Very little, if anything, is usually at stake anyway, it's normally just a self-inflicted mental own goal.
It's a hard mental paradox to fix though, even though we logically understand that people like confident worry-free people more than people who worry about how they are liked, we still often worry about how we are liked anyway.
"Mental own goal" is such a perfect turn of phrase.
> It's a hard mental paradox to fix though,
One of the things I've learned in the past year of therapy is that if a mental problem is hard to fix at one level, it's usually because that problem is just an emergent symptom of a different deeper level issue.
Also, you never really "fix" psychological problems, so much as grow forward into a slightly different person that both combines that problematic history and adaptations to deal with it. It's like we're weird amphibians that can't regrow lost limb, but can grow an unrelated new limb at a different location that lets us walk again.
Yes, thanks for saying this so clearly and concisely. Why is it so hard to apply this knowledge when actually confronted to a situation??
(even for strangers, I stated that less is at stake, but it is actually still quite hard for me to speak to them! I'm way more at ease with people I know. I am very much aware that it goes very well every single time though. It's so dumb! Practice helps though.)
The mental framework we were programmed with in childhood (usually by parents) is a huge factor here too. My parents were super critical and judgemental, and pretty much taught me not to trust myself. It took years of work on this to kind of "reprogram" my mind, getting to a point where I'm totally authentic with people and rarely phased by their opinions! It's a really nice place to be.
The sad part is you come to realize there are actually some people out there who feel severely threatened by authenticity, and will actively try to tear you down; make you less. That can really hurt when you're not prepared for it. People are really odd sometimes.
There are mountains of books written about this topic for a reason, it's a complicated subject.
One thing though, I've recently started taking my fitness seriously and I've noticed a borderline magical improvement in my confidence and social energy without actively focusing on it at all. Worth trying.
It's easy to overthink this stuff, but that might just be another way of staying in our head. I don't what it is, testosterone maybe, but we shouldn't forget that our head is just as much a part of our body as our arms and legs, and if we take care of our body our thoughts tend to also be taken care of.
Less is at stake usually.