RECOGNIZING THE THIN LINE BETWEEN CONFIDENCE AND ARROGANCE

None of us can sit here and argue with confidence being one of the sexiest traits a man can possess.  Women will voice it themselves, but nowhere is it more clear than watching how they respond to a self-assured man.

In the online community of pickup artists, a lot of guys preach the “fake it until you make it” approach to confidence, and that does work to an extent.  It’s hard to develop confidence overnight, so it’s not like you can just decide to have it.  And huge confidence gains will be had by a few successful nights if you’ve always struggled in your dating life.

So the idea is you swallow your insecurities, tuck them away, and get out there playing the game.  Fair enough, and it often works.

But the major problem most guys have in regards to this area is that they step too far over the line in their approach and come across as arrogant instead.  And arrogance is not typically an attractive trait.  The result is we end up pushing women away from us instead of attracting them.

So how do you walk that fine line?  Well, let’s look at a few concepts that might help you – these are some really simple ways to put yourself in check.

First off, in the beginning, you are going to need to remind yourself to be confident quite often.  You’re not likely to walk out there deciding to be confident and never think of the issue again; instead, you’ll be readjusting your thoughts and behaviors a lot to keep centering yourself and striving for a confident state.

Each time you have to stop and think about this to bring yourself back around, I want you to reassess the kind of confidence you’re shooting for.  And the idea I want you to keep ingraining into your brain is a balance between being confident and humble.

Confidence is an inner thing – not an outward characteristic like arrogance.  It’s the way you feel about yourself.  The way you carry your body.  All too often, arrogance is an outward attempt to appear confident, and this is why men trying to fake it so often jump to that arrogant extreme.

Acting humble, on the other hand, is the opposite of arrogance.  It’s not puffing out your chest and bragging about yourself.  It’s a calm confidence.  It can be hard to express this type of confidence at first, but watch what other men you see as confident are doing and I think you’ll get what I mean.

The second idea I want to bring to your attention to is simply observing the reactions people have towards you.  If you’re acting arrogant, people might be attracted to talking with you at first, charged up by your energy and seemingly confident, good-humored nature.  But the more they talk with you, as they realize you’re not going to let up and might just be an arrogant prick instead, their attention will seem to start waning.

They’ll either get dismissive of you or start challenging you a lot.  These challenges might seem friendly at first, but when you cap back on them, you’ll find they get more hostile and suddenly you’re having some weird energy struggle with someone you just met.

You’ll know when it happens because you can really feel this dynamic in the air.

The problem is that we typically just put it off on the other person and decide there was something wrong with them – that’s just our human nature at work.  But if it happens to you a few times, you really might want to analyze the impression you’re giving people and readjust if you’re coming on too strong.

So just pay attention.  It’s that simple.

The third thing I want to bring up is a specific pickup technique that’s really been blown up in the seduction community – negs.  You’ve probably heard of negging before.  It’s basically a way to get a hot girl’s attention by poking fun at her a little bit or challenging her – sort of teasing her about something.

The idea is that most men suck up to these kinds of women, and they aren’t used to a guy putting them in check, so it throws them off and makes them curious.

Negs can work, but insecure guys typically lean on them too much in an attempt to appear confident and indifferent.  I’ve seen guys actually insult beautiful women not once but then repeatedly, even if the extreme neg somehow did work the first time around.

It’s almost if they were trying to send the girl home crying or something.  Not cool, guys.

Insulting someone is not going to get you laid – sorry to break the news, but it’s not that easy.  It’s one thing to tease a little bit and be somewhat of a challenge, but go easy with it.

And believe it or not, negs are not essential.  I actually advise most guys not to use them because it’s so likely they’ll get it wrong.

The first thing you need to understand if you do decide to use negs is that they should either be obvious jokes or so offhand that the girl won’t see it as an insult – if anything, she’ll see it as you not really meaning to be insulting because you didn’t think it through enough to know any better.

And anything past that first neg should really come across like you’re teasing her.  Think kid sister kind of jokes.

But once again, if you really are having trouble wrapping your mind around negs, you don’t need to even go there at all.  You can get a lot further by building comfort first and then breaking rapport a little bit, like we talk about in “Understand Attraction.”  A neg is not the best way to break rapport because it is too easy to take things too far back in the other direction and ruin the moment.

The main thing I want you to get from this article is just this whole idea of the difference between arrogance and confidence.  We’re not out there trying to show people how great we are, even if we are amazing studs.  

We’re not out there trying to become the alpha male at the club – all too often, thinking you can go into a nightclub and dominate the place is going to get your ass kicked instead.

We’re out there trying to make friends and, yeah, get laid as much as possible.  Because we can if we just put our minds to it and try.

And that’s not arrogance.  It’s confidence in our competence.

The best way to get better at navigating that thin line between confidence and arrogance is to practice the art of Breaking Rapport. Breaking Rapport is an advanced technique that is incredibly effective at generating sexual attraction.  The key to mastering it is developing a very keen eye for the dividing line between confidence and arrogance, between playful teasing and hurtful insults.

There’s a huge amount you can learn about this from a bonafide master at using and teaching advanced Breaking Rapport techniques. You’ll find methods here that will help you immeasurably in walking the confident-but-not-arrogant path and that also, by the way… just happen to be geared as well to generating massive attraction in the process…