Here's my favorite music for turning sadness into happiness and optimism:

Chumbawumba: Tubthumping

I get knocked down. But I get up again. No, you're never gonna keep me down. Words to live by.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Paul Colman Trio: Turn

Gotta turn this life around, turn this life around. Catchy jingle about beating hard times, if you can ignore the kitsch religious undertones.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Steve Winwood: While You See A Chance

While you see a chance, take it! Great advice Steve.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

En Vogue: Free Your Mind

Confidence is a lot about how you think. Free your mind!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

David Guetta featuring Kelly Roland: When Love Takes Over

Want to feel more love in your life? Get it here.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Dutch featuring Crystal Waters: My Time

This is my time, this is my time.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Jimmy Cliff: I Can See Clearly Now

A classic song for emerging from difficult times.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

KT Tunstall: Suddenly I See

For that "Aha!" moment, when you realise you've now got the confidence you always wanted.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Vanessa Amorosi: Shine

Everyone's gonna shine.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Steve Winwood: Back In The High Life

That's where you're going to be: Back in the high life again.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Add Yours

How about you? Do you have a favorite song for switching to a more positive mood?

Music To Make You Happy When You Feel Sad is a post from The Confident Man Project

Related posts:

1. Music To Help You Feel Confident
2. How to Make Your New Year's Resolutions Actually Work
3. You can Lead a Horse to Water, but You Can’t Make Him Drink

If there's one theme that shines through from legendary actor and ladies' man Errol Flynn's autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways, it's his complete lack of shame in going after what he wanted. He loved the company of beautiful women, and his swashbuckling movie persona ensured that he had more attention from them than he could handle. Yet even before becoming famous, it seemed that he had something that women wanted and they were happy for him to seduce them so they could have a taste of it.

Flynn's sense of adventure and willingness to take risks seems to lie at the heart of what made him so appealing to women. He was unashamedly sexual with women, getting into more than the odd spot of bother and ending up accused of statutory rape after some under-age actress with starry eyes got involved with him. Or at least, that's his version of the story. Perhaps it was part of a conspiracy against him, or maybe they just regretted it later and wanted revenge. Flynn felt that the many women he had sex with enjoyed the adventure just as much as he did, so why change his ways?

Yet underneath the Hollywood persona, he was filled with self-loathing and often deeply unhappy. Any man who has ever heard the expression “In like Flynn” must wonder how this can possibly be.

His dream had been to be a writer but he became famous for playing a stereotyped Don Juan style character in movies controlled by studio executives. He longed for freedom but led an extravagant lifestyle which required him to work in order to finance it. His relationships were marked by disharmony, conflict and unhappiness. He felt a tremendous inner conflict between being the man he wanted to be who was taken seriously by others, and following his passion for freedom, adventure and women. Flynn ended up hating the very work that made him most famous and while most men struggle to get women into their lives, his struggle was to get them out. He drank heavily to avoid the pain and whiled away his time in a constant search for adventure and passion with women.

Flynn doesn't really speculate on how much of this can be traced back to his childhood in Australia's southern island state of Tasmania, but it's interesting that he had a hostile relationship with his controlling mother. I'm left wondering how much of his passion for freedom and adventure was in reaction to his mother's influence and how much was just the normal innate longing that so many of us as men have allowed to be crushed by our early life experience. He certainly never lacked confidence, preferring to take risks come-what-may and “enjoy the thrill of living every day”.

Underneath the moments of passion, Flynn seemed to end up mostly unfulfilled. I can't help but see this autobiography as a cautionary tale on the need to resolve our inner conflicts and work toward a balance of seeking freedom and adventure without creating destructive relationships that lead to personal misery and lack of deep fulfillment in life.

My Wicked, Wicked Ways by Errol Flynn is a post from The Confident Man Project

Related posts:

1. 100 Ways To Meet Women

At a recent Love, Intimacy and Sexuality workshop run by The Human Awareness Institute, I found myself dealing with rejection right from the word go. Our very first task was to choose a buddy for the weekend, and I immediately found myself drawn to the most attractive woman in the room.

Problem was, so was another guy. And she chose him over me.

Ouch!

Before I knew it, that story was running in my head about other guys being better than me in some way: more attractive, sexier, more desirable. But the good thing was that the voice telling the story wasn't as loud as it used to be, and the unpleasant feeling it created in me wasn't as overwhelming. I'd been “rejected” in favor of another guy, but I was doing OK.

The very next exercise involved picking a partner, and again the same woman sprang straight to mind. I knew if I didn't act immediately, that voice in my head would start making up a big dramatic story about how she'd already rejected me once and so she obviously didn't like me. Why go back for more self-flagellation?

Because if you don't ask, you don't get what you want. Anyway, she hadn't “rejected me”, with all the associated dramatic sounds of violins playing in the background of my head; she'd simply made a choice in a moment, and that's what we were all there at the workshop to learn to do: live at choice.

So before the voice in my head could dissuade me any further, I went straight up to her and asked “Would you like to work with me?”. She smiled, “Sure; I'd love to!”. And we did. Awesome exercise too. Boy, was I glad I asked!

We make up all kinds of dramatic stories in our heads when we encounter “rejection”, and these stories can make us feel pretty bad about ourselves. Rejection stings when it reminds us of the times that we missed out on something we really wanted as a kid; be it love, affection, or that cool Lego set we really wanted for Christmas. As a result we told ourselves that we weren't good enough, and that's painful. Being reminded of our unhealed emotional pain is never pleasant.

But the irony is that despite the stories we make up in our heads, what we think of as rejection isn't even about us. Here are a few reasons why:

Your Disowned Shadow Repels Women

Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung recognized that all of us have a shadow side that we don't like to acknowledge. It lurks in our subconscious and contains the parts of ourselves that we are ashamed of, our unhealed emotional baggage from the past, and our biggest blind spots. We don't like to recognize it, and certainly don't like to reveal it to other people. Our unacknowledged shadow has tremendous power over us, and the fact that we are secretive and ashamed of it is what gives it so much power.

Other people can often sense what is going on in our shadow even better than we can, and that's one reason women may feel uncomfortable when they first meet us. Ever noticed that guys who are completely at ease with their sexual desire seem to have women falling for them left, right and center, while creepy guys get told off by women for only wanting sex?

The problem isn't that the creepy guy wants sex; the problem is that his creepiness makes women feel uncomfortable around him, and women hate feeling uncomfortable. In fact, everyone does. We come across as creepy whenever the disowned baggage in our shadow is activated. When we learn to totally own our dark side, we start acting with greater internal congruence and other people get to relax around us because we're not subconsciously sending mixed messages all the time.

We're all subconsciously broadcasting the insecurities of our disowned shadow side to other people all the time, and they're picking it up subconsciously too. So you've got to learn to love your shadow side if you want to make people feel really comfortable around you. Especially women.

So it's not really you that women reject when you haven't accepted your shadow side, it's the uncomfortable way the mixed messages from your subconscious makes them feel that they're trying to avoid.

We All Project Our Shadow Onto Other People

The other thing to remember about the shadow is that everyone projects the disowned baggage in their shadow onto other people. If there's something you don't like or find off-putting about someone else, especially if you can't quite put your finger on it, it's because they have triggered something in your shadow that you haven't dealt with yet. That makes you feel uncomfortable, but rather than owning that discomfort it's easier to project the feeling onto the other person and decide that you just don't like them.

But it's not really about them; it's about you. Again, this happens subconsciously. Despite our best intentions, we're all projecting our disowned shadow onto other people all the time, and they're doing the same thing to us.

So if a woman decides that she doesn't like you, it's because you've triggered something in her shadow side that she hasn't dealt with. Simply approaching her for a conversation could trigger her fear of strangers. Or perhaps you've been overtly sexual towards her and she's got a Catholic upbringing worth of sexual shame buried in her subconscious, ready to be triggered at a moments notice. Maybe you remind her of her first boyfriend who cheated on her and whom she hasn't really forgiven. Or any one of a zillion other reasons which really have nothing to do with you.

Once you really start to understand deep down that rejection is about other people's projections onto you, and isn't really about you at all, rejection starts to lose its sting.

Women Reject An Approach, Not You Personally

When you're approaching a woman you don't know, it's important to remember that she doesn't know you from a bar of soap. She really has nothing to go on other than the way that you present yourself when you approach her. If you're friendly, likeable, interesting, charming, and make her feel good... chances are she'll feel comfortable around you and won't reject your approach. If you're nervous, self-conscious, needy, desperate and wanting something from her you'll probably make her feel uncomfortable and get the opposite reaction.

Either way, it's about your approach rather than about you personally. The attitude and motivation you adopt makes a big difference: do you just enjoy making people feel good by being around you, or do you just want sexual gratification from her? Are you a giver or a taker? Women want to feel comfortable around you before any fireworks are going to start for her, so the intent behind your approach her makes a big difference.

Nobody can get to know the real you in the first couple of minutes of a conversation. The problem for a lot of guys is that we just haven't ever learned how to get out of our own way and be real with a woman we've just met, so we end up creeping her out. Putting people at ease around you is something you can learn by developing your social skills.

Every woman is different, and an approach that works brilliantly with one may not work with another. Her current mood plays a huge part too. What didn't work with her now may have worked just fine in an hours time.

Remember that any time you feel you've been rejected, it's your approach that didn't work; it's not about you. Learn the social skills to fine-tine the way you interact with women when you first meet, and you'll find yourself having less and less rejection to deal with.

Rejection Won't Kill You

The final thing to remember is that rejection won't kill you. In fact, it has the potential to heal you by triggering your unhealed emotional pain and bringing to your conscious awareness. If you deal with this constructively by being nurturing towards yourself, you gradually heal it. The problem for most guys is that we avoid rejection so completely that we never get the opportunity to really deal with the pain that we've buried around not getting our needs met.

If you want to learn to put your rejection issues behind you, you're going to need to experience more rejection rather than less. That's how you learn to deal with it. Start asking for what you what in all circumstances, and notice how you react when you get it and when you don't. Go for what you want in life without being so attached to the outcome and learn to deal with the inevitable disappointment that happens on the occasions that you don't get it. Let go of needing to get what you want, so you can be more free to ask for it. This is tough at first when you've led a life of avoidance but now it's time to man-up and learn that rejection isn't the big deal that you've been telling yourself it is.

Build genuine confidence and you'll find your resilience against rejection growing. You may even learn to laugh when someone turns you down because you can see their shadow projection and insecurities playing out. The less emotionally triggered you are around rejection, the more you'll be able to roll with the punches from life and from women.

Rejection Isn't About You is a post from The Confident Man Project

Related posts:

1. Handling Rejection When Approaching Women

Warning: contains minor spoilers...

You're A Wizard

In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Harry learns that he's a wizard. He just didn't realize because he's been brought up as an orphan in a family of muggles (non-wizards). It's a similar situation to many other men I know who lack confidence: we were brought up in families with low self-esteem and poor communication skills, and we internalized this believing there was something wrong with us.

You're a wizard too. You just don't realize because your unique gifts weren't valued in the environment where you grew up. Once Harry enrolls in Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft and Wizardry, he's finally in the right environment to flourish and discovers that he's already famous. It's the same for you: once you realize that you're a wizard and get into the right environment, you'll flourish and your old feelings of lacking confidence will be a distant memory.

You Can Speak A Language You Aren't Aware Of

Midway through Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry discovers that he can speak directly to snakes. Always has been able to in fact, but he just didn't realist It's like when we lack confidence around women: we don't realize that we already have everything we need to flirt, be playful, and have fun around women. The hidden language of sexual attraction is built into us but often nobody has shown us how to unlock it. Once we learn how to do that we realize that it's been with us all the time.

If you've ever noticed how you come alive unexpectedly when a beautiful woman shows up unannounced, you'll know what I'm talking about. When Harry realizes that he can speak directly to snakes, he has incredible power with them. Once you realize that you can talk to any woman in a way that's fun and playful, you'll experience incredible power too. The key to unlocking this secret is Confidence with a capital C.

How To Handle Your Painful Memories

Harry runs into difficulty when he encounters creatures called Dementors who come to guard Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Dementors normally guard the terrible wizard prison of Azkaban which is said to be even worse than the prison we all create for ourselves in our minds. All wizards fear Azkaban because the Dementors trigger enormous emotional pain as they suck out your soul, so the inmates almost always go mad.

Dementors remind Harry of the pain and grief he still feels about his parent's death and every time he encounters one he is so overwhelmed that he passes out. He feels completely trapped at Hogwarts until he comes across the Marauder's Map which shows him a secret passageway to Hogsmead that allows him to bypass the Dementors completely. Harry is now more free to go where he wants, but is still paralyzed when encountering a Dementor unexpectedly on the school grounds.

Professor Lupin teaches Harry a magic spell to help him deal with the painful memories that Dementors trigger: The trick is to think of a happy memory whenever the Dementors are near. It takes time to master, but over time Harry learns to use happy memories to defeat the painful ones from his past so that he can remain conscious and function even when the Dementors are around.

Dementors are like negative thoughts in our heads that remind us of painful memories from our past, like being rejected by women we are attracted to. Finding the Marauder's Map is like learning better communication skills or pick-up artistry in order to connect with women. This can be a stepping stone towards gaining greater confidence but eventually we need to deal with our deeper issues. Emotional healing allows us to deal with the painful memories and experiences from our past that stop us feeling truly confident. Using happy memories to change our emotional state when we're triggered by a painful reminder of the past is one step towards healing emotional pain.

Women Respond To A Direct Approach

Harry and Ron face every young man's scariest experience with girls in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: asking a partner to the school ball. Hermiony gets off easy as a girl since another guy asks her, making Ron rather jealous; but she suffers because really she wanted Ron to ask her. Meanwhile Ron and Harry agonize for ages over who to ask, and how to ask them. Eventually Harry finally summons the courage to approach the girl he wants to invite, and simply says: "Would you come to the ball with me?"

"Yes", she says, much to Harry's relief. Well of course she wants to go to the ball with him; he's a wizard, and something of a champion at his school.

You're a wizard too remember and when you let your inner champion out in your interactions with women, they naturally respond to the direct approach. Too many guys believe they have to put on some fake facade and run a bunch of routines in order to make women interested in them. You just have to be willing to be vulnerable and let your inner champion out to play. It may be scary at first but when you do this, women respond positively to a direct approach.

Be Your Own Man

Harry feels jealous of his friend Ron when Ron is made a prefect at Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Although Harry doesn't like these unpleasant feelings, he can't help but compare himself to Ron and their friendship is strained for a while. Later on as they both grow more mature, Harry sees that Ron has both strengths and weaknesses; some of which complement Harry's strengths and weaknesses. Their friendship deepens as they learn to work more closely together, leaving Harry feeling greater support from Ron and Hermiony. Harry also learns about The Order of The Phoenix which he is now old enough to join and where he can be supported and mentored by adults as he learns to become a leader in his own right.

Harry also learns more about his father, who he has previously placed on a pedestal. Memories from Snape, a childhood enemy of his father, make Harry question whether he still wants to be like his father. Over time, Harry develops a more mature and well-rounded view of the father he misses so much. As he does, Harry learns to develop the personal qualities that he finds important; whether his father had them or not.

Get Yourself A Mentor

In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry finds a mentor in the form of a book. The previous owner of his second-hand Advanced Potion-Making textbook has left helpful clues in margins which make the standard potions much more powerful and give him an advantage over the other students at Hogwarts. Later on, Professor Dumbledore begins to mentor Harry directly by revealing a series of memories about their enemy Lord Voldemort's past. Through a variety of teachers and mentors, Harry learns about being a wizard and gains the knowledge and experience that his own father was unable to pass on.

Mentors come in many forms. Some teach directly, others use the power of stories to convey their wisdom. We encounter some in person, while others teach through books, websites, songs, or films. A good book can condense years of wisdom on a given topic so you can master what took years for the author to learn in a matter of hours. In an ideal world your father taught you how to be a man, but in the real world your father may have been absent like Harry's, or perhaps he just didn't know what you need now. Learning everything by trial and error takes a long time. Get yourself a mentor so you can fast-track the process of learning what you missed out on from your own father.

Never Give Up On What Is Important To You

Every man needs a mission in life: something that drives you forward, that you won't give up on no matter what. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry faces his greatest challenge yet. Dark Lord Voldemort and his army of Death Eaters have taken control of the Ministry of Magic, the wizard newspapers, the prison at Azkaban, and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Evil is everywhere. Rather than returning to school where he faces certain death, Harry goes into hiding with Ron and Hermiony to complete the mission that Professor Dumbledore left for him as war breaks out between his remaining adult supporters and the Voldemort's Death Eaters.

Harry has a mission that he won't give up on. It keeps him motivated no matter how dire his circumstances appear. You need a mission too; something personally important to you that will keep you going even during hard times. Perhaps you already know what it is and have known since childhood, or maybe you need to take some time out from normal life to work out what is important to you and what you should pursue in life. Once you find it, never give up on it. Many of us avoid pursuing our dreams because we are afraid of failing. Don't fall into this trap; failure is just a necessary learning experience on the road to success. Learn to embrace failure and the lessons you learn from it. No matter what happens, stick to your guns and always work towards what is most important to you. Never give up.

Harry Potter and the Path of Confidence is a post from The Confident Man Project

Related posts:

1. Claude Monet, Dirty Harry and Romeo on Confidence, Kissing, Dancing and Romance
2. Confidence, Cats In The Cradle and My Relationship with My Father
3. 4 New Videos To Help You Build Self-Confidence

I just got off the phone with my mother who was berating me because I had not responded in a timely fashion to an email, which made her ashamed and disappointed. I went to my computer and looked up "how to deal with a controlling mother". Your article looked interesting so I began to read it, and as I did my eyes opened up as if you were speaking directly to me! I would love to speak with her about these things, and also with my father, but her defense is locked down tight: she is a psychologist of many years, and would just discredit anything I had to say. She also insists that my father would not want to talk to me about anything on an emotional level (he really doesn't like to be dragged in between us), and therefore I shouldn't bother. I also run the risk of making her angry, which is VERY easy to do, and then I worry that I'm hurting her. Just writing this really exposes to myself the psychological mire I exist in... Advice?

This is a great question Steve so thanks for putting it out there. Our relationship with our mother can have such a powerful controlling influence over us and really undermine our self-confidence. Most men are reluctant to admit how powerfully influential our mothers still are even long into adulthood, and this can have a massive effect on eroding our sense of self.

Mother issues are a very common problem. Just yesterday I was on the phone with a friend whose childhood was dominated by his mother and other women around him. My controlling mother article consistently gets more hits every day than anything else on this site. It's a big problem.

We grow up emotionally attached and enmeshed with our mothers, and controlling mothers resist the normal detachment process that begins during adolescence. When mothers complain about their adolescent boy's bad behavior, what they're really feeling is the normal pain of separation that parents go through as we individuate and become men. A mother with insight will grin and bear this pain as she allows you to separate; but many parents lack this insight and try to maintain control. A power struggle results, which is particularly intense when each side has their self-esteem invested in maintaining control (for her) and gaining freedom (for you).

You might think that a psychologist would have a better insight into this than most; what I'm talking about is basic attachment theory and she's almost certainly read Bowlby's work on it. But we never see our own emotional responses objectively so the fact that she should be an expert in this kind of thing isn't really relevant. In fact I've noticed amongst my friends with psychologists as parents that they often seem worse at this kind of thing. Your mother may feel extra defensive when her relationships aren't working well since she's supposed to be an expert; perhaps you're projecting higher expectations onto her due to her expertise; or perhaps she became a psychologist in the first place because she had issues to work through and it's still a work in progress. Either way it doesn't matter; forget about her being a psychologist and start looking at her as just another fragile, defensive human being who is herself hurting as much as she's hurting you.

Going through a period of conflict where you learn to stand up to your mother is a normal and necessary part of developing your individual identity as a man. Ideally it happens during adolescence, but in the case of a controlling or hostile parent it's understandable that we avoid conflict like the plague. From my experience, it doesn't matter how long you delay or avoid this conflict: it doesn't go away until you really face it and stand up to her. It seems to be just an unavoidable part of life, but there are a few things you can do to make the conflict more bearable.

The most important thing is to learn to tolerate your mother's emotional state regardless of whether it's pleasant or unpleasant, while you also learn to express how you feel in a constructive way. Over time you can learn to be less emotionally meshed with her and transition from a parent/child relationship to an adult/adult relationship which is more fulfilling for both of you. I've done this really well with my father; with my mother it's a work-in-progress, but it seems to be getting there.

I had a similar experience on the phone with my mother last year where she got extremely angry with me after I rescheduled a lunch outing at the last minute because I had a bad headache. It was very heavy going, and I could see that the anger she was showing me was out of proportion to what had actually happened, so something else had to be going on. For the first time I could remember, I actually acknowledged her anger rather than avoiding going there. All I had to say was “You sound angry” in response to a few of her comments, and her anger appeared to skyrocket. Previously I would have just avoided this and skirted around it, but this time I wanted to face it full-on.

People who are easily angered typically have a backlog of unexpressed and unprocessed emotions which are unleashed on unsuspecting family members when they do something that upsets them. The truth is that you can't make your mother angry. What happens is we do things they don't like, and they have an emotional response. If they're self-aware, they'll own this response and say “I feel angry when you do that”. But self-aware people don't become hostile and controlling in the first place, so you may need to model assertive communication of emotions for her. In my conversation with my mother, I said to her “I feel really nervous saying this, but you sound really angry with me and I'd like to hear what's really going on for you?” She hung up on me three times as I kept ringing back to get to the bottom of the what she was really upset about.

I knew that after 77 years feeling ashamed of how she really felt, my mother wasn't likely to go along with this new way of communicating easily, but it was still really important to me to be direct with her and ask what the real problem was. It turned out that rescheduling the lunch date was just the tip of the ice-berg. She was angry about a lot of things, and most of them didn't even involve me. My mother has a store of resentment towards my father that she projects onto me; it's a dead give-away because she uses his name whenever she's at the height of anger at me. You don't have to study psychology to see that this is displaced anger: my mother is angry with my father, but is too afraid to express it in her closest relationship, so she fires it at me instead where the stakes aren't as high.

The challenge is standing up to dysfunctional behavior from your mother and responding with your true emotions regardless of whether it goes well or not. We build confidence by exercising courage in situations like this. Courage is the willingness to take action even when we don't know how it will go. When I stood up to my mother by acknowledging my fear and her anger, it didn't appear to go well. She went even deeper into her anger and then my father weighed in as well. He's also afraid of her anger, so it's easier for him to get angry with me for “upsetting her” than it is to back me in doing what's best for the relationships between us all: acknowledge each other's true feelings.

You know you're a man when you're isolated like this and doing the right thing by everyone anyway, regardless of their childish resistance. No-one said growing up would be easy; that's why so many men are still children walking around in a man's body.

If you find your mother's emotions overwhelming, you may need to put some emotional distance between the two of you. Many men move cities or countries for a while in order to add physical space between them and their mothers on the pretext of moving “for work”. Don't expect her to be happy about this, but you'll notice how much better she treats you on your occasional visit back home. Stay too long though and you'll probably regress back to parent/child again. Moving away is only a stop-gap measure, but it can give you the space to build your confidence without her constant influence undermining the everyday gains you make. On the other hand, simply running away from the problem won't help because we all take the baggage from our mothers into our relationships with women until we really deal with it.

Note that unless you're doing things that are deliberately hurtful and vindictive, you aren't “making your mother angry” or “hurting her” when you acknowledge her feelings and allow her to feel them more deeply. That's just how feelings work: when another person acknowledges how we feel, it gives us permission to go deeper into our emotions. Not only is this a healing thing, it's also the basis of intimacy in all our relationships.

The normal separation and individuation process we go through in growing from a boy to a man is inherently painful for mothers, and that's part of what she signed up for when she became a parent. You can't tip-toe around this or protect her from it if you want to be your own man. We all have to learn to do what's right even in the face of resistance from our parents, and this is particularly difficult when they're used to exercising control over us emotionally.

When someone affects you emotionally, you give your power away to them. This can be a positive thing when we fall in love with a woman, and it can be challenging when our parents use emotion to manipulate us. But nobody can affect you emotionally without you letting them do so. And the same goes for your mother: you don't “make her angry”. You do your thing and when it triggers her insecurities, she responds with anger because in the past that was an effective way of stopping you doing whatever reminded her of her unhealed pain.

Circumstances that create an emotional reaction in us typically do so because they remind us of an unpleasant event in our past that we need to work through. You can't force your mother to do the hard work of healing emotional pain from her past, but you can't really be free by tip-toeing around it either. The key to emotional healing is to stop avoiding unpleasant emotions, so you're actually doing your mother a favor whenever you do the things that make her angry... provided you're doing them because they are the right thing to do, and not out of malice. Her anger isn't really about you at all; it's just a projection of some hurt in her past. Each time she goes to the pain, she has the opportunity to heal it. If you learn to be steadfast and meet her anger with love, it will soften over time. Even if it doesn't, you'll have learned to stand up for your emotional truth in the face of a woman's volatility; and other women will love you for this.

I don't pretend that this is easy. I was stressed out and tense for at least 3 days after the argument I had with my mother. I'm still learning to unmesh emotionally from her. I also had fallout with my father to deal with: we ended up having a conversation where I told him I was upset with him for getting angry with me, that I wasn't perfect and needed to be free to make mistakes, and that I didn't want to keep relating to either of them by avoiding how we all feel. He apologized and started asking me how I thought he should deal with her moods. Talk about irony. My advice to him was much the same as what I'm saying here: learn to identify how she feels, reflect that back to her, and acknowledge how you feel. Stop avoiding her emotions. This is the basis of emotional intimacy, and it takes time to learn to do it when we're out of practice.

Interestingly enough, despite a lack of apology from my mother, she has been treating me with greater respect since our “argument”. I wouldn't say I handled the situation perfectly, but the main thing I did differently was I acknowledged how she was feeling, and I sought to understand what was really going on behind that rather than getting defensive about it. I suspect my mother felt quite embarrassed about what she said to me on the phone but is too ashamed about it to offer an apology.

I could bear a grudge and feel resentful towards her, but shortly after my conversation I was thinking about how people in my family seem to deliberately withhold what other people want from them. It's like we all know what each other wants, but we don't give it to them because we know they want it. What's with that? I started feeling angry with my parents and siblings. Then it occurred to me that I was doing exactly the same thing with my mother. I know what she wants from me: a quick phone call roughly once a week just to see how she is, with no other agenda. But I don't give it to her.

I had a bunch of excuses for why I didn't do this, but it really boiled down to a self-righteous attitude that she didn't deserve it. She doesn't give me what I want (emotional support, warmth, kindness) so why should I give her what she wants? Pretty petty really. So I thought to myself: what would happen if I were to drop my self-righteousness and just start giving her what she wanted? I began calling her regularly just to see how she was. And what do you know: she started responding to me with warmth and kindness instead of criticism, hostility and anger.

I also recommend that you don't get involved in discussions about your father with your mother, or vice-versa. Don't try to drag your father into what's going on between you and your mother, and don't bitch to your father about her either. The closest allegiance a married person has is to their spouse so if being true to yourself triggers your mother's fear and anger, it's natural that she'll want your father on her side rather than yours. Let it be. Remember that to really be your own man, you need to be able to stand true in the face of criticism, judgment, anger or whatever from your father too. This is part of transitioning from father/son to adult/adult in that relationship. Get support from other men so that your father isn't caught in a parental love triangle; it's no wonder he hates being in this position.

Doing all of this requires self-awareness and emotional healing for your past hurts. Otherwise you remain vulnerable to your mother's moods. I don't recommend attempting this healing with your parents initially; they're too close to the action and are likely to be triggered by your attempts to heal your own stuff. I've done a lot of different types of therapy to deal with the anxiety I inherited from my parents and emotional healing was really crucial for me. Exposing our psychological mire is precisely what we need to do in order to heal the shame that is beneath it, so good on you Steve for going there. Be patient with yourself because this stuff is dealing with really core issues that can take time to heal.

The ultimate destination is to be able to show your mother love and kindness regardless of how she acts towards you. That's what they mean by unconditional love. Any man can love the lovable; it's loving the unlovable that makes you a hero and sets you free. This requires us to deal with our own emotional baggage sufficiently that we don't get triggered and overwhelmed by hers. Then we can be free to weather the storms of our mother's emotional state so that we can act with personal integrity. Hard as it may be to believe, she'll end up being grateful for your ability to do this and you'll end up copping less hostility from her. Or even if she doesn't, it won't affect you as much and this skill will be brilliant in your relationships with women. Either way you're a winner.

You're on the right track, so hang in there. For more on transitioning from a mother/boy to woman/man relationship with your mother, see Step 8 in Confident Man: Forgive Your Mother.

How to Resolve an Argument with Your Mother is a post from The Confident Man Project

Related posts:

1. How to Recover From a Controlling Mother

Just leave a comment below letting us all know how your site, product or service helps men along with a link to it. Other readers will be able to find out about you and search engines will see the link you've left to it. This is a great way to kickstart traffic to your site, especially if it's new. If I like your product, I'll be happy to review it.

Please Like, Tweet and +1 this page using the buttons at the top or bottom, so other people can find out about it too. The more you share it, the more people will see your comment about your site and get to visit it.

This blog uses CommentLuv Premium to allow you to create a dofollow link to any article on your site when you leave a comment here. It gives you better visitor engagement, leading to more traffic and a higher search engine ranking. Just enter the address of your blog in the website field and type your comment as normal. My blog will read your RSS feed to find your articles to backlink to. The more you share this post, the more of your articles you get to choose from. If you use WordPress, I recommend you install CommentLuv Premium on your blog too, so visitors are encouraged to share and comment on your articles.

Thank me by pressing Like, +1 and Tweet, then leave your comment & link below:

Promote Your Website, Blog, Product or Service Helping Men Become Confident Here is a post from The Confident Man Project

Related posts:

1. How to Win Your Copy of Confident Man For Free
2. Defeating Depression for Men
3. Stem Cell Research Offers Hope To Men With Backbone Injuries

Many women throw tests at men without even realizing that they're doing it. I've had a lot of conversations with women lately about this and often they're fascinated by the whole concept. They don't even know that they've been doing it all their lives, and sometimes strongly deny throwing tests at men entirely... unaware that they're throwing me a test in the process.

I remember when I first started spotting this dynamic between men and women, I often saw it in acting class when other students were improvising. A woman would walk on stage and say something derogatory to a man, and the man would usually act like a wounded child; thus failing the test. I'd be watching thinking “It's just a test! Don't collapse!” The guy didn't realize that it was a test, and the scene would go downhill as she lost any attraction towards him. Other guys would roll with the punches and end up seducing the woman; all because they knew how to pass the test.

Women's tests have been called compliance tests, bitch shields, and shit tests. They're all the same thing. They don't mean that she's a bitch; they just mean that she's checking you out and screening you to see what you're made of. The more attractive the woman, the more attention she gets and the more she's likely to test you especially when you first meet.

Once you know how to pass these tests you'll find your conversations and interactions with women flow more smoothly and become much more fun. So here's how:

Recognize That It's Just A Test

The first and most important point for handling a woman's tests is to recognize them in the first place. Once you realize that women are constantly throwing you subconscious tests, you'll start to spot them all over the place. Any time she says something a little out of left field that seems to question your character, integrity, strength, intentions or motives... it's just a test.

There's no point resenting women for doing this; it's just how they work. Remember that she's not necessarily aware that she's testing you, and that the purpose of the test isn't what she's really asking or saying; it's about something deeper. All these years women have been trying to flirt with you, and you've been fobbing them off because you just didn't realize.

Don't Get Defensive

We often take things that women say about us way too seriously. Once you spot a test, the most important thing is to avoid getting defensive. You don't want to end up in an argument with her over something trivial, and you don't want to end up in a position where you are justifying yourself. That doesn't make for a fun conversation.

The point of the test is to see how you respond emotionally: if you're affected and get angry, defensive or upset then you've failed the test. Fortunately once you learn to recognize these tests in the first place, you'll be much less affected by them and you'll begin to pass them with ease.

Play Along

Apply the golden rule of Theatrical Improvisation: always accept what other people say about you as being true. If she says something that seems a little derogatory, you can still accept that in a playful joking manner. Obviously you're not going to do this on a witness stand in a courtroom, but I'm talking about regular social interactions here. Even if you strongly disagree with their implied assessment of you, you can still accept that it is true for them. Other people's opinions don't matter to you anyway. If you have true inner confidence, you don't care about what they think of you and this makes it much easier to remain unaffected in the face of what feels like criticism.

Tease Her

One of the best come-backs for a test is to tease her. A classic response to any test where she's made an ambiguous or negative statement about you is to simply say “That's why you like me.” with a playful smirk. If she plays along, you know you've passed the test. If she gets all serious then maybe she's not much fun to hang around with in the first place. You don't want to give up straight away if she's someone you've just met since she may just be particularly defensive today, but there's no point persisting too long trying to play with someone with no sense of fun either.

Develop Your Sense Of Fun And Humor

Having a playful sense of fun and humor is a natural way of passing women's tests, because you aren't taking everything so damn seriously all the time. Learn how to kick back, laugh, and engage with people on a playful level. Allow yourself to get things wrong and to laugh at yourself. Just because you're a lawyer or a scientist doesn't mean you have to be right all the time in your social interactions; that will just make you appear stilted and hard to get along with.

Reassure Her

Some tests will be more serious than others, and indicate that she needs reassurance and attention from you. Women never stop testing you, so don't be surprised in a relationship that the tests never go away. If she's feeling insecure she will throw you more tests. This could come across as anything from asking you for the tenth time whether you've put the trash out, to interrogating you about why you were late home from work. Reassure her that you love her and give her the attention that she's crying out for, and she'll feel less need to keep testing you.

Learn When To Stand Your Ground

Obviously there will be times when you want to stand your ground with a woman. You don't want to put up with bad behavior, let her put you down or treat you poorly. After all, you wouldn't do that to her would you? The problem is that when we lack confidence we tend to come across as defensive rather than assertive when we start standing up for ourselves. And we tend to get defensive much more often than necessary. Learn to let go of what other people think of you so that you can roll with the punches. Stand your ground when it's really important but focus of having fun with other people instead of taking them overly seriously all the time.

How to Handle a Woman's Tests is a post from The Confident Man Project

Related posts:

1. How to Handle Criticism
2. How to Communicate Sexually With a Woman
3. How To Pick Up A Woman At A Party

Between fellow course junkie Dunstan Bertschinger and I, we've explored a bunch of books, courses and workshops that have helped us get in touch with our intuition, emotions, and inner magician. Dunstan is a swimming coach who helps his clients gain confidence by developing their relationship with the water. He sees learning to swim as a metaphor for finding your place in the world: you can relax and trust the water to support you, or you can struggle to stay afloat.

Here's a podcast conversation between the two of us discussing several courses and workshops we've found helpful lately for developing confidence and getting in touch with our masculinity. Some of the themes we cover:

• The real meaning of confidence
• Opening your heart to receiving from others
• Being real with women and other people
• The problem with being nice when we're inauthentic
• Giving up perfectionism
• Transforming emotional wounds into personal power
• The power of naming your fears
• Your thoughts and feelings are not real
• The secrets of personal magic/alchemy
• Overcoming creepiness
• Reversing our childhood conditioning and being honest
• Overturning negative beliefs

It's real, it's raw, it's free, and it's available for download here. Or you can play it by clicking the play button:

/freebies/Interview-Dunstan-Bertschinger.mp3

Here are links to the resources mentioned in the podcast:

• Master Your Destiny course and The Magician's Way book by William Whitecloud
• The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida
• Personal Growth Counsellor Denise Cook
• The Human Awareness Institute Love, Intimacy and Sexuality workshops
• Indian spiritual teacher Osho
• The Work of Byron Katie and her book Loving What Is
• The popular “law of attraction” movie The Secret that tells only half the story

You can connect with Dunstan Bertschinger on Facebook. We love your feedback so please leave a comment letting us both know what you think!

How to Develop Your Masculinity is a post from The Confident Man Project

No related posts.

This month's edition of the Confident Man Carnival brings you the latest advice from across the net on confidence with women, dating and relationships:

Lisa Hood presents 10 Weird But True Facts About Kissing posted at ZenCollegeLife, saying, "Kissing is an integral part of our courting rituals, holiday celebrations, and romantic comedies."

Charles Chua C K presents The Ten Golden Rules of Human Relations posted at All About Living with Life.

Donna Cullen presents 10 Love Lessons from Claude Monet posted at Top Dating Sites, saying, "Claude Monet was one of the forerunners of what would eventually become one of the most easily accessible artistic movements of the era. His art also has a lot to teach about love."

Mary Edwards presents 10 Love Lessons From Dirty Harry posted at Best Dating Sites, saying, "Education in romance can come from the most unexpected places, and we don’t always recognize it until it’s too late. Who knew, for instance, that while we were watching Inspector Harry Callahan dispatch thugs with his .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 29 revolver in those Dirty Harry films that we were in fact being schooled in the language of love? Don’t believe us?"

Donna Cullen presents The 10 Reasons You're No Romeo posted at Top Dating Sites, saying, "Romeo and Juliet. Those universal literary symbols of true romance for generations of young lovers since the mid-16th century. So how do you compare to young Montague, you ask?"

Donna Cullen presents 10 Literary Romances That Would Never Work posted at Top Dating Sites, saying, "Most people (at least most women) enjoy a good love story. We swoon at the romantic parts and cry during the heartbreaking parts all in nervous anticipation of a happy ending. There have been oh so many romantic novels written and read ever since pen has been put to paper."

Mary Edwards presents 10 Fights Every Young Couple Has posted at Best Dating Sites, saying, "If you are married you will totally get a kick out of remembering all the silly little fights you had as a newlywed and if you are a newlywed maybe these will be food for thought."

Ken Lange presents Why Not Learn to Dance? posted at Kenneth Lange, saying, "Dancing is something that a well-rounded man must master." And I agree with him.

Jon Rhodes presents Positive Self Affirmations posted at HypnoBusters, saying, "This article shows you how you can make yourself more positive and confident, with the use of affirmations."

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of the confident man carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Claude Monet, Dirty Harry and Romeo on Confidence, Kissing, Dancing and Romance is a post from The Confident Man Project

Related posts:

1. Harry Potter and the Path of Confidence
2. Confidence, Cats In The Cradle and My Relationship with My Father
3. 4 New Videos To Help You Build Self-Confidence

I've always been a pretty funny guy; my sense of humor developed for coping with boring schoolroom classes where I'd constantly be making funny comments to keep myself and the other kids amused. Needless to say, I got sent out a lot. Even years later when working as an Engineer, I couldn't help but put funny footnotes in technical documents. My inner comedian was bursting to get out and now I'm even studying stand-up comedy.

But even if you've never seen yourself as funny, it's definitely a skill that you can learn to develop. You'll love the satisfaction you get when you make people laugh; any comedian will tell you that this is the best drug out there. So here are my tips on how to be funny:

Notice What Amuses You

All good humor is based in truth. Start by noticing what amuses you, and work with that. Don't try and be someone you're not, or try to second-guess what other people will find funny. Ideas that are genuinely funny to you will often be funny to other people too.

Start noticing what amuses you about people, places, events and concepts. Pay more attention to what's going on around you. Learn to laugh at the absurdities of life, and start pointing them out to other people. If you find it funny, share it with others.

Don't Try

This may seem paradoxical, but if you want to be really funny you have to avoid trying too hard. Humor arises spontaneously from an inquiring state of mind, not from trying to be really clever or funny. The more you relax about being funny, the funnier you will be.

If you want to be funny to attract women, make sure you portray yourself with high status in your humor and learn to do it effortlessly. You want to be funny, not goofy.

Be Real

People connect best with humor that's authentic. The best comedians put a lot of their personal pain into their acts; it's like therapy for them. Billy Connolly is a classic example: he often talks on-stage about his abandonment issues. Most people are too afraid to share their personal issues with other people but when you start making light of yours everyone around you will find your humor liberating. They'll be drawn to you like moths to a flame.

Tell it like it is. Humor gives you the opportunity to speak the truth in a way that slips past people's defense mechanisms. A statement of truth that would otherwise be blasphemous or offensive can often be delivered safely with humor. Learn to laugh at how absurdly uptight we all are sometimes and share your personal insecurities with other people while avoiding put yourself down. A little self-deprecation is fine, but you want people laughing with you, not at you. Portray yourself as the winner rather than the loser when you're being funny.

Reveal Your Inner Thoughts

Chances are that you already have amusing inner thoughts that you just aren't sharing with other people. We all do. Funny people have simply learned that these thoughts are valuable and are worth sharing. Often you'll get a great response, which encourages you to share more next time.

Sometimes an amusing comment will bomb completely and you may have a terrible feeling of failure or of being foolish or stupid. This is the time to remind yourself that you're simply out there amusing yourself, and if other people don't get it that's their loss. Keep sharing what's going on in your head even if your humor occasionally fails to land with people who take life too seriously, are in a bad mood, have no sense of humor, or simply have one that doesn't gel with yours.

Notice Connections Between Things

Linking people, places, events and ideas that aren't normally associated with each other is often funny. You'll find that your mind is already making these connections, but you're probably just not sharing them with other people at the moment because they seem ridiculous. That's because they are ridiculous. And that's why they're funny.

Our brains are wired to find connections between things as a survival strategy so we're constantly coming up with silly associations. Many people believe these associations are real, which is why beliefs such as the supernatural are so common, or they reject them out of hand because they're obviously absurd. Once you recognize these absurd associations you can use them to be funny.

Make Call-Backs

One of the funniest ways to link disconnected ideas is to refer back to an idea which came up earlier in the same conversation. Comedians and writers call this a call-back. Using call-backs in conversation is powerful because it shows your partner that you're really paying attention to what they are saying and that you're listening on a deep level.

Everyone loves a good call-back and once you're aware of them you'll notice people from comedians to suave pick-up artists peppering conversations with them all the time. Unlike a joke, the more you repeat a good call-back the funnier it gets.

Learn To Tell Funny Stories

Telling funny stories always makes people laugh. You're either telling a funny story, or you're making some amusing observation on what's happening right now. Don't tell jokes unless you're extraordinarily proficient at coming up with original ones; jokes almost always make you look lame even if you get a laugh. Never tell a joke you heard somewhere else.

Telling funny stories is a great way to show off your cool personality. Don't try to add humor to your stories; just work on uncovering the humor that's already there. To be really proficient at story-telling, check out the Edge Of Their Seats Storytelling Home Study Course by Craig Valentine.

Carry A Humor Diary

Professional comedians and public speakers collect humorous material from their daily lives for use later on. They often carry around a humor diary or notebook where they can write down any amusing observations that come to them. I do this, and so can you. Jot down anything that amuses you as you go about your daily life, and review it from time to time to remind yourself of the funny stories or incidents you've been a part of. Personal humor works best and this is a great way to cultivate it. As you pay more attention to the humor in your daily life, you'll naturally become more funny.

Read Books

There are plenty of books out there that can teach you how to delve into the depths of your troubled psyche to mine it for humorous gold. You can also learn how to deliver your material for maximum impact, whether it be on stage or simply in conversation. I recommend Stand Up Comedy: The Book by Judy Carter. When you read the book make sure you actually do the exercises and you'll find yourself becoming funnier all over the place.

Take A Course

Doing a course is the most practical way to expose your humor gene and learn to be funny in front of other people. Theatrical Improvisation courses are a great way to start if you're particularly nervous, or dive straight into a Stand-Up Comedy course in your town. Comedians normally work at night and have to do something during the day; they often enjoy teaching their craft to others.

You don't even have to leave your home to do this; you can do it online. I recommend the High Status Humor course, especially if you want to be funny in order to attract women.

Practice, Practice, Practice

As with anything else, practice makes perfect. Being funny is as much about delivery as it is about material, and the only way to fine tune your delivery is to practice and see how it goes. Material that is funny to you may not be funny to other people, or may only be funny to men. The more your practice the better you'll get at both picking your material and delivering it.

When you first try using more humor you may be nervous and talk too fast. Slow down. Try a concept on a few different people before declaring it not-funny. Sometimes other people are just in a bad mood. Be willing to fail more, so you can have more success. Always go back to what you find amusing and keep developing your personal funny bone. You'll start attracting other people who share your sense of humor and you can all have a lot of fun being funny together.

How To Be Funny is a post from The Confident Man Project

No related posts.