Helping Men to Be Confident

How To Connect More Deeply With Women

I was recently coaching a friend of mine who is highly successful in business, but really struggles when it comes to connecting with women. What I noticed most strongly in our conversation was that my friend talked mostly about what he thought, and very little about how he felt. This was a strategy that served him well in the business world, but didn’t work so well when it came to establishing connections with women.

Man and Woman Connecting

Photo Courtesy PhotoXpress.com.

If you want to connect more deeply with women, emotions are the key. Most of us guys have received a great deal of education on how to think, but very little on how to handle feelings. We rarely disclose how we feel to other people, and we aren’t good at acknowledging other people’s emotions either.

Our emotions are a deeply powerful part of our experience of life, which is why they are so important in connecting more deeply with other people. Women are generally much more aware of how they feel than us men are, partly because they’re biologically wired that way, and partly because they’ve usually spent a lot more time talking over their feelings with their girlfriends. Most men on the other hand are often out of practise when it comes to relating emotionally, because it’s often been seen as weak, or as a poor second to relating intellectually.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

Christian Teaching That Can Undermine Your Self-Confidence

I’ve been thinking lately about how much my self-confidence was undermined by what I was taught as a child in the church where I grew up. Even long after I had abandoned the belief system on a conscious level as an adult, I still felt the emotional effects of having my sense of self eroded and my self-belief undermined. There are some positive aspects of Christian teaching, but these didn’t sink in for me as deeply as the negatives. Even if you still believe in the basis of Christianity, I suggest you start questioning some of these Christian teachings which can undermine your self-confidence:

Blessed Are The Meek

Image courtesy sxc.hu

Yeah right. Try telling that to Genghis Khan. Now I’m not suggesting that you should go and invade half of China, but if ever there was a teaching designed to simply appease the masses, this is it. It would be more accurate to say “Blessed is the man who believes in himself and valiantly goes after what he wants in life without attachment to getting it”.

You Were Born Into Sin

The basic notion that we are born into original sin is flawed. The truth is that you were born exactly as nature intended.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Be A Sexual Man

You might think that being a sexual man would come naturally to every guy; but many of us have had our natural connection to our sexual energy beaten out of us through a combination of family experiences, religion, societal conditioning and past experiences where acting in a sexy manner towards women has led to us being rejected or punished in some way. Self-confidence and sexual confidence are one and the same, so learning how to get back in touch with our innate sexuality is very powerful.

Being A Sexual Man

Martina Hughes

With this in mind I recently attended a seminar on Being A Sexual Man led by Tantric practitioner Martina Hughes from TantricBlossoming.com. It’s great to hear a woman talking about how women want you to be up front with them about your sexuality, rather than hiding it or “leaving your penis at the door” in your interactions with women. When we pretend that we’re not sexual beings in order to get women to like us, we’re playing the Nice Guy game and often end up falling into the friend zone where we feel frustrated and emasculated. This doesn’t work for us, and it doesn’t work for the women in our life either.

When our sexuality is repressed, our life force is repressed.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

Converting Business Success Into Confidence With Women

I know a bunch of guys who are very successful in their careers, but still lack confidence with women. Coming from an engineering background originally, my experience has been that career success doesn’t always translate automatically into feeling confident interacting with girls. In fact, some of what we learn as men about being successful vocationally can work against us when it comes to the fairer sex.

Cute girl in a bikini with a laptop

Success in Business May Not Translate Into Success With Women

Women want a well-rounded guy who is successful in business but they also need to be able to connect and relate to us in order to get to know us more deeply. The biggest mistake I see successful career guys making with women is attempting to apply the same strategies that work for them in the business world to their relationships with women. After a few relationship failures, the once confident guy’s self-confidence starts going down the tubes as he blames himself for not getting the relationship he wants; or even worse he becomes bitter and resentful of women for not liking and accepting him the way he is. The problem isn’t him; the problem is the strategy he’s using unconsciously to connect with women, and simply changing strategy can make all the difference.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

Getting Angry With My Father

I’ve spent the last few years working hard on connecting more deeply with my father, motivated by a few reasons: For one, I felt I was missing something in my own sense of self; a connection to my own masculinity that would normally comes from a boy’s father. I also found myself feeling a profound sense of grief and loss towards my father, which seemed particularly odd given that he’s still very much alive and kicking. And then other men I’ve talked to whose father’s had died have often told me how much they regret not connecting on a deeper level and getting the chance to ask questions they’d long for an answer to, while he was still alive.

Being Angry With Our Father Can Be Challenging

Frankly, it hasn’t been an easy process. My experience of my father is that he talks about his experiences in excruciating detail that is totally devoid of emotional content. This often leaves me switching off and ending up feeling isolated, lonely and depressed in his presence. He says things that just aren’t very interesting and appears to show no regard for whether his listener finds the conversation engaging or not. When he tells me about visiting a relative or going to a concert, I’m likely to hear more about the parking and travel arrangements than whether he enjoyed the actual event itself.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

The Hero’s Journey From Frightened Boy To Confident Man

I’ve been fascinated lately to discover the work of Joseph Campbell and his book The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Campbell’s life work involved analysing the myths, legends and stories of every nation, culture and religion to identify common themes and patterns between them. He found a striking commonality between the stories of different cultures and identified a pattern which seems etched in the human psyche that he called The Hero’s Journey. Think of any major blockbuster movie or movie franchise like Lord Of The Rings or Star Wars, and you’ll see elements of The Hero’s Journey. I also see a remarkable parallel with the adventure that every man is called to in growing from a frightened boy into a confident man.

The hero of every man’s story is ourselves. Not necessarily who we are now, or who we think we are; but our real self that only emerges as the journey progresses. It’s the journey from boy to man, but also the journey of self-knowledge, stepping into our own power, being more authentic and ultimately being free. So here’s how I see men growing up fitting into the framework that Campbell identifies for the every man hero:

The Hero's Journey is also a metaphor for growing from a boy into a man

The Hero’s Journey

Initially, we live in the protected world of childhood.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

Need Someone To Talk To? I’m available

Life can be hard and we all need a little support from time-to-time. I spend a lot of my time coaching other people, and being coached myself; I find it tremendously rewarding connecting with others and helping them get past obstacles int heir life that I’ve struggled with too. If you’re stuck and don’t know where to turn, contact me so we can line up a time to talk over Skype and see if I can help you in person. Often just having someone else there who understands where we’re coming from can help lessen our isolation and build our self-confidence.

Need Someone To Talk To?

Just this morning I had a call from someone who was overcome with anxiety and desperate to know what to do. I’ve been there myself, so I could offer empathy and reassure them that they were going to be OK. After a while talking to me, they felt much calmer and more able to cope with what they were going through.

Here’s some of the feedback I’ve been getting lately from people I talk to:

“I wish I’d had that conversation with you twenty years ago Graham”
– Paul, Chatswood Australia

“I cannot overstate how much talking to you has helped me.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

Do Women Really Want Men To Be Vulnerable?

I’m a big fan of Brené Brown’s TED talk on The Power of Vulnerability. I keep coming back to watch it again every few months, and it never fails to move me each time I do. It reminds me that authenticity, connection and vulnerability are the keys to freedom while guilt, fear, shame and disconnection are the bars of the jail cell in which I’ve lived so much of my life. If you haven’t watched it yet, I highly recommend you watch it now.

And then watch this awesome follow-up titled Listening To Shame where Brené talks about the impact on her life of having the first talk go viral. After telling the conference of her research-induced breakdown (a.k.a. spiritual enlightenment), the video went viral with four million hits on the Internet. She went into a meltdown and didn’t leave the house for three days because of a vulnerability hangover. That’s the feeling that we get when we reveal something we’re ashamed of in front of other people. It’s the reason we avoid revealing our true selves to others: we know there’s likely to be an unpleasant emotional reaction within us at the thought of other people knowing the parts of us and our story that we don’t like.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

Why You Need An Ideal Future Vision

Having a vision for your ideal future allows your inner creativity to start moving you towards fulfilling that vision in your life. The first step of the online course is to create a vision for your future. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to resonate with you.

Having A Future Vision To Aim For Makes You A More Confident Man

For inspiration, here’s mine:

I routinely give myself permission to have the life that I desire without requiring other people’s approval. I am willing to experiment and have the freedom to fuck things up and get it wrong from time to time, knowing that the more I am willing to get it wrong the more things will also go right. I am fully comfortable with failure and simply see it as a learning experience. I have healed all the wounds of the past so that I can be free to be my true self, fully expressed in the world.

I have many close female friends and feel very comfortable being myself around them sexually, emotionally and intellectually. I have a rich and fulfilling sex life with as many women as I desire. I feel comfortable expressing my sexuality around attractive women, and they feel grateful and appreciative of the opportunity to connect with me.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

The Voice In Our Heads That Creates Self-Doubt

I have a little voice in my head that’s capable of creating almost unlimited amounts of self-doubt. Actually it’s not so little. It’s the voice that shouts “It’s not going to work!” when I try something new that’s really important to me, “You’re going to screw it up!” when I’m playing music for other people, or “She won’t want to talk to you!” when I see a woman I find really attractive. And fuck it’s been pissing me off lately.

After years of personal development, workshops, counseling courses, life coach training courses, and just plain good old procrastination, I’ve finally decided to offer one-on-one coaching to other men via Skype. I am way qualified for this by now; most of my life coach friends have far less training and counseling experience than I do, yet they started coaching ages ago. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be doing the same.

Listening to Our Inner Critic can lead to Self-Doubt

Well, there is according to my inner critic. No sooner have I hit the “order” button on the business cards calling myself a Confidence Coach than that shitty little voice in my head says: “Nobody’s going to pay you to coach them!… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago