Five Stoic Skills For Steadier Self-Confidence

Confidence built on praise rises and falls with other people. This Stoic talk offers five skills that move the centre of gravity back towards your own conduct: clarity of purpose, holding outcomes loosely, closing the gap between who you are and who you pretend to be, self-worth that does not depend on approval, and learning to enjoy your own company. These are practices rather than personality traits. They can help you meet rejection and uncertainty with more steadiness, without pretending nothing affects you.

Transcript

Something that I have been investigating. One of the things I like to do is draw overlaps between different topics I find interesting. So I found something quite wild here. I was looking into the science of charisma and attraction. I don't mean surface-level dating tactics now, I mean the qualities that makes someone fundamentally impressive or praiseworthy or energetically the type of person who is magnetic. The type of person who turns heads and opens doors. Well, They often exhibit the same traits that the Stoics spent centuries trying to cultivate. So I'm talking here about the deep, Internal power. The kind that doesn't need validation. The kind that makes you feel like you're the main character in your own life rather than a non-player character, An NPC waiting for someone else's approval. So I think and I hope you'll find the following exploration of these five core qualities and how they relate to ancient Stoicism interesting. By practicing these, You'll become more confident and you'll learn to walk through the world with more self-sovereignty and self-belief. So the first trait or skill is clarity of purpose. The Stoics were obsessed by proharesis, Which is your moral character, Your conscious choice, Your will. Marcus Aurelius starts meditations essentially by asking himself, What am I doing right now and why am I doing it? So generally speaking, It's quite useful to know what you want and why you want it. Not in some vague sense like I just want to be successful, But actually with a razor sharp precision. So why are you at this party? Why are you pursuing this career? Why are you in this conversation? When you move through life with clear intentions, People can feel it. You're not drifting, You're not performing, You're on a mission. And even if that mission is just, I'm here to enjoy this coffee and have one good conversation, That's still clear in purpose. The alternative is to be unclear in your intentions, To want five different things at once. This is confusing energetically to other people. And you'll find that when you are lacking confidence, You are usually not clear in your intentions. You want many things. You want to not get rejected. You want to appear to be impressive. You want to have a good time. You want to not have a bad time. You don't want to embarrass yourself, Right? All of these different things, And you want them all simultaneously and there's no clarity of intent. Conversely, If you think of someone who's ultra confident, They don't have 25 different intentions. It's clear. It could just be in the moment, Dealing with what they have. It could just be as simple as have a good time, Interact with the next person, Then the next person, Express myself, Vibe with individuals, Whatever it is. And this applies outside of the realm of social situations too. If you're working on a project, Do you have a single clear mission, A vision, Something that is driving you forward? I knew someone who knew someone who knew someone. I knew someone who played poker professionally, And he said that his friend had a quote called intentions equals results, And what he sensed when he was playing poker professionally was that oftentimes his opponents would not truly want to win. They would sometimes get gridlocked in a battle and not want to win the game as it should be played, But to try and beat the other person or take revenge on another player or just not appear to be a bad player. All of these different competing intentions. Meanwhile, The person who has this razor focus to win, This clarity of intent, They massively increase the likelihood that they will. So how to practice this? Well, Before any situation, Just ask very simply, What's my intention here? You can write it down if you have to, And the question will save you 90% of the anxiety and second guessing that tanks your confidence. The second core idea is non-attachment to outcomes. Epictetus draws this brilliant line in the sand. He says that some things are up to you and some things aren't. Some things you are responsible for and some things you are not responsible for. Your effort, That's yours. The result, Well, It's not yours. Unless you have invented some machine that can literally organize and alter atoms in physical reality, You cannot control the outcome of your actions. Some people would say, Well, Yeah, But you can influence them. But how do you influence them? You influence them by taking action, Which you control, Certain judgments, Certain intentions, Which you control. So ultimately, There are things you can control and things you can't. Here's the skill, And I see this with my coaching clients a lot. Brilliant, Intelligent, Creative people that know they have so much to give, So much talent, And they are being held back and stuck in place by an attachment to the outcome. The most prolific creators, They pour themselves fully into the process and then they let go of what happens next. Now this is hard because our entire culture conditions us to obsess over outcomes. Did you get the job? Did they text back? Did your post go viral? Outcome, Outcome, Outcome. But real confidence doesn't depend on winning. It depends on knowing you showed up as your best self regardless. Whenever I've competed in Jiu-Jitsu, It's never the winning or the losing that makes people feel good or bad when they compete. It's how they performed, What they did or didn't do. So a good friend knows that he made a mistake, Knows that he could have pushed the pace a little bit harder but didn't and lost. That's the thing that hurt. Seneca said it perfectly. He said, Quote, Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands. So stop white-knuckling reality into submission and learn to dance with it instead. Here's how you practice it. After any high-stakes moment, Whether that's an interview, A date, A presentation, Consciously release the outcome. Say out loud, I did my part, The rest isn't mine to carry. Then you can see how much lighter you feel. If you particularly struggle with this, I'd recommend engaging in some kind of creative practice where you have no choice but to let go of the outcome. So that could be doing gesture drawings where you do 30-second figure drawing where you're forced to move quickly and not create beautiful pictures. Another thing might be to do morning pages where you don't rewrite or edit what you write, You just flow. Or to draw pictures then rip them up later, But just to create without needing a certain outcome at the end of it. My niece is 14 years old. She likes drawing. I'm a fairly high-level artist, I've been doing art most of my life. And she comes to me and she says, What should I draw? And I said to her, I think the best thing that you could draw right now is to draw a human face from the side. Because I looked through her sketchbook, It's all front-facing faces. And her reply was, But I can't draw faces from the side. I said, Yeah, I know you can't do that yet. But how do you expect to be able to do that if you never do it? No, I don't want to do that, I can't do that, I can only draw faces from the front. But how do you know though? I've tried and it didn't look good. This is the exact point I'm talking about here. The attachment to the outcome limits the learning, Limits the progress. If she truly wants to become a better artist, If she got clearer in her intent, I want to learn, Then a better, More productive attitude would be, I'm going to draw faces from the side, They'll probably suck, I'll try and make them better each time, Learn as much as I can. And hopefully I'll be better in 30 days from now than I am today. Instead of, I don't want to do that because I'm not good at it. The third trait is authenticity or congruence. The Stoics called this living in accordance with nature, Specifically your own human nature. So you're not pretending to be someone you're not, You're not shape-shifting for applause. An authentic person is pretty much the same person in all contexts, This is core confidence. So here's the skill. Your words, Your actions, Your inner beliefs need to line up. When there's a gap between who you are and who you're pretending to be, People sense it and you feel it, Like wearing shoes that don't fit. Marcus Aurelius, Famous quote, Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be, Be one. This means that if you value honesty, Speak honestly. If you're introverted, Stop apologizing for needing solitude. If you think something's boring, Don't fake enthusiasm. So much social anxiety comes from the belief that you feel like you need to be something different from what you are. So here's the practice. Identify one area where you find yourself performing instead of being real. And again, I'm using social examples here because these traits are social traits, But the rules apply across the board. So maybe you laugh at jokes that aren't funny. Maybe you agree with opinions you don't hold. Stop just for one week and experiment with radical honesty, Without being unkind of course, And notice what happens. The fourth trait is self-worth. What do you think about the word entitlement? When you typically call someone entitled, It's never usually positive, Oh that person is so entitled, So self-centered. But there's a form of entitlement that is actually very healthy, Not the toxic narcissistic kind, Let's think of the stoic version. And this is knowing your inherent worth as a rational human being. Epictetus said that we all have a piece of Zeus inside us. We all have a piece of divinity inside us. And our job as human beings is to sort of finish the work that our creator couldn't do themselves. Now I'm not asking you to believe in Zeus or take on a new religion, But the point is there is something special just in the fact of being a human. It's an incredible thing. We are not better than anyone else, But likewise we are definitely not less than anyone else either. So the skill to develop is that when we walk into a room knowing that we belong there, We're actually seeing reality more accurately. We belong here not because we're perfect, But because we're human and that's enough. This is not arrogance, It's a quiet reassurance that you don't need to earn the permission of anyone else to take up space, To speak your mind, To pursue what you want. You are entitled to the things you are entitled to. A lot of us go through life and we are entitled to have our opinion heard. We're entitled to disagree with other people. We're entitled to make mistakes. We would all agree on that, Right? But we feel as though we're not. So we actually take away our power. So just notice when you make yourself small. Notice when you shrink yourself down, When you apologize for asking a question, When you downplay your achievements. Catch it, Correct it, Stand tall, Speak clearly, And act like you own your life. Because you do. The fifth and final principle from the world of charisma, Self-confidence, Magnetism is self-amusement, Which means enjoying your own company. Seneca spent years banished on an island and he wrote some of his best work there. Why? Well, Because he didn't need external validation to feel whole. So the skill to develop is to become someone we actually enjoy being around. If we can't entertain ourselves, We'll always be dependent on other people for our emotional state. We'll chase dopamine hits, Scroll social media endlessly, Cling to people who drain us, Just to avoid being alone with our thoughts. But when we cultivate an internal world that's rich and interesting, We're free. You're not performing for approval. You're genuinely having a good time being you. So how do we learn to enjoy our own company? Well, Spend some intentional time alone. No scrolling, No distracting, No binging, Just being. Journal, Walk, Think, Meditate, Get curious about your own mind. It probably will feel uncomfortable at first, But that's the point. We need to sit with it. And then when you're socializing, Notice if you're saying things to make the other person laugh or saying things to make yourself laugh. Someone who's more self-amused will be saying things that pump up their own emotional state and then that kind of opens up the opportunity for other people to join in. So it's sort of like going first. That's so much better than someone telling you a joke because they need you to react a certain way for them to feel good. Completely different. The intentions are very different there. That links back to clarity of intent. Now, I hope that you found some of those principles useful, Intriguing, Worthy of practicing. But here's the truth. You can't fake these skills. You can't fake charm. You can't fake interest. Clarity, Non-attachment, Authenticity, Self-worth, Self-amusement, They can only come from real practice. But the beautiful part is when you commit to being yourself fully and apologetically, Life will give you instant feedback. Some people won't like you, But that's good. They're filtering themselves out. The ones who stay, Those are your people. Studies show without any shadow of a doubt, Relationships are vital for happiness for most people. For the vast majority of people, Relationships are key to a fulfilling happy life. Even the ancient Stoics themselves were very fond of other people, Other philosophers, Other thinkers. They were in islands. They were connected. And we don't need to have a thousand shallow connections. One, Two, Three, Four deep friendships is really all we need. So stop twisting yourself into shapes that don't fit. Show up as you are and then just let reality take care of the rest. That's not within your control. Marcus Aurelius said you have power over your own mind, Not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength. These five skills are all internal. They're all within your control and they're all practices. There's no final destination yet. So start with one. For example, Get clear on your intentions this week or release one outcome you've been gripping onto too tightly. Maybe just stop pretending for the next 24 hours and just watch what happens. Confidence isn't something you get. It's something you become. One honest, Intentional, Non-attached moment at a time. So go be yourself and if the world doesn't like it, That's its own problem, Not yours.

Reviews

Thanks for this super helpful talk!
Love and blessings to you Jon

A beautiful guide to self mastery and being yourself. Excellent guidance. Thank you