Helping Men to Be Confident

How to Resolve an Argument with Your Mother

I just got this question about resolving an argument with your mother in response to my article on How to Recover From a Controlling Mother. Steve asks:

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?… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Handle a Woman’s Tests

Women put men to the test all the time. Consciously and unconsciously, women are always sussing out what you’re made of and whether you have what it takes to protect her in the big wild world. This is important to her because when you really man-up, she gets to relax and play more; which is what she really wants.

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.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Develop Your Masculinity

Being a man in today’s world can be a challenge. Fortunately there are a lot of resources out there that can help get us in touch with the masculinity at our core and be more confident and effective in the world.

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, and you can preview it by clicking the play button:

… Continue reading…
By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Be Funny

Learning to be funny can help you to be confident and there are plenty of advantages: you make other people feel good around you, become popular, and attractive. Women consistently say that they love a guy with a sense of humor, so it’s worth taking some time developing yours and learning to be funny.

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.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Be Popular

I hardly need to spell out the advantages being popular: more friends, a wider social circle, [intlink id=”33″ type=”page”]greater confidence[/intlink], more people to play and have fun with, and more women to choose from when dating. Being popular can either be superficial like Glinda in the musical Wicked, or a deeper trait based on being an all-round great guy. I’d suggest going for the deeper version every time.

With that in mind, here are tips on how to be popular:

Make Other People Feel Good

Popular people love making other people feel good because it’s more fun having fun with other people than doing it by yourself. Learn how to make other people feel good by being around you, and they’ll want to be around you more and more. Pretty simple, really.

Learn How To Make Other People Laugh

Making other people laugh is a great way to make them feel good. Develop your sense of humor and learn to express the quirky, amusing thoughts that go through your head. Learn to tell stories that amuse other people, show off your strengths, and make them laugh. If you don’t consider yourself funny, read books on stand-up comedy and learn the secrets that comedians know about how to make other people laugh.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

Music To Help You Feel Confident

Music is a great way to change your emotional state, helping you feel more positive and confident. Listening to your favorite uplifting music naturally puts you in a good mood and helps you feel confident.

Here’s a list of favorite music I keep on my MP3 player to help me feel confident:

Bon Jovi: It’s My Life

It’s your life, and you can do with it whatever you like. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.

No Doubt: It’s My Life

No Doubt’s take on the same theme.

Survivor: Eye Of The Tiger

Classic track for getting pumped up. I know pick-up artists who advise students to listen to this before [intlink id=”492″ type=”post”]hitting the clubs to meet women[/intlink] on a Saturday night.

Kenny Loggins: Danger Zone

Picture yourself on the back of a motorcycle riding along beside the airport, ala Tom Cruise. Works every time.

Van Halen: Jump

If this doesn’t get your heart going, check that you’ve still got a pulse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlq0lYB3iSM

The Bee Gees: Stayin’ Alive

This is a great one for learning to swagger along the street confidently. Put your headphones on and practice walking along as if you’re John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.

Yes: Owner Of A Lonely Heart

I don’t know exactly why, but this one totally works for me too.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Be Cool

Cool people are, well, cool to hang around. They are relaxed in who they are and stay cool in any situation. If you want to be more confident, more popular, have more friends, attract more women, or just get along more easily with other people then it’s worth developing some cool traits.

Here are some ideas on how to be cool:

Forget About What Other People Think

The quintessential element underlying coolness is that you don’t care what other people think of you. It’s none of your business. You retain a cool detachment from other people’s judgments of you at all times, and this allows you to relax and let your true personality shine through. Whether other people like you or not is of no concern to you. Cool people don’t get lonely very much because they’ve got plenty of friends, and they know there are always people to hang out with. They are non-needy. Since they don’t need more friends, they attract them easily.

This trait of being unconcerned with what other people think of you underlies everything else about being cool. It also distinguishes genuinely cool people with superficial people who are trying to fake it until they make it.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Make Your New Year’s Resolutions Actually Work

Well it’s that time of year again. Do you make New Year’s Resolutions? How did you go with last year’s? Have you given up smoking yet? Lost weight? Learned to be confident with women? Or perhaps you gave up on the whole idea years ago because you found that it just doesn’t work.

Well join the club. But if you’d like this year to be better than last year, you need to start doing something differently. So here’s a process to make New Year’s Resolutions that actually work and make a profound difference in your life:

Write Down Your Goals

The first and most important step is to frame your New Year’s Resolutions as goals that you can work towards, and write them down. Get yourself a goal book to write your goals down in and track your progress towards them. Keep it handy as you’ll be using it a lot: It will remind you of what goals are important to you so you don’t get distracted by other less important activities, and it will help build your confidence as you start to notice goals that you set yourself being achieved.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

The 10 Secret Keys To Happiness

Many people are looking for the answer to the basic question: how to be happy?

We all want to enjoy life and avoid suffering, but there’s more to it than just that. So here are my 10 secret keys to happiness:

#1: Make A Difference To Other People

No man is an island. We’re all biologically wired to live in community, and to make a contribution to the greater good. Of course we’re also wired for self-protection and to get our personal needs met, but millions of years of evolutionary development living in tribes means that we can’t do this in isolation. Loneliness is one stark reminder of this that motivates us to reconnect with our fellow man.

If you make yourself the center of the universe, and your life solely about meeting your own needs, you create personal misery. At the other end of the spectrum, martyrdom will make you bitter and resentful. The primary key to happiness is to find ways to make a positive difference to other people in a way that energizes you without depleting you.

#2: Use Your Gifts, Talents and Passion

To be energized in the long haul while you’re busy making a difference to other people, you need to be utilizing your unique gifts and talents in ways that you feel passionate about.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago