Can bad experiences boost your confidence?

There’s a lot of misunderstanding about confidence in the popular media today. Confidence would seem to be mostly about smiling a lot and looking great. But what about the bad experiences? Are they just wasted time and energy? Or can they actually contribute to boosting your confidence? Find out here — in under five minutes — how bad experiences can actually play a vital role in helping you to be a more confident man.

It’s all data.

Your experiences — all of them — provide you with information. And sometimes that information will be, “Wow! That worked!” And sometimes what you’ll learn is, “Whoa. That really didn’t work at all.” All of which means that all of your experiences can be used to tell you something. And that something is — if you’re paying attention and learning — what do I want to repeat? And what do I not want to repeat? Because remember that confidence comes from repetition. And as such, even though contrary to popular culture’s depiction of confidence, bad experiences can actually boost your confidence by helping you know what you don’t want to repeat.

The question is: did you learn from it?

So the real question becomes: are you learning from your experiences — both the good ones and the bad ones? Because especially when it comes to the bad experiences, it does take some work to focus your attention on learning. But your natural tendency when you have a bad experience is to just get in bed, pull the covers over your head and forget it ever happened. And start again tomorrow. But that would be a mistake. Because as you know, there is that famous quote from George Santayana, ““Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Learn from your bad experiences.

So — this is going to take some focused effort on your part. And instead of sticking your head in the sand when you have a bad experience, it’s time to learn from it. And if you’re ready, so am I. So please feel free to write to me at mark@marknewtonpdx.com and let me know what you’re struggling with. Because as an experienced men’s life coach here in Portland, I’ll have some ideas about where to go from here.

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I'm here to help you focus, overcome resistance, and get moving again.