Develop A Strong Point Of View

Hey, it’s Graham from The Confident Man Project here again and today I want to talk to you about the concept of developing a strong point of view. Now, this is a concept I’ve borrowed from the acting world and it’s very applicable I find to guys, particularly when we lack self-confidence. Often we’ve given up on having a really strong point of view.

Perhaps our opinion in the past hasn’t really been validated or hasn’t been valued or other people haven’t respected our point of view and we’ve learnt over time to just become kind of bland and neutral in our ideas about everything.

This is not a very attractive quality when we have no point of view, and it leaves other people feeling uncomfortable around is because they never know where we stand. Other people generally would rather know where we stand even if they disagree with us than to just be really uncertain about what it is that’s going on for us and what it is that we like.

So the idea behind developing a strong point of view is to start having preferences about things. For instance, a very simple one is are you a dog person or a cat person. Now, don’t say that you don’t care because that’s not having a point of view. Even if the issue doesn’t really mean a lot to you, just pick arbitrarily one or the other that you would prefer a little more and decide that that’s who you’re going to be.

Start having more of a point of view about things. What kind of food do you like? Would you rather go to Italian or would you rather go to Indian? Don’t say, “Oh, I don’t really mind. They’re both good.” Pick one and say, “Yeah, that’s my preference.”

It’s okay to still like things that are not your first preference, but having a strong point of view about what you like projects self-confidence and reminds yourself that you know what you like and what’s important to you.

I learnt this lesson once going out on a – well, it wasn’t even really a date, it was just a dinner outing with a friend of mine, and I had come across this idea that it’s better for a guy to actually say “Hey, this is where I want to go. Would you love to come?” than to ask your girl, like, “Where would you like to go?”

Start making decisions for yourself. If you like going to Italian restaurants and you’re going out with a girl, say to her, “Hey, I want to go to this great Italian restaurant. Would you like to come?”, rather than asking her, “Oh, would you like to go to dinner with me? Where would you like to go? Do you want Italian? Do you want Indian? Do you want Chinese?”

Start having a point of view about things and you’ll find over time that the more you do this, the more consistently the more confident you feel in what it is you want and in having a point of view that other people will begin to respect. Whether they agree or not, it doesn’t matter. But you’ll start getting more respect from yourself and from other people.