Thursday, July 17, 2008

Competence vs. Confidence

To quote Neil Strauss:

Quote:
The two biggest clichés of dating advice are: Just Be Yourself and Be Confident.
That’s a load of bullshit: You shouldn’t be yourself, you should be your best self.
As for being confident, it’s impossible to just be confident because someone tells you to. This is impossible without success. Success breeds confidence. So you need to learn to have success...
Here’s pickup broken down to its most basic formula: Be interesting and interested... be confident and competent.
Something Mystery once said still sticks with me that really brings to light that having confidence isn't everything. When it comes down to it which would you prefer to have: confidence or competence....when riding a motorcycle. As you can see confidence alone can get you killed if you don't know what you're doing. Competence can get you from point A to point B safely and on time. That is why competence wins out over confidence any day of the week in my book and it applies just the same to relationships and social interaction as it does with riding a bike.

2 comments:

ABlogDead said...

I like this alot. It's something I seem to forget all too often.
Nice blog.

mr said...

To me, it is the opposite: competence breeds confidence, and than success!
One of life's greatest joys is to be competent in a given area of expertise.
The result will be success in that area.
So, competence, confidence, success is the natural order of things.
Michael