#after all that effort leaving depression and self hate from my adolescence behind. from being proud of myself for being different to all me

[gatun-gatunesco]

...

[abortionado]

Can you please write moreid #3 from the fluff or 12 from misc?

Sorry this took me so long! This sort of prompt (not depressing or horny) is not what I’m used to writing, so it was kind of a challenge. I hope you like it! (Set during S1. Long as hell for absolutely no reason. Not NSFW, but warning for adult themes.)

Spencer wakes up as soon as the sun’s flush has spread to the center of the sky.

For a fraction of a second, before he’s opened his eyes, he’s certain he’s at home. Then, for an even smaller increment, he’s half-awake and confused at the unfamiliar angles at which the light fills his peripherals. 

Then, then, once his brain has fully rejoined him on planet Earth, then he remembers. 

Holy shit. 

Holy shit. 

Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid, Spencer. 

Sleeping with your coworker?

Stupid.

Think. 

He’s still asleep. 

Carefully, as if he’s diffusing a bomb, Spencer removes Morgan’s (heavy, good Lord, what does this guy lift?) arm from where it’s draped across his chest and sits upright. He keeps every muscle in his body tense in an effort to keep as still as possible. 

Twelve and a half feet from here to the door, clothes five feet three inches left of the door.

Will take me two minutes to dress. My legs are three feet and four inches long. My strides are four feet and five inches on average.

Sixteen stairs. 

Six and a half inches each.

It should take him, he reasons, about four minutes and some change to dress himself and get out the front door, as long as he makes exceptionally good time and manages to dodge distractions. (He doesn’t want to seem too eager, after all, hanging around the house the morning after--he doesn’t want Morgan to know just how much this matters to him.)

As soon as Spencer shifts his weight, though, he realizes how sore the previous night had rendered him, and he tries to adjust his calculations for limping.

Six minutes? Eight?

He’s not sure. 

He’s not sure of anything right now.

God, he hates being unsure. 

Painstakingly slowly, Spencer climbs out of bed and tiptoes over to the corner of the room where his clothes had been carelessly discarded the night before. 

(He finds that he almost doesn’t want to put them back on. He feels as though he’s somehow a changed person.)

For just a moment, as he’s wrestling his jeans on, Spencer pauses to drink in the domestic tranquility laid out before him. The sun has risen in full, and its gentle morning rays are slipping in defined slates through the blinds covering the window above the bed. Derek Morgan is passed out with his back to the corner of the room where Spencer is standing. Even from behind, everything about the older man seems regal, somehow; unnaturally beautiful, like he was created by something far more powerful than a man and a woman. His shoulder blades, the curvature of his spine, his medium-dark complexion that almost seems to glow in the sunlight--it’s all perfect. His back is scratched up, and it’s with genuine surprise that Spencer realizes he must’ve done that. 

Reluctantly, he tears his eyes away and turns to face the wall as he gets dressed.

Four and a half minutes with NO DISTRACTIONS.

No distractions.

Don’t get distracted.

Don’t get--

“What’re you doing?” Morgan calls from behind him, voice thick with sleep.

Shit. 

Spencer pivots quickly around, heart hammering, still holding his shirt in his left hand. “I was j—uh—I was just…leaving…?” 

Morgan frowns. “I drove you here.”

“I was…gonna take the metro.” 

“Uh-uh.” He yawns and sits up. “What kinda douchebag do you think I am? I’m not gonna fuck you and let you take the train home.” 

“Morgan, I can—”

“Hey. Call me Derek, okay?” 

“Derek, I can get myself home. It’s really not a problem.”

“It is a problem. I’ll make you breakfast. C’mon.” His face softens a bit. “Please?”

It occurs to Spencer, then, that he might actually be wanted here. He entertains the thought (doesn’t cling to it, but allows it to pass by without shooting it down) that Morgan - Derek, whatever - actually wants to make him breakfast, and isn’t just doing it out of obligation or because he feels bad for him. It’s an unfamiliar (though certainly not unwelcome) feeling-- being truly wanted is a dopamine rush he hasn’t felt in years.

Spencer nods, trying his best not to grin like a lovesick teenage girl. “Okay. Sure, I can stay for breakfast.” 

… 

Spencer’s never been good at sitting still, and it’s ten times worse when he’s nervous. 

The atmosphere of the kitchen is not tense--that’s not the right way to describe it, because Derek certainly doesn’t seem tense, humming to himself as he flips pancakes and the dusty, familiar smell of the heat turning on fills the room--but Spencer is certainly tense. He hadn’t grabbed his shirt when he’d come downstairs, having been thrown off of his groove by Derek asking him to stay for breakfast, and he’s self-conscious and cold. He bounces his leg up and down idly and wrings his hands in his lap.

Sleeping with your coworker, he thinks, over and over and over. Stupid.

“Do you mind if I go look at your pictures?” He eventually asks, gesturing towards the framed photos on the wall in the living room. 

“Not at all. These’ll be done in--actually, I’ll come in there.” 

As Spencer stands up, he absentmindedly grabs a gray hoodie draped across the back of one of the kitchen chairs and tugs it over his head. It’s warm, soft, and smells like Derek. 

He never wants to take it off.

Morgan’s living room is painted a pale blue color. The couch and coffee table sit a foot and a half apart. There’s a brown, circular rug (almost exactly six feet in diameter, Spencer notes) in the center of the floor. The walls are lined with photographs; side-by-side portraits of two pretty young women who Spencer recognizes as Derek’s sisters, a photo of Derek in front of some sort of waterfall with his arm around a slim, pretty brunette woman (which sparks an irrational jealousy that Spencer swallows as best he can), and a small framed photo of a group of people which looks to have been taken with a disposable camera. 

Spencer moves in to get a closer look.

“Is this JJ on your wall here?”

“In the group picture with the unit?” Morgan calls. “Yeah. We look a lot younger there, huh?”

Spencer smiles. “You do. I didn’t even recognize Gideon. What year was this?”  

“That was...‘98? ‘99? JJ’s first year. Probably my favorite year with the BAU yet.” 

His favorite year ever was before I was there, Spencer realizes with a twinge of sadness.

“That was before we got the jet,” Derek continues. “Man, you don’t know the struggle. We used to fly commercial. Get split up and sat next to randos. But that was before 9/11, so...hey, did you see my hoodie anywhere? I swear I set down in here somewhere.” 

Spencer’s smile fades. He balls his fists within the too-long sleeves of Derek’s missing hoodie. Fuck. 

God, he’s so bad at these things. 

He’s almost never sure in advance exactly where other people draw the lines of their comfort zones, but he can always tell once he’s overstepped them, and standing here at eight o’clock in the morning in his coworker’s living room, bare-chested beneath his hoodie, sore between the legs and staring at his family photos, he knows for sure that he’s overstepped. He’s gotten too comfortable.

Spencer reaches to pull the garment off. “Uh, I…”

“You’re wearing it, aren’t you?”

“I’m not, I--”

Derek chuckles. “You’re super cute. I’ll be out there in one sec.” 

..

Honestly, the fact that Derek regularly has two kinds of syrup (maple and blueberry) in his house is extremely intimidating. 

Spencer’s spent most of his life around older people, and, though he certainly never feels left behind intellectually, there are occasional jarring moments when he realizes just how immature he is in comparison to his peers. This is one of these times; he feels adolescent and ridiculous looking around Morgan’s fully-furnished, Real Adult living room, thinking about how he probably has a mortgage and a spice cabinet and a swiffer mop. 

(Two kinds of syrup--really? Spencer doesn’t even have ice cubes. Maybe it’s time for him to grow up and get an ice tray.)

“Did you know that the profitable blueberry season in South America directly follows the profitable blueberry season in North America, almost to the day?” Spencer asks, nervously dragging his forkful of pancake through his puddle of blueberry syrup. He’s hardly eaten. He’s too uneasy. “On the day that the average North American blueberry farmer’s profits decline to zero, the average South American blueberry farmer’s spike. Now, this is partly just because of demand, of course, but the fact that it’s so exact--”

“Spence?” Morgan interrupts.

He mentally kicks himself. “Sorry.”

“Hey, no. Don’t be sorry. Listen, uh...do you think I could maybe...take you out...sometime?”

Spencer frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Snipe you. No. What do you think? To dinner or something.”

(If Spencer didn’t know any better, he’d almost think Derek looked nervous. He’s biting his lower lip--it’s a classic anxiety tell. Sometimes, Spencer really wishes he wasn’t a profiler.)

“...Why?”

“Why?” Morgan repeats. “Because I like you.”

Spencer’s stomach turns over. “You do?”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

“...Do you really mean that?” (His heart hammers. He wonders, for a moment, if this is some kind of cruel joke, like the ones kids used to play on him in high school.)

“What? Of course I mean it.”

“Do you do this with everyone? I mean, everyone who…?”

“No.” 

It’s difficult for Spencer to comprehend; he almost can’t wrap his head around the idea that someone so gorgeous and widely beloved and well-put-together would want anything at all to do with him, let alone this. “Then why is this time different?”

“Because you’re different. I’ve never met anyone like you in my life. Look, can I take you out, or not?”

Spencer locks eyes with Derek and raises his forkful of pancake (now completely saturated with blueberry syrup) to his lips. He’s not quite sure if the overwhelming, comfortable warmth he feels is from the heat, Derek’s hoodie, or the affection he feels bubbling up inside him at the prospect of a date, but he finds that he doesn’t really care. 

“I’d like that.”

[xxladylovexx]

It used to be that when a 13-year-old wanted a binder for school, it meant a trip to Staples. For today’s tweens and teens who identify as gender-nonconforming or transgender, shopping for a binder may mean a compression undergarment worn to flatten breasts.

Made of thick spandex and nylon, binders resemble tight undershirts, creating a masculine profile. The American Academy of Pediatrics has estimated that 0.7 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds in the United States, about 150,000, identify as transgender. Dr. John Steever, assistant professor of pediatrics at Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center in Manhattan, who runs its transgender health program and has evaluated over 500 patients from ages 8 to 23, said that almost 95 percent of the transmasculine teenagers in the program bind.

Binders are not classified as medical devices, but some doctors and parents have concerns about their safety. (Common-sense binding guidelines include: Don’t use Ace bandages or duct tape, don’t bind at night, limit a binder to eight to 10 hours a day, don’t shower in it, don’t wear two, and don’t wear one that is too small.)

Though breast compression has been around hundreds of years — think of corsets — commercial binders, primarily sold online, have been available for about 15 years. Marli Washington, 26, a transgender man and founder of GC2B Transitional Apparel, an online binder company, wrote in an email that the company had had “at least a 200 percent growth” since 2015.

Some transgender teens say they buy binders so that they can “pass” as male or to diminish feelings of discomfort with the body known as body dysphoria. And though wearing binders is temporary, their use can be associated with later medical transition. Dr. Steever said most of his patients who use binders “then tell me the next things they want to do, like testosterone, mastectomy and maybe phalloplasty. Ninety-five percent of the people I’ve evaluated get started on cross-hormones.” (Cross-gender hormone treatment in young people may affect future fertility, but data is limited.)

For transgender or gender-nonconforming teens who cannot afford binders, which start at around $30, there are free binder programs. FTM Essentials runs an application and lottery for those age 24 and under. Point of Pride, a transgender nonprofit based in Eugene, Ore., ships binders free to people of any age who express need and has sent over 4,000 nationally and internationally.

Often, teenagers first learn about binders through YouTube videos hosted by young people. An instructional video called “Chest binding” by a Norwegian teenager named Kovu Kingsrod, who wears as many as three sports bras a day, has more than a million views.

Tami Staas, 51, a schoolteacher who lives in Tempe, Ariz., and is president of the Arizona Trans Youth and Parent Organization, has a 21-year-old son who was assigned female at birth and who started binding at 12. He wore a binder about 12 hours a day for five years. He had trouble in gym class and breathing trouble.

“It was like trying to run a marathon in a tight bustier,” Ms. Staas said. “It was difficult for me to weigh: Am I doing the right thing? Is it causing irreparable damage? It was very difficult to watch him cause himself physical pain in order to be comfortable in his own skin.” At 18, he had a double mastectomy, or top surgery, and now takes testosterone weekly.

A 17-year-old in Phoenix who binds daily and asked to be identified only by the initials J.M. said he started binding at 13. To maximize the compression, he bought a binder one size too small and wore it at night. “My arms and hands would feel numb and tingly off and on,” he emailed, “from how tight the material was around that area.” When he removed the binder, he found his skin “severely chafed and raw.”

He added: “The divots left behind from those times took months to heal. In all honesty, I couldn’t have cared less about the damage being created, just that my chest was flat.”

Dr. Ilana Sherer, a pediatrician and founder of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center at the University of California, San Francisco, Benioff Children’s Hospital, emailed that “binders can be physically very uncomfortable and can cause problems especially if overused or ill-fitting, so it’s important that every youth weigh the risks and benefits for themselves and have access to quality, well-fitting binders.”

But even those are correlated with negative health effects. Though there have been no studies on binding and adolescent health, because of ethical concerns about research on minors, a 2017 study by students at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Boston University School of Medicine, and the Boston University School of Public Health looked at 1,800 transmasculine adults with a median age of 23. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said they had bound for over a year, over half bound an average of seven days a week, and 66.6 percent were interested in top surgery. An additional 13.1 percent had already had the surgery.

Participants reported a statistically significant improvement in mood after binding. They also reported decreased gender dysphoria, anxiety and depression. As for physical effects, 97.2 percent of the group that bound reported at least one negative physical symptom, such as back pain, overheating, chest pain and shortness of breath. Other symptoms included numbness, bad posture and lightheadedness.

Commercial binders were highly associated with negative outcomes (20 of 28 negative outcomes), as were elastic bandages (14 of 28), and duct tape or plastic wrap (13 of 28). One reason may be that commercial binders lend a false sense of security, leading wearers to keep them on too long or sleep in them.

The American Academy of Pediatrics does not have an official position on binding. But in a policy statement last year on care of transgender and gender-diverse children and adolescents, it advocated a “gender-affirmative care model,” where providers convey that “variations in gender identity and expression are normal aspects of human diversity.”

But some worry that parental efforts to affirm a young person’s identity by supporting binding may contribute to self-hate. Jane Wheeler, a co-founder of an organization called Rethink Identity Medicine Ethics, which examines standards of care for gender-variant children and youth, said binding “feeds into a normalization of body hatred, that some forms of body hatred are O.K.”

Brie Jontry is the spokeswoman for 4thWaveNow, which describes itself as “a community of parents and others concerned about the medicalization of gender atypical youth.” Her daughter, now 15, told Ms. Jontry that she was trans at 11 and wanted a binder. Ms. Jontry bought her a running bra, but her daughter felt it was not constricting enough, refusing to leave the house until she got a binder.

The first one she tried, at age 12, was too tight, Ms. Jontry thought, so they returned it and ordered a larger one. Her daughter, who was home-schooled, bound at home and every time she went out. She stopped running, rock-climbing, backpacking and swimming.

“We would go for our evening walk and she would get winded and dizzy,” Ms. Jontry said. “She stopped climbing trees. She stopped doing things where any degree of upper-body flexibility was important.”

“Binding is not benign,” Ms. Jontry said. “It encourages the idea that people’s distress and anger and trauma should be turned inward toward their own bodies instead of outward toward the culture that feels oppressive to them.”

Dr. Sherer wrote in an email that “it’s strange to me that someone would think of a binder as being a form of self-harm when there are so many other garments used by gender-typical people to change their appearance that are also extremely uncomfortable (hello high heels …).”

But binder use in teenagers may become a thing of the past. Ms. Staas, the Arizona teacher, said that several members of her group take hormone blockers to prevent developing female sex characteristics.

Those youths, she wrote in an email, “will not develop breast tissue and therefore will not have a need to bind their chests.”

[intesarjawad]

Self-Confidence: The One Formula That Will Make You Insanely Confident

As a young boy going to grade school I never considered confidence to be an issue. I was one of the most popular faces in school. I had excellent academics. Me winning different awards and recognitions was a commonplace. I used to do stage shows in school functions and I was also the class monitor. Naturally, I was the most confident person I had known back then. But it all changed when in 2nd grade I had to leave that school and got admitted to another much bigger school. It was in my new school that I realized that I’m not the best. There are plenty of other people who are far better than me. The system, the curriculum everything was different. Three months in this new school was enough to pop the bubble that I lived in for the first 8 years of my life.

And for the first time in my life, I realized that confidence is definitely an issue and that I lacked plenty of it. I spent the next 8 years in this school. Inside these 8 years, I entered my adolescence, the effect of the society set in. Like many others, I started worrying that I would be judged and was in constant fear of this. I kept myself aloof from doing a lot of things, from participating in a lot of activities that I otherwise would have done. All for my lack of self-confidence. The initial struggle that I had made me believe that I was never good enough and all that happened in my previous school was just a delusion.

Towards the end of this period however, I did get habituated with the system. I did do well enough. But it was nothing close to my potential. And the prime reason behind this is my continual lack of confidence which in turn prevented me from taking action.

I’m pretty sure that you too have such a story where you lose out on a lot because of your lack of confidence (tell me about it in the comments section), otherwise, you wouldn’t be here in the first place. In fact, most people in the world have a profound lack of confidence which prevents them from reaching their actual potential.

To solve this issue I spent a considerable amount of my time researching into the topic of confidence, what is it and why we lack so much of it. I searched for solutions to this problem. And while doing that I noticed a pattern which can be expressed as a formula. A formula which I believe can make you very confident. At least, I’ve found it to be useful for myself when it came to building my self-confidence. Read through to find this out.

How to use this article

This is probably one of the largest posts you are going to find on the internet knowing which may prevent you from reading any further. But hey, if confidence is something that can define your entire life, then there is no harm in spending even an entire day reading a single piece of writing if required. I can guarantee you that if you won’t regret it. To get the most out of this article-

Grab a pen and paper

You can either listen to the audio version of this article which is at the top. If that doesn’t work for you can just read all the way yourself

Read this article in chunks rather than reading it at once. That way you’ll retain more of what you learn

Take active notes as you read through

I would suggest that you bookmark this page, share it with others or even email yourself this article so that you don’t forget about it. You can also use Evernote to save it for later reading. (Signup to Evernote using this link to get Evernote Premium for a limited period of time)

If you scroll down you’ll see a self confidence quiz which I suggest you to take to know how confident you are now

Every month, take the quiz again to see the change that has been bought to your life reading this article

From the results of the quiz if you believe that there is something that you need to work upon come back to this post anytime

In this ever eventful world, in case you don’t forget to retake this quiz, you will automatically receive an email once every 4 weeks from the first time you take the quiz reminding you to take it again.

Refer back to this article after taking the quiz

Let’s start off with some basic questions.

Introduction

What is confidence and what does it mean?

The word confidence has its origin in the Latin word ‘confidere’ which means ‘to have full trust’. In modern days, confidence has expanded in its dimensions so much so that there is no one single definition that can fully define what confidence means. The following are some of the prominent definitions of confidence-

a belief in your own ability to do things and be successful

a feeling of certainty

a positive and habitual way of thinking

an attitude that invokes action and emotion

behavior that makes a set of feelings and attitudes follow

the extent to which you can get out of your own way

the extent to which you can continue to take the right action despite what you feel

to be fearless in your actions

an emotion born out of your actions

you maintaining originality, you being your true self irrespective of your surrounding environment

Although there will be disputes regarding the definition of confidence, there’s one thing I can say for sure. Confidence isn’t something that you’re born with. It isn’t something that comes all on a sudden and enables you to do whatever you like. It isn’t something that’s permanent. And being confident certainly DOES NOT MEAN not having your nerves.

Confidence isn’t something that you have rather it is something that you do.

Where does self-confidence come from?

This question has a fair level of controversy to it. Different people will give you different answers- from past successes, from accomplishments, from being well built-up, from good performances, etc. But the truth is self-confidence as the name suggests comes from your own self, it comes from inside you.

To properly articulate it, self-confidence comes from raising your Self-esteem. But isn’t self-confidence and self-esteem the same thing? Absolutely not. Self-esteem denotes your sense of self-worthiness. Prominent psychotherapist Nathaniel Branden in his book The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem writes that your self-esteem is your reputation with yourself. It’s what you genuinely believe and think of your true self.

Difference between Confidence and Overconfidence

Confidence is quiet and it stays within you. When you’re confident you don’t act morally superior. Rather you are humble and you rightly estimate your skillset grounded on reality.

But when you are overconfident you have this fixed mindset that you are always correct. You tend to overestimate yourself and are proud of yourself. Unlike popular belief, you really don’t need to outwardly show that you’re always right and proud of yourself. Even if you’ve never expressed overconfidence in front of others you may be just as overconfident as any of those overconfident persons you hate.

Why is confidence important?

Confidence, for many people like you and me, happens to be that one thing that has the potential to initiate a series of actions in our lives that will change it for the better. The benefits of confidence include but are not limited to-

Better performance

Enables you to take action which you otherwise would not have taken out of fear

It empowers you to say ‘No’ when you should be saying ‘No’

Being confident removes anxiety

You can unlock your full potential by being confident

You get to discover your true self

It can make things easy for you

It can free you from your self-built cage

What does a profound lack of confidence bring to your life?

Confidence means having enough belief in your abilities that you become active. Lack of confidence, therefore, means being uncertain of whether your efforts will be successful – an uncertainty that makes you scared to even try. Lack of self-confidence potentially leads to-

Social anxiety and withdrawal

Emotional turmoil

Self-negligence

Depression and sadness

Closeting yourself

Treating yourself very badly

Fear of facing any new situation

Not discovering your full potential

Lifetime regret

Eating disorder

Always having self-doubt

Living a very mediocre life

Not fulfilling your dreams

Always getting less than what you deserve

Moral deterioration

Bad relations with other people

What causes people to lack so much in confidence?

Although there may be a plethora of reasons why most of us lack confidence, some of the prime reasons include-

Self-limiting beliefs

Physical insecurities

Past trauma

Anxiety and depression

Comparing with others

Negative self-talk

Bad parents

Lack of congruence between what you want, what you believe and what you do

Social prejudice

Self-pity

Lack of self-discipline

Lack of adequate knowledge and practice

Bad company

Lack of awareness

Want of perfectionism

Being a victim of bullying

Inferiority complex

Often not completing what you started

A false sense of pleasure

How confident are you?

To know how confident you are you can take this comprehensive self-confidence quiz.

How can you be more confident?

The internet is filled with quick fixes some of which may boost your confidence level temporarily. But none of them will truly enable you to build your confidence. Because having a permanent sense of high self-confidence asks you to follow a complex long term process. However, the process of building confidence can be simplified with this one formula. Wait for it, wait for it, and… POOF! Here it is-

Intention + Thinking + Imagination + Action = Supreme Confidence

The Supreme Confidence formula

Throughout the rest of this post, you will come to know how to implement this simple yet highly effective formula in your life to build your confidence and become superconfident.

Part One Of The Confidence Formula: Intention

Having the right intent is essential for any journey. You just can’t go out hoping that one day you’ll reach your destination, one day you’ll become confident. You need to expect it and need to know that it will happen. For this, you need to have the right intent.

1. Determination

There is nothing you can achieve but failure if you don’t have the determination to take you all the way through.  Confidence is something that you need to create for yourself. Unless you have the determination to do this whatever formula you follow it doesn’t really matter. You’ll never have confidence. Approach the act of gaining confidence as an obligation and be determined.

“One of the greatest turning points in my life occurred when I stopped casually waiting for success and started to approach it as a duty, obligation, and responsibility.”

Grant Cardone

But how do you become determined?

2. Ask yourself – “Why do I need this?”

Every morning, or before any major event ask yourself why you need this confidence in the first place. Clarity is power. Unless you and, more importantly, your mind and your body specifically know why you need to be self-confident, you will never be self-confident.

This is primarily because our brains are great at filtering out information that we don’t require. So it’s important that you keep reminding yourself of this information. Each day, grab a pen and a paper and write your answer to the above question so that it gets internalized in your brain.

3. Understand that you are going to miss out on a lot of good things if you are not confident

Lack of confidence prevents you from taking action. You know that you’ve already missed out on a lot of things to date because you were not confident when you needed to be. You know you could have achieved a lot more if it weren’t for your inability to be confident when required. If you don’t take any measure now this will continue forever and ever. 

It’s time you call it QUITS.

Make a comprehensive list of all the good things that you are going to miss out on for your lack of self-confidence, and reflect upon that list on a daily basis. This regular act of reflection shows your brain why it’s important to act now.

4. Pain vs Pleasure

According to Tony Robbins, one of the best life coaches out there, Pain and Pleasure are two of the most powerful forces in the universe. In fact, everything that we do day in and day out all through our lives is purely driven by our sense of pain or our sense of pleasure.

For example, you perceive just standing in front of a crowd, all staring at you as a severe ordeal. You attach a deep sense of agonizing pain to it. On the other hand, we associate pleasure to being in a group and not being observed by others.

The amalgamation of these two forces together is what has made the fear of speaking in public the No.1 fear in humans, coming ahead of the fear of dying.

But our brain always takes decisions with positive intent. For example, people who smoke know that it is going to kill them. But still their brain compels them to smoke when it’s boring, or when they are going through some painful situation, all that with the positive intent of making them feel good.

What’s important is that we actively teach our brain to understand what’s good and what’s not by actively attaching an insurmountable level of pain to the things that we don’t want to have and actively associating utmost pleasure to the things that we want to have; in this case being able to do the thing that we want to with confidence.

The other thing to keep in mind is that you need to prioritize long term pleasure over short term pleasure. This is because in most cases-

Short term Pleasure = Long term Pain

5. Congruence

Congruence means to be in a state of proper alignment. To have an insane level of confidence you need to line things up properly. Your intention, your mindset, your actions, body, and mind all need to be properly aligned with your goal, your vision. 

When there is congruence in your action there is clarity in your mind; your brain knows exactly what to do when to do it and how to do it.

So to have meaningful confidence in yourself align all the factions of your life in one direction.

Part Two Of The Confidence Formula: Thinking

The next part of the formula is Thinking. To be insanely confident, which a presume you’re currently not, you need to change your default way of thinking.

1. Accept what you can’t change about yourself

Face it. No human in this world is perfect. Each one of us is full of imperfections. It is these imperfections within us that make our lives so different from others. Some of the natural traits that we have can’t be changed no matter how hard we try.

Fretting about these flaws within you won’t cure these imperfections. Rather, it’s more likely that you’ll end up magnifying a very small issue into a life-defining problem.

In these cases, the smartest way to act is to accept what you can’t change about yourself and live with it, if not be happy with it. What you can’t change you can’t change.

So accept it, get on with it and love yourself anyway.

2. Practice Self Awareness and know yourself inside-out

Self-awareness means to have a conscious awareness of your own character and your feelings, your strengths, your weaknesses and everything thing else that defines who you are. 

The reason why self-awareness is such an important trait is that it helps you to know who you are and what values you stand for. Having full knowledge about these things is an integral part of being self-confident. Because knowing yourself inside-out helps you to decide what to do to achieve your goals. It helps you to know what your strengths are so that you can use them to the fullest. It also helps you to know what your weaknesses are so that you can work on them.

Start your morning asking yourself, “Who am I?” This one simple question will give rise to a series of other questions all that contribute to the complex development of you and your belief system.

3. Define Your Fears

Defining your fears top to bottom gives you clarity. You come to know the reason behind your fears. Having this knowledge helps you to take action to eliminate these fears by taking proper action.

4. Recognize that you are holding yourself back

As humans, we have limitless potential. But more often than not we tend to hold ourselves back. We fail to recognize the infinite potential we possess. Whether be it the prejudices of the society or our own myopic vision very few people actually reach their full potential and produce excellent results.

The key to getting out of this is to recognize that it is you who is holding yourself back, and not anyone else. A good example in this context would be the story of Marvel’s very own Captain Marvel. She had the power to single-handedly defeat an entire Kree army. But it was only when she realized that her powers were subdued by the Kree device on her neck(in our case the limiting beliefs inside our head) that she was able to uncover her true powers.

So don’t judge your self-worth based on your current condition. Because you too, my friend, are holding back an enormous deal of power. Realize this as soon as you can.

5. Combat Negativity

You simply can’t focus on being confident and at the same time have a bunch of negative voices roaming around your head. Getting rid of all these negative thoughts is the precondition to have a clear and confident mind.

Here are some of the key negative elements you need to eliminate from your mind:

Your inner critic: The inner critic is that voice inside you that plants reservation in yourself. Your inner critic constantly criticizes each and every one of your actions that too from a pessimistic point of view. It strangles you from doing anything meaningful by swaying you against it.

Overthinking: Overthinking is one of the root causes of our lack of self-confidence. It prevents us from living the moment and implants meaningless concerns in our head.

People who lack confidence all share one thing in common, and I would know because I was one of them: They live in their head. So much so, that they can’t even hear what the other person is actually saying.

Nicolas Cole

The Imposter Syndrome: Imposter Syndrome is when you always have this feeling that every great result you have achieved until now were mere accidents. It’s not because you deserve this success, rather because you somehow turned out to be lucky.

Arrogance: Arrogance is the opposite of confidence. It is a brittle shield trying to hide your insecurities. When you are arrogant you try and identify your worth with your own beefed-up opinions and visions of yourself. You try to show that you’re better than others, rather than showing who you really are.

Comparing yourself with others: Comparing yourself with others is an act of foolishness. Each and every one of us is unique. We all have our own joys, and we all have our own difficulties. Never compare yourself with anyone yourself. Present-day social media plays a big role in creating a comparison mindset.

Compromising originality: You will never be confident if you are constantly compromising your ownself and living a life dictated by the opinions of anyone else but you. Embrace who you are and never make a compromise on that just for the sake of making people who don’t matter happy. Let go of managing other people’s opinion of you.

Waiting for other people’s approval: Majority of the people aren’t really successful in their personal life. So why bother looking forward to the opinions of people who are not any more successful than you are? Believing that a certain person’s approval will make you happy or more confident is a destructive habit.

Perfectionism: Perfection in the vast majority of case the opposite of completion. The sense of perfectionism in whatever is it that you do dissuades you from taking proper action. According to Brené Brown, we strive for perfectionism to shield ourselves from the possibility of failure. If you really do want your works to be perfect make sure that it does not stop you from taking action.

Other Negative Habits: Some other prominent negative habits that hinder the development of your confidence include but aren’t limited to- Staying in situations that you really dislike, focusing intensely on practice, disqualifying yourself before doing something, playing really low, etc.

But how do you kill all this negativity from your mind?

Follow these simple yet effective steps to combat negativity

Be mindful and aware of your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and reactions to situations, and also the people around you.

Kill all the disempowering thoughts and beliefs

Replace them with empowering revitalizing thoughts and beliefs

Repeat this until it turns into an automatic response 

6. Find a good and consistent source of confidence

For most people, their source of confidence lies in the praises and approvals of other people. The problem with this is that such a source of confidence isn’t reliable since it isn’t consistent. And more importantly, it relies on how well you perform. So to make the flow of confidence from such a source consistent you need to perform really well that too on a consistent basis.

But in practicality, this is impossible. No human, irrespective of their level of expertise, can deliver good results and perform well on a consistent basis.

So you need to find a proper source of your confidence, one that is consistent. One from which you can gain confidence even when you have no one to stand by your side. It can be a vivid imagination of your goal, a strong determination, your love for your sport, your firmness to do the right thing, or anything else that’s consistent.

7. Have a Growth Mindset rather than a Fixed Mindset

A Fixed mindset is when you believe that everything from your strengths, your weaknesses, your potential, and your results is fixed and predetermined. And you are going to get nothing more than what you are destined to get.

A Growth Mindset, on the other hand, is the belief that most if not all the things in life are flexible and malleable and changes the way you want it to. Which means that your potential and your strengths are limitless. It all depends on what sort of actions you are willing to take. That is, your attitude to your life is going to define your altitude.

So to have your desired level of confidence you need to have a growth mindset. You need to believe that your level of confidence isn’t fixed. It can be improved by taking proper actions.

8. Practice having an Equality Mindset

Back in school, one of my teachers, who has been in this noble profession for over 50 years now, once told us-

In my entire teaching career, I have seen students of all kinds. I have seen only a few people who are prodigies and intellectually superior than others. The number of dumb students even fewer. Most students have the same level of intellect. The difference is in the way they use it.

Phanindra Chandra Banik

That coming from a person with 50 years of experience, can never be doubted.

So have an equality mindset. The person in front of you isn’t superior to you in terms of intellect. Be confident and never let other people intimidate you. Moreover, make proper use of your own intellect.

9. Control What You Focus On

Imagine that you are on a podium giving a speech in front of fifty-odd people. What should you be focusing on?

Here are your options-

(a) How the people are reacting to your speech

(b) What the people are thinking about you

(c) Sounding and appearing more confident

Most people choose option (c), which is absolutely wrong. So are (a) and (b). So what exactly should you be focusing on?

It’s your content that you should be focusing on. That is to say, all that you need to focus on is what you are saying at the moment. Everything else doesn’t matter. If you focus on what other people are thinking about you, or on sounding confident, which most people lacking confidence inevitably do – your content which is your main performance is likely to get sidetracked amid the chaotic environment inside your head.

So only focus on what really matters, and eliminate all the pointless concerns.

10. Own Your Strength

Irrespective of who we are and what we do, each of us, we have our own sets of strengths and weaknesses. But our pessimist side often wins the fight against our optimistic side. And as a result, it reminds us of our weaknesses every now and then.

As a result, our strengths, or more precisely the knowledge of them thereof, remains in the shadow; so much so that we hardly recognize.

Learn to recognize your strengths and continually build upon them. If your feeling stranded and don’t know where to start from, you can always take the 16 Personalities Test. Even the free test will give you a comprehensive explanation of yourself. It tells you your personality type, your strengths and weakness, and many more.

One interesting thing that I found when I gave the 16 Personalities Test is that I belong to the ‘Logician’ category and about 3% of people in the world are of this personality type. This makes this personality type quite rare. What this means for me is that the majority of the people I meet are going to be different than me. And that’s completely okay.

11. Embrace Your Vulnerability

Most of us use the word ‘Vulnerability‘ to mean a weakness of some kind, or a state of being exposed to attack. But renowned researcher Dr.Brené Brown sees it differently. According to her, ‘Vulnerability’ means the willingness to openly admit failures and weaknesses which helps us build up resilience to feelings of shame, and be happier with what we have.

In her research, she discovered that shame weakens our ability to believe we can improve ourselves and that we can improve our level of confidence. And shame is a common way in which we try to combat our vulnerability. So if you can embrace your vulnerability, your sense of shame automatically disappears.

To know more about this you can check out Brené Brown’s Ted talk on ‘The Power of Vulnerability’ below.

Brené Brown: THE POWER OF VULNERABILITY

12. Failure is an integral part of the confidence gaining process

There was a time when I feared failure so much that this fear was enough to prevent me from doing a lot of things that I genuinely wanted to do. And I know a lot of you are currently doing the same thing. We all know well that failure is but a stepping stone in our path to success. Yet only a few of us actually portray belief this in our actions.

And rightfully so, people of the likes of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Jordan, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, and J.K. Rowling, people who were ready to fail often are the ones to make a name for themselves in their respective fields.

So embrace your failures and learn from them rather than running away from them. Each time you fail, you learn more about the thing that you’re doing, and the more you learn about it, the more confident you’ll be.

13. Become a (Reverse) Paranoid

Paranoia is a mental condition characterized by delusions of persecution, unwarranted jealousy, or exaggerated self-importance, typically worked into an organized system. It also used to mean the unjustified suspicion and mistrust of other people.

While you and I may not have paranoia, the mental condition, we do to some extent have a mild sense of paranoia acting within us. For example, if you’ve ever scored bad in an exam where most others have done well, it’s not unnatural for you to feel that you are subject to partiality by your teacher or someone else.

This toned-down form of paranoia most of us have in a lot of cases bars us from seeing the actual cause behind our failure and compels us to make excuses.

We call it Reverse Paranoia when we use this paranoia in a positive way, In this mode of thinking you start believing that everything happening in this universe has the sole objective of ensuring that you succeed. For example, in the previous scenario instead of making excuses that the teacher was partial, you believe out of all the people the teacher is indirectly challenging you to do better in the next test. And this is because he knows that you have incredible potential.

In this mode of thinking, every obstacle you come across in life, you believe, is an indication that it’s time for you to up your game. You believe that you are facing this obstacle because you have the strength to overcome this and it’s time you discover that.

Part Three Of The Confidence Formula: Imagination

Does this sound familiar to you?

One day you come across an event which happens to ignite a strong sense of motivation inside you. It can be anything- a movie, a story, an exceptional performance by someone, anything. You go back home, and that night you feel pumped up. You resolve that tomorrow is going to be the start of your epic journey to success. No matter what happens you are going to kill all your temptations of mediocrity and are going to only those things which are going to make you successful. You are going to build the best of habits and are going to be super-confident and super-efficient.

Come the next day, you wake up to the alarm, all pumped up. You start doing what you’re supposed to do. After grinding your to-do list for an hour or two you think that it’s time for you to take a break. And so you start your short break.

But alas! You see your phone and pick it up, thinking that minute or two on your phone won’t disturb your routine. Two minutes turns into five and then ten…and by the time you notice it’s been 2 whole hours. And then you spend 3 more hours on the phone, thinking that your day is already over, there’s nothing you can do to make it better, and so you’ll start again afresh tomorrow.

The next day comes, but you believe you’re not ready yet. So you defer the beginning of your epic journey to success for tomorrow. Seven days later you remember that not so long ago you resolved to immerse in a new routine. But here you are back to your old routine, doing what you always do. And more importantly, you have no idea why you’re doing what you’re doing now and not doing what you were supposed to do.

We’ve all been through this experience. And amazingly most of us are going through this mediocre routine right now.

Why does this keep happening so often? Why do we not do what we’re supposed to? And why do most people consistently revert back to that old cycle of lack of self-confidence of theirs?

The simple reason is our subconscious mind. That is to say, although we consciously know you that need to be self-confident and we may firmly believe that you can be confident, our subconscious mind doesn’t believe the same.

And because of this, that feeling of fear and that lack of confidence always seems to set into your mind and your body no matter what you do. Because around 90% of what we do on a daily basis is controlled by our subconscious mind; the reason being that your brain is an expert at flushing out all the unnecessary details.

You can understand this more clearly from an example. Let’s go back to that scenario we were in a little earlier – you giving that speech. Your conscious mind is busy thinking out the things that you are going to say to the people and how you are going to present it to them. So the task of handling your confidence now goes to your subconscious mind. Now, all the fears and all the doubts all the nonsensical questions that have been programmed into your subconscious starting from your birth till date sets in. Your adrenaline goes up. Anxiety sets in your veins. And there you go, all your confidence which your conscious mind has been hosting didn’t take a second to get flushed out.

So what is our problem?

The main problem when it comes to our lack of self-confidence lies in our subconscious and the way it has been programmed.

But what is the subconscious mind?

In psychology, the subconscious is the part of the mind that is not currently in focal awareness. The subconscious mind is like a big memory bank that stores your beliefs, memories and life experiences. This information that is stored in your subconscious mind always affects your behavior and actions in different situations. In the simplest of senses, our subconscious is our built-in auto-pilot feature.

Whatever we do every day, at least 90% of it is done by our subconscious mind. Only 10% or so of our daily tasks, we actively do with our conscious mind.

So the secret to an insane level of confidence lies in how our subconscious is programmed. And it should be quite clear to you by now the default settings is really very bad.

But how do we override this default program that has been solidified in our subconscious upon running for years?

In comes Imagination. It is this 11-letter magical world that can reprogram your subconscious the way you want it. You may the smartest, the strongest, the fastest, but if you lack the power of imagination you can do nothing with your strengths. Because you’re still running on that default mediocre program that everyone else is running on.

The clearer is your imagination the closer you will be to your goal. If you can hone this skill properly than you won’t have to worry about being confident ever again. Here is what you should do-

1. Visualize Yourself Being Confidence

If I ask you to go back to your home from your school or your office would you be able to do that? Most people including you would answer, “Absolutely.”

Why is that the case? It is because you’ve been through this road so many times that you know every nook and corner of it. You know this way like the back of your hands. And it is this familiarity with the road from the start to the finish is what enables you to find your way home without any hesitation.

The phenomenon works in every aspect of our lives. If you know the road, every nook and corner of it from the beginning to the end, you are inevitably going to reach our goal.

Visualization plays the most important role in these cases. You can use your imagination to visualize your entire road to success. By visualizing every aspect of the journey both the good and the bad and every possible permutation of them as vividly as possible, you now have a complete road map to success installed into your subconscious. And no matter what situation arises, it shouldn’t be a problem for you because you’ve already visualized this inside your head and you already know the way out of this situation.

The reason why visualization works so well is that our brain really can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality. So practice the art visualization every day for at least 10 minutes. For some, this act of visualizing may turn into procrastination. If that’s the case write everything down on a diary just in order to guide your imagination.

2. Affirmations

Affirmations are basically mantras bearing a sense of positivity that you keep on repeating to yourself until it gets imprinted into your subconscious. And when that happens, these positive affirmations override your default negative beliefs. Your subconscious now knows how powerful you are.

For example, you can repeat to yourself – “I am the most confident person alive.” For more such affirmations check out this amazing list of affirmations by Crystal Jackson.

3. Anchoring

Anchoring is an understated yet highly effective tool to boost your confidence. It refers to citing one or more of your past successes as an inspiration to overcome future hurdles. Pick a past accomplishment something that even startled you when you achieved it and use it is an anchoring thought to make yourself believe that if you could achieve then you can achieve whatever you set your site to.

If you fail to find such an accomplishment, use your imagination. Because you already know that your brain really can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality.

4. Use Confident Language

The way we speak and the words we make use of on a daily basis, all are an indirect reflection of inner belief system. When you use a confident language not only when talking to your yourself(something that successful people do a lot) but also when talking with others, that confidence from your language transpires into your inner system.

So, replace all the ‘I should’ with ‘I want’, the ‘I should not’ with ‘I don’t want’, and the ‘I can’ with ‘I will’. Let confidence be your diction.

5. Make Self-Distancing An Inherent Part Of Your Language

Self-distancing means speaking to yourself from a third-person perspective. Let’s say your name is Lebron. Instead of saying “I wish I can do that” say something the likes of “Lebron wants to do this”, “Lebron is confident”, or “Lebron is the best”.

Sure, this sounds narcissistic. But it definitely works. Interestingly Lebron James himself does this quite often as you may say in any of his interviews. Self-distancing will drastically increase your confidence because it forces you to think objectively and shuts down all the crappy negative thoughts in your mind.

6. Keep away from negative people

Negative people are great confidence drainers. They have very low self-confidence. Moreover, they can drain your confidence as well. Staying around them will definitely make an otherwise confident person rethink if he is confident or not.

You might think that avoiding these people is no big deal. If it only were that easy. The problem is some of our very own people, people closest to us may be a negative person. Your best friend, your parents, your partner it’s not unlikely for these people to spread a bad aura in your life. Even the language they use regarding you no matter how affectionate that maybe can create a limiting belief in your mind. Learn to identify these people and deal with them tactfully.

7. Don’t just hope, expect and know that you’ll achieve

We ‘hope’ for a lot of things in our lives. But ‘hope’ more often than not is nothing more than a mirage. Stopping wasting your time hoping for things and start expecting. Know that you are going to achieve what you’re working for.

Confidence comes for certainty. Knowing that you’re going to achieve your goal, expecting that you’re going to succeed gives you a sense of certainty wich hope in and of itself doesn’t.

8. Keep Your Goals Secret

When we reveal our goals to someone else, irrespective of whether we know them or not, it creates a two-fold problem. The first is when that person praises you. It gives you a false sense of accomplishment. So now you don’t feel the urge to work for it.

The second is when that person doesn’t praise you rather questions your goals. This questioning instantly implants a sense of doubt within you. As a result, your confidence level reduces.

So never share your noble goals with anyone else.

Part Four Of The Confidence Formula: Action

Norman Vincent Peale once said, “Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.”

Action is what completes the four-part confidence formula. And if you’ve made this far then I believe that you have what it takes to act upon what you’ve learned. The following are some of the many actions that you should be doing to consolidate confidence within yourself for eternity.

1. Accept Responsibility & Stop Complaining

Complaining about your circumstances, your weaknesses, your difficulties, or even your complaining about your shadow will give you nothing. You might garner sympathy from others. But expect nothing more than that.

Never make excuses or blame others for-

your lack of confidence

your failures and setbacks

how you are treated by others

anything

Rather accept responsibility for your own actions. Because if you don’t nobody else will. You have to be confident yourself. Nobody else will make you confident.

2. Overcome Weakness

Identify all your weaknesses and work on those that can make a difference. Ignore the petty stuff. You don’t need to perfect. Even the best of the best have their own weaknesses.

So work on priming yourself. If you want an A then study for an A and not for a B.

3. Exercise and Confidence

Your emotion is defined by your motion. When you move you might feel exhausted, but it makes your body happy. This is because the human body was designed to walk miles after miles on a daily basis(something that our ancestors used to do) rather than being a couch potato.

Personally, I don’t like to exercise at all. But I’ve seen that when I exercise the morning of any big day, I do quite well. It helps me control my nerves and use my energy effectively. So exercise at least once every other day.

4. Meditate Your Way To Confidence

Meditation does wonders to your body, mind and as well as your confidence. It not only calms your nerves but also helps you to think your way through.

Even 5 minutes of meditation will take you a long way through.

5. Start Journaling

Writing what you did today before you go today in a diary seems lame. But many of the highly effective people have this habit of journaling. Because spending on a pen and some paper and devoting 10 minutes a day to journaling will pay you dividends.

Journaling helps you to-

strengthen your self-discipline

make yourself accountable to yourself

plan ahead

learn from your mistakes

take inspiration from your past (raw material for Anchoring)

Writing about your failures and your guilts day after day forces your brain to take action. Because, naturally, you don’t want to see your failures again and again.

6. Adopt Confident Body Language

When you’re not confident it tells in your very posture. The way you place your arms and legs, the way you move your eyes, these all as visual cues for the person in front of you that you’re not feeling confident. On the contrary, when you have a strong posture to others you will appear to shine with confidence. This physical sense of confidence quickly spreads into your inner system and makes you believe that you’re confident.

Watch the following Ted Talk by Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist and a prominent advocate of ‘power posing’, has to say regarding your body language:

AMY CUDDY: Your body language may shape who you are

So do pick up some Superman and Wonderwoman poses.

7. Gamify Your Life

We all love to play games. And most of us equally hate working in life. So turn your work and your training into a game; reward yourself for your accomplishments. Microaccomplishments takes you a long way through. Gamification makes tasks interesting and increases your accomplishment rate. And the more things you accomplish the more your confidence increases.

This brings us to our next point…

8. Completion

Complete whatever you start. When you have a long history of not completing things your brain starts believing that you don’t need to complete anything. This can assume a dangerous form over time. Don’t leave things incomplete.

9. Use the 5 Second Rule

This very handy tool was formally devised by author Mel Robbins in her famous book The 5 Second Rule. Whenever you know that you should be doing something but just don’t feel like doing it, count from 5 to 1. As soon as your done counting stand up and start acting. This counting backward sends a message to your brain that you need to take action right now.

So if you’re low on confidence but you need to do something that requires you to be on the top of your confidence, count 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and launch yourself like a rocket and dive deep into your work.

10. Enjoy the process

No matter what happens it’s important that you enjoy the process. Stop overthinking, stop thinking whether you are going to embarrass yourself or not. If you feel your nerves settling in again ask yourself am I being nervous or am I feeling very energetic? When we are about to do a task which we normally don’t do, a challenging task, our body quickly musters a high level of energy ready to be used. This sudden spike in energy and increased blood flow is what we mistakenly call nervousness. You’re not nervous. At least your body isn’t. It’s just highly energized. Recognize this as soon as possible.

Start taking action and whatever you do enjoy it fully. Don’t worry about being confident. Because you can’t think of being confident and be confident at the same time.

11. Some Other Things You Can Do To Bolster Your Confidence

If you’ve already materialized all that you have read until now into action than you’re already the most confident person you know. But if you still want to go that extra mile you can check out the following list-

take a cold shower every day

take the 100-day rejection challenge

try something new every day

help out someone

read good non-fiction books whenever and wherever you can

complement others as much as they deserve

act as if you know what you’re doing

groom yourself properly and look confident

develop your brain

do at least one thing for the betterment of your body daily

write all the things that you’re grateful for in your journal

Conclusion

I know that this isn’t the first article you’re reading on changing yourself. And yet there is little change in you. If you want to change for the better you have to move. You have to start taking action. Confidence isn’t a bird that is going to fly to you. Rather confidence is something that you have to create with your actions. But after all this, all I have to say is that your life is your life. I’ve done my part handing you the roadmap. It’s up to you to decide what you’re going to do with it.

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P.S: Coming soon ‘The West World Mindset’

You might still be wondering if there is a singular technique that can in and of itself bolster your confidence-level sky-high. As for now, I can tell you that there is one such technique which I personally use. It’s called the ‘West World Mindset’. You won’t find this on the internet though. Because I made it up myself. And now it’s paying me in dividends.

Join the journey below if you haven’t already. That way when I’m done writing a blog on this secret technique you will be notified immediately.

The post Self-Confidence: The One Formula That Will Make You Insanely Confident appeared first on The Intesar Jawad Blog.

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[sage-nebula]

★ ☆ ☠ ♡ for Jounouchi?

★ Sad Headcanon:

In all honesty, Jounouchi has many, many reasons to be depressed. His dad has been an abusive alcoholic for about as long as Jounouchi can remember, and has been racking up gambling debts for just as long. In childhood his parents fought near constantly, and this only ceased when he was ten and his mother moved out, taking Shizuka with her but leaving Jounouchi behind with his father. After she left, when he was barely eleven (if he was eleven—he might have still been ten) he received a waver so that he could work part-time jobs (a paper route for sure—that’s canon—but I personally believe he has other ones here or there that he keeps on the down-low) so that he could make ends meet, given that his father is both unemployed and, as stated, a gambler. He fell into gang life in middle school, had a toxic / abusive friendship (“friendship”) with Hirutani during this time that followed him to high school, and even in high school it isn’t as if his problems have gone away. Hirutani stops being an issue, but his dad is still an abusive drunk. He’s still the sole breadwinner for their household. Shizuka is going blind and though he manages to win the prize money for her operation (in the manga, he and Atem never dueled; they mutually agreed he would take the prize money while Atem went after Pegasus), it was still hard. He was a sixteen-year-old boy who felt responsible for his little sister’s eyesight. There is a big problem with putting that kind of weight and responsibility on a teenager’s shoulders.

So Jounouchi has many reasons to be depressed, many reasons to angst … but the thing is, Jounouchi hates feeling sadness. And that might seem obvious, because no one likes being sad, but what I mean is that when Jounouchi is depressed, he tends to get angry along with that depression, because he hates the feeling of helplessness that sadness gives him, hates the feeling of weakness that it permeates him with. Jounouchi has felt powerless at many different points in his life. He was powerless as a small child to stop his dad from being an abusive drunk, powerless to stop his mother from abandoning him, powerless in the face of his father’s debts. He has always tried to not be powerless—he used his own body to protect Shizuka whenever their dad lashed out at her, for instance, and has worked part-time jobs to support the household and try to pay his father’s debts—but that doesn’t change the fact that, as a child / adolescent / teenager, he doesn’t have enough power to do very much against things like a massive gambling debt, no matter how much he tries. For him, sadness is attached to that sense of powerlessness; at least if he’s angry, that feels productive, like he can channel that anger into doing something about it. Depression, on the other hand, is despair; it’s spawned from a sense of helplessness and an inability to do anything to change the situation at hand. Crying over his mom abandoning him when he was ten didn’t bring her back. Feeling like he’s a worthless piece of trash (and we know that, in canon, he has felt this way—he straight up says in Death-T that he hated himself at the start of the manga, and we see continuing self-deprecation throughout Duelist Kingdom and the rest of the series that shows us that his self-esteem issues are not gone) didn’t do anything to stop him from being a worthless piece of trash (in his eyes), and that made him angry. Typically, even when Jounouchi falls prey to depression and sadness, there are always flashes of anger and bitterness there. Even in what I consider to be my magnum opus, Whispers in the Dark, while Jounouchi is understandably very depressed throughout the fic, he’s still bitter and angry at his situation (and especially Hirutani) as well. It’s not just that he’s sad and brooding; rather, even when his thoughts are spiraling to dark places, there’s still a lot of anger there to go with it. Loathing for himself, loathing for Hirutani … whatever the case, it’s not just that he’s sad. Rather, the fact that he’s so depressed just spurs his anger even more, because he hates feeling so weak.

So all in all, Jounouchi—particularly in canon—tries to actively fight feelings of sadness. He’d much rather take that sadness and find a reason to be pissed off about it, because to him, anger is more productive and it feels better to be angry than sad. Anger he can at least do something with, in his mind, even though he often ends up turning that anger on himself. Sadness is helplessness and weakness, and he hates feeling that way, and so he avoids it if he can. (Again, sometimes he can’t—and later in life he does have a period of depression when he’s refusing to allow himself to openly return Yuugi’s feelings because he feels like he’s not good enough for Yuugi, and that’s mostly just depression rather than anger—but for the most part, he actively resists being sad because he hates how that feels. If he has to feel a negative emotion, let him be pissed off. He doesn’t just want to be depressed. And yes, things do work out and he ends up allowing himself to openly return Yuugi’s feelings and they’re very happy together, but it’s a whole ordeal because he holds himself back for a long time, despite both Honda and Anzu telling him to go for it. It gets better, but it’s an ordeal at first.)

☆ Happy Headcanon:

Where Jounouchi hates feeling sadness, he loves feeling happy. Again, given his life circumstances, happiness has been hard to come by for quite some time. His home life was nothing cheerful, particularly after his mother took Shizuka away and abandoned him, and middle school—while it had its fun moments—wasn’t a basket of rainbows either. Yes, he met Honda in junior high and the two of them have a positive and good friendship (and hanging out with Honda was definitely among the brighter moments of middle school), but he also did a lot of things in junior high that he is not proud of and his relationship with Hirutani was, as mentioned, toxic. We actually see how miserable Jounouchi is at the very start of the manga, when high school has newly started for him; he scoffs at Yuugi’s idealism, and the idea that Yuugi has a treasure, and later confesses in Death-T that it wasn’t Yuugi that he hated at all, but rather himself. Jounouchi was depressed and angry and filled with self-loathing prior to befriending Yuugi, something not helped (I’m sure) by the fact that he repressed his nerdy interests in an effort to seem manly and fit in. (Because we see how much of a nerd he is in canon, how much he loves games and action figures, but he didn’t openly show this until befriending Yuugi.) But after befriending Yuugi, happiness is a lot easier to come by. Even though his home life and family situation both still suck, spending time with Yuugi allows Jounouchi to freely engage in his passions and interests without fear of judgment, and Yuugi himself is a confidant that Jounouchi trusts heart and soul. He’s at his happiest when the two of them are playing a game together, or watching anime together, or … er, watching “independent adult films” together (and Takahashi confirmed that they do watch porn together, jfc), or whatever else. Being with Yuugi makes it easy for Jounouchi to forget, even temporarily, the dark parts of his life. Jounouchi can fully be himself around Yuugi, and finds hope, inspiration, strength, and courage in Yuugi just as much as Yuugi finds it in him.

That totally not shippy (read: it’s shippy, I’ll own it) bit aside, it’s because Jounouchi has had plenty of times and reasons to not be happy that he actively tries to be happy. Jounouchi doesn’t take things for granted; he knows, perhaps better than some, that happiness is not guaranteed and should be cherished when he has it. He knows that it’s better to be happy than to give into misery, has learned now that hope is something worth having and optimism is not something to scoff at. He knows that there’s strength in joy, in friendship, and love. So even when it comes to little things, even if it’s something small and silly, if it makes him happy he chases it and doesn’t care what others think. He’s learned to have confidence in himself and to just unironically enjoy the things he enjoys. If it makes him happy, it’s good, and that’s that.

So with that said, things that make him happy are: Spending time with his friends (especially Yuugi, as mentioned); spending time with his little sister; playing games (both board and video); watching anime and reading manga; good music (his favorite band is Siam Shade); delicious food (as someone who lives in poverty it’s no wonder he pounces on good food when he can get it); putting together garage kits and models; riding his bike, exercising, or otherwise being active, and other things here or there. He cherishes all of these things and has no problem making that known.

☠ Angry / Violent Headcanon:

Oh boy.

As mentioned, Jounouchi prefers to be angry rather than sad. Anger is productive, anger makes him feel like he has some power or control that he can use to fight back against whatever is making him depressed. Having grown up in an abusive household, Jounouchi shows signs of C-PTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder) that are most apparent in his difficulties with emotional regulation. Jounouchi has a quick and hot temper; when he’s aggravated, he’s pissed, and he wastes no time in letting the irritant know it. He also, depending on the circumstances, wastes no time in getting violent over it. He straight up attacks the camera crew before asking questions in Vol. 1, Ch. 2, and as late as the Battle City arc wastes no time in beating the shit out of the two guys who punched Malik back when Jounouchi first met him (and thought Malik was a good guy who had helped Bakura). While in both cases he was being protective over someone (Yuugi in the first, Malik in the second), the fact remains that Jounouchi’s temper was sparked, and immediately ignited into a blaze of fire. Even setting aside acts of violence like that, we see that it’s not hard for him to snap or yell if he gets irritated, that it takes three of his friends to drag him off Kaiba in Duelist Kingdom (okay, that was violent again), that he has a very mercurial temperament and can go from reasonably content to snapping fairly quickly if someone provokes him. When Jounouchi feels things, he feels them very strongly, and this includes things like anger, which for him can spiral into violence due to the fact that he grew up in a household with an abusive father, and these things can embed themselves in a child’s psyche. Jounouchi saw violence and had it normalized growing up, and while he won’t hit girls (he hated when his father would hit his mother, and used his own body to defend Shizuka, and also—thanks to the toxic masculinity his father instilled in him—sees girls as not being as strong, physically, as guys and thus won’t hit or push them), he has absolutely no problems decking a guy in the face. We see this, time and again, in the series. To Jounouchi, violence can easily be a solution to a problem. Maybe there are better ways to handle it—Yuugi certainly thinks so—but punching a bastard in the face is definitely one of Jounouchi’s preferred methods for doing so, because this is what he learned growing up, this is what he internalized, and his temper can spark white-hot when he’s provoked.

(Note: None of this is to say that he has an out of control, violent temper, because he doesn’t. But his mercurial temperament does speak to difficulties with emotional regulation (particularly when he has outbursts, such as when he snapped that he could never trust Kaiba at the start of the Duelist Kingdom arc, and once again shouted at Bakura for even suggesting Kaiba could have some good in him at Pegasus’ castle). Jounouchi would never hit someone he cares about and fuck anyone who even suggests it. So believe me, I’m not saying Jounouchi can’t control his temper or that he would ever hit someone he loves, because he would not. He would never. Don’t get it twisted.)

With all of that said, Jounouchi has in the past used this tendency toward violence as a way of self-destruction and self-harm. Jounouchi hated himself at the start of the series / pre-canon, he routinely got into fights in junior high, and he was in Hirutani’s gang on top of that. We know, based on what we know of Jounouchi’s character and also from what others who knew him back then (Honda and Hirutani, namely) say about him, that Jounouchi picked most, if not all, of the fights he got into back then. Part of this was due to wanting some measure of control and power over his life, some way to feel better about himself and his situation. He’s “the best at fighting,” as he tells Bandit Keith in Duelist Kingdom after knocking him to the floor, and we can tell that this is not a lie, not something he’s making up. Jounouchi earned the right to think that about himself during all the fights he got into in junior high, due to the name he made for himself through those fights, and getting into fights that he could actually win for once did something to (in a twisted way) boost his self-esteem and make himself feel good about something. He might have been worthless trash, but at least this was something he was good at, at least this was something he could do. And even if he was bruised and aching by the time he dragged himself him, the other guys were always in worse shape, and at least these were fights he chose. It wasn’t like when his dad kicked him around. These fights were ones he wanted, ones he won, ones he had control over. These fights and this violence was something that he had power in. It was self-destruction, but it was controlled self-destruction, so he was far more comfortable with it.

And it was self-destruction. As I said, this is Jounouchi’s way of self-harming. Jounouchi doesn’t cut, doesn’t do drugs, and does not drink alcohol (I swear the idea of him drinking is so OoC, considering his father’s alcoholism broke their family apart, has helped drive them into debt, and spurs his abuse toward Jounouchi, so the mere idea that Jounouchi would drink and be anything remotely like his dad is beyond ridiculous), but he does pick fights that leave him bruised and bleeding. He fights, and fights, and fights until he’s so exhausted and hurt he can barely think anymore. The severity of this depends on how bad his circumstances are—it fluctuated in middle school, and doesn’t really happen in high school until the tail end of Whispers—but it’s definitely his self-destruction / self-harm method of choice. He gets himself into fights so that he can work through all the negativity within him through external violence that he both inflicts on others and that they inflict on him.

So to recap: Jounouchi prefers anger over sadness, has a quick and hot temper due to emotional regulation issues, would never hit someone he cares about but has no qualms about laying the smackdown on someone who deserves it (provided they’re male because, again, he won’t hit girls), and purposefully picks fights when he’s in a dark place mentally because that’s how he self-destructs / self-harms (and, in junior high, tried to make himself feel like he had some power and control in his life). That about sums it up.

♡ Romantic Headcanon:

For the longest time, Jounouchi is not much of a romantic, and isn’t interested in serious relationships. Part of this has to do with his parents’ failed marriage; their marriage was toxic for pretty much his entire childhood and ultimately fell apart, and while he knows that not everyone = his parents (and while he certainly is loath to be like either one of them, but especially loath to be anything remotely like his father), that sort of thing still sticks in a child’s psyche. Jounouchi doesn’t have any idealism or optimism toward the idea of romantic relationships, and as such he doesn’t even really entertain the idea of a serious, committed relationship until his early twenties (and even then, it’s just one specific committed relationship that he wants in his early twenties). Before then, in the time post-high school and before his one serious relationship, Jounouchi bounces from casual relationship to casual relationship. He dates around when he can and has fun. Even when some of the girls he dates want him to commit, he doesn’t because he just doesn’t feel that strongly about them (like, they’re hot, and they’re cool, and he likes them a lot, but he’s not in love with them and doesn’t want to commit, and some of them don’t take this very well), and doesn’t want a serious relationship. Casual relationships, without all the deep-seated romantic ties, are where it’s at for him.

This changes when he falls in love with—or rather, when he lets himself realize, accept, and embrace the fact that he has fallen in love with—Yuugi. Yuugi is the first (and only) person Jounouchi ever wants to spend the rest of his life with. While Jounouchi still isn’t fond of stuffy, fancy dates on the regular (and fortunately, neither is Yuugi), for the first time he actually cares about making an effort toward romance, rather than just seeing dates and the like as something he has to get through in order to get to more fun hangouts or make-outs. Christmas Eve is a romantic holiday in Japan (akin to our Valentine’s Day here in the west), and it’s after he and Yuugi enter into a romantic relationship that he actually cares about celebrating it for the first time in his life, and puts real care and effort into planning an awesome trip to Tokyo for himself and Yuugi to celebrate. (Note: They get together when they’re about 23/24, so yeah—early twenties.) Just as Yuugi gave him optimism and hope for life in general back when they became friends, Yuugi also reignites the hope and optimism toward love and romance that Jounouchi didn’t have beforehand. Jounouchi becomes serious about (romantic) love and becomes more romantic because he’s serious about Yuugi. Falling in love with Yuugi, and realizing and accepting those feelings, opened Jounouchi up to that and made him want and actively pursue a deep, serious relationship, rather than just the casual ones he had before.

As a final note on that, Jounouchi is biromantic/bisexual. Growing up he thought of himself as straight, largely due to the toxic masculinity he had instilled in him, but as he grew older, more comfortable with himself, and dropped the toxic masculinity he realized his attraction to men as well. He still has a preference toward women (as Yuugi, despite being panromantic/pansexual, does as well), but he is still bi nonetheless (and again, in a committed relationship with Yuugi, so). It just took him a while to realize that.