The Confidence Myth

Ladies, have you ever found yourself feeling insecure even though deep down you know you are actually a dime piece? Have you ever felt like your confidence would be mistaken for “cockiness”, so you found yourself dulling your sparkle to please society? Have you avoided letting yourself feel too confident just to find that it causes your confidence to slip away all together? If any of these hit close to home, then this is a post that you need in your life.

I hate to break it to you, but we as women have been LIED TO. Starting at a young age we are told that we should be humble so that we are not threatening to others. We are told that if we do not know that we are beautiful, that is what will make us beautiful. We are not actually supposed to think we are attractive; we are just supposed to take a man’s word for our attractiveness. Ladies let me just tell you that this is BULLSHIT.

First, if you pretend not to know that you are beautiful for long enough eventually you are going to start to believe it. Remember self-fulfilling prophecy from your psychology class freshman year of college? No? Let me refresh your memory: basically, self-fulfilling prophecy means that something can become true simply because a person believes it will and aligns their behaviors to fulfill the belief. If you tell yourself not to be confident, you will not be. However, the reverse is true as well: if you tell yourself you are a badass bitch, that is exactly what you will become.

Now let us talk about the lie that we as women have come to believe. The lie: humility and insecurity are more attractive than confidence. We are told that if we want men to like us then we cannot like ourselves. We must smile at the ground and not know that we are beautiful so that our knight in shining armor can come swoop us up and tell us that we are. If you believe this lie it may be the reason you often find yourself asking the question “Why doesn’t Steven like me back?” Steven doesn’t like you because you don’t even seem like you like yourself, sorry to be blunt with you Tina. What Steven wants is a prize that he must win and to be a prize you’ve gotta believe that you are a prize.

Believing = being. Recently I read the book “Why Men Love Bitches” by Sherry Argov and it said that a 7 can turn herself into a 10 just by believing that she is, read that and then read it again! I did not believe this myself until recently with a man. For the purposes of this blog we will call this man “Hunk.” Hunk is the man that every woman dreams of - intelligent, in shape, charismatic, flirtatious, tall, handsome. While texting Hunk I was freaking out, literally. I was sitting on the sofa texting him, and in my head I was telling myself “Oh my god. Why is this man talking to me? This man is 1000X more attractive than I am. I will never be hot enough for this man.” Hunk is so hot I was shocked that he was even giving me the time of day however, I decided to act like a 10. I was SHOCKED at the outcome. I didn’t hold back with the pretending to know I was a prize thing; I flat out said that I knew I was hot and let me tell you, the response I got was shocking. Hunk said “Haha there’s no doubt about that... and the fact that you know that makes you hotter.” Later in the conversation I was acting like I knew I was hot shit again and he said “Haha that confidence is sexy, that’s for sure.” Ladies READ THAT then READ IT AGAIN. Confidence = sexy.

The reality is this: when I acted confident it came off as attractive and I also started to become genuinely confident. When Hunk said that the fact I knew I was hot actually made me hotter I thought to myself “Yea actually, that’s right. I am hot as FUCK and don’t you forget it.” Funny thing how quickly I started to become the thing I was pretending to be.

LADIES! Stop putting yourselves down. Stop dulling your sparkle to avoid seeming “cocky.” Stop believing songs on the radio that say “You don’t know you’re beautiful. That’s what makes you beautiful.” Stop being insecure because you have been relying on compliments from men to boost you up for so long. Start acting like the BOSS ASS BITCH that you are! Even if you don’t 100% believe it at first - you will, and once you do everyone else will believe it too.

XOXO,

Ashley Rathbone