Graham Stoney

I struggled for years with low self-esteem, anxiety and a lack of self-confidence before finding a solution that really worked. I created The Confident Man Program to help other men live the life of their dreams. I also offer 1-on-1 coaching via Skype so if you related to this article contact me about coaching.

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
Palm tree growing in the shadow of another tree

What Are You Living In The Shadow Of?

Palm tree growing in the shadow of another tree

What are you living in the shadow of?

In the backyard of my sister’s holiday house where I’m currently staying is this palm tree on the right of and growing very close to a larger gum tree. The palm is living it’s life in the shadow of the other tree and you can see that it’s not as big or as luscious as palm trees usually are. In fact, it looks mangy and emaciated. Not flourishing. The leaves are small, few and far between. They fall off easily. This palm tree is not exactly fulfilling its full potential.

That’s because the shadow from the other tree blocks the sunlight, and they’re so close to each other that their root systems have got to be entangled and choking each other. It’s probably fair to say that as a result the slightly larger tree isn’t growing to its full potential either.

Now I’m sure that my sister’s septic system is glad these two trees aren’t growing gangbusters, because they’d be sending their roots down into it. Or at least, it would be glad if septic systems had feelings; which I’m pretty sure they don’t. They’d be pretty cranky at all the crap they have to put up with.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Recover from a Violent or Abusive Childhood

Being abused as a child or being raised in an abusive environment can have a profoundly negative effect on your adult self-esteem. As children we generalize our experiences and assume that the whole world operates the same as our immediate circumstances. If we felt unsafe, unloved, unfairly criticized or hurt as a child by the people who were supposed to take care of us, it can affect our whole perspective on life and be devastating to our self-confidence.

Abuse leaves us feeling isolated from other people, and our true self

Abuse leaves us feeling isolated from other people, and our true self

Domestic violence, verbal, emotional and sexual abuse during childhood are insidious because they destroy our natural sense of trust and color our view of the world and the people in it, making it seem like a dangerous and scary place.

We don’t necessarily need to be the immediate target of abuse in order for it to affect us. I grew up with a critical, dominant mother who was verbally abusive to my relatively [intlink id=”518″ type=”post”]passive and emotionally neutered father[/intlink]. He bottled up his feelings of frustration so they built to the point where he would explode violently.

It was mostly my parents who were on the receiving end of each others abusive treatment, but as a sensitive child I was traumatized by growing up in an environment where I felt unsafe and on edge much of the time.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Handle Criticism

I’ve never been a big fan of criticism; even when it’s accurate or well-intended, it’s all too easy to trigger emotional memories of times when painful criticism was leveled at me as a defense by other people who were avoiding dealing with their own issues. I had a critical mother who often used the phrase “If your mother can’t tell you, who can?” to justify perfectionist and often just plain hurtful criticism. My early experiences with her started a pattern of being overly defensive and not taking criticism at all well.

Criticism says more about them than it does about us.

Criticism says more about them than it does about us.

So now rather than reacting emotionally to criticism, I try to respond as constructively to it as I can. For example, there was recently some criticism of The Confident Man Project in a thread on the social anxiety support forums, so I’ll use this to illustrate how to respond to criticism.

Notice Your Emotional Reaction

We’re all emotional creatures deep down. When we get criticised, our first reaction is an emotional one. Acting on this raw emotion may or may not be the most useful thing to do depending on the circumstances. For instance there may be times when unwarranted criticism makes us angry, and our anger motivates us to stand up for ourselves where we otherwise may let someone else’s agenda walk all over us.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

100 Ways To Meet Women

There are women out there all over the place. Why do so many guys have trouble meeting them? After all, there must be at least 100 ways to meet women. Some of them will probably even involve nudity. Let’s see:

  1. Go to a Yoga class

  2. Go backpacking in youth hostels

  3. Do a meditation class

  4. Go to Resolving The Mindset Riddle

  5. Enroll in a Guitar class

  6. Join a 12-step therapy group

  7. Go to Improv classes

  8. Go to comedy festivals

  9. Ask for movie advice in the ticket queue at the cinemas

  10. Participate in a Spencer Tunick photo shoot.

  11. Take acting classes

  12. Go to art installations

  13. Go to Breakthrough To Success

  14. Join an Amnesty International letter writing group

  15. Take life drawing classes

  16. See live theater

  17. Learn to play music

  18. Start your own business and go business networking

  19. Study Psychology

  20. Take a life coach training course

  21. Get into personal development

  22. Become a life model

  23. Go to rock concerts

  24. Volunteer for the political party with the most attractive male candidate

  25. Hang out with your female friends, and meet their friends

  26. Go to bars

  27. Do a Yoga retreat

  28. Go on a naturist holiday tour

  29. Join Greenpeace and start participating

  30. See live music

  31. Go to the beach with friends

  32. Do a road trip to another state

  33. Join a writer’s group

  34. Talk around the water cooler at work

  35. Do volunteer work

  36. Organize your own house party

  37. Do a health retreat

  38. Backpack across Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa or America.

… Continue reading…
By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Manage Stress

Stress is the unspoken epidemic of the 21st century. There’s too much to do, too much pressure, too many people to please. We feel restless, tense and on edge much of the time. You can’t relax. After a while, you begin to think that this is normal; the way you’re supposed to feel all the time. You get addicted to your own adrenalin.

You never take the time to even breathe properly. You push, and push, and push as though your life depends on doing what you think you need to do. There’s never enough time. And when your current project is done, there’s always a new one to work on. The pressure never ends. You get headaches frequently, but push on regardless.

Left untreated, chronic stress will destroy your health and rob you of your zest for life. Eventually you burn out, give up, fall ill, get depressed and just don’t care any more. It’s important to learn how to manage stress before that happens. Here are some tips on how to do it:

Take Regular Breaks

Your body isn’t built to handle the non-stop adrenaline rush of chronic stress. If you live in a constantly adrenalin charged state, eventually your health will suffer.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to be Confident with Women

A lot of guys who are confident and capable in most areas of life still struggle when it comes to meeting and relating to women confidently. Just because you’re good at your job, successful in business, sport or hobbies doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be confident with women.

On the other hand, confidence with women does tend to flow over into every other area of your life. It’s just one of those fundamental things that effects your whole life when you master it. So here’s how to relate to women confidently:

Ask Yourself What You Really Want From Women

What is it you’re really looking for from women anyway? Is it love, intimacy, sex or a relationship? Or are you really seeking validation and approval from them, trying to compensate for a lack of true self-esteem? Most guys who struggle to feel confident with women are still trying to make up for childhood love we didn’t get from our mothers or stability we didn’t get from our fathers. If you had an [intlink id=”480″ type=”post”]emotionally disconnected mother[/intlink], or a [intlink id=”518″ type=”post”]passive or emotionally unstable father[/intlink], this can undermine your self-esteem and show up as nervousness around women.

If you have mother or father issues that are unresolved, get some emotional healing so you don’t carry this emotional baggage straight into your next interaction with a woman.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago