Okay. I read a lovely post by @soldier this morning about confidence and how to get it. She was right; it's absolutely not something that happens overnight but there are little things that you can do to rewire your brain into thinking a bit more openly. If you place the palm of your hand over your forehead you will find that it's almost impossible to frown without a great deal of effort. Smiling can be infectious and it's a great way to meet new and happy people and expand those previously closed boundaries. Anyway, I'll leave her to continue with her really good guide. For me, I want to do something a little bit different. Here's why you're unhappy, and it's not what you expect I bet.

You struggle with truth

I'm 100% open and honest with everyone. Ask me a question about anything in my life, apart from my bank balance, or the keys to that balance and I'll tell you. Everything in this world begins and ends with you. If you're telling porkies to your friends then you are ultimately being dishonest with yourself. What's the number one fast track to a downward spiral of battling with your conscience and building up emotional turmoil? Keeping secrets from family, friends and lovers. Unless you're a complete sociopath then I expect sleeping with another man is weighing heavily on your mind right about now. Nothing is more freeing experience than having no secrets. Be honest always.

You struggle with trust

I've heard people tell me that they trust no-one, which is actually a really good way to be because that then minimises their chances of being exploited. I have a different attitude to that though. I trust first and take it as it comes. I like the phrase innocent until proven guilty, it has opened up quite a few avenues to me that were previously closed. I like a bit of risk, and in doing so you have to place a good amount of trust in others. That being said though, I have been burned badly in the past, but in true courtroom style I have slammed the judgement hammer down and labelled them as guilty. Once bitten, twice shy as they say. I know some of you may have been burned on a level that I wouldn't understand, and through a lifetime of grief and hardship you find it hard to trust anyone. All I say is go and find where the good and honest people hang, and learn to trust again. I was the same, it wasn't until I surrounded myself in good people, and learned the difference, through a lifetime of socialising with people that would give Begbie on Trainspotting a run for his money, that I learned to trust again

You struggle with safety

Perhaps life’s biggest flaw is when someone does not feel safe. Now, in a western world that's heavily policed with long jail sentences for those that murder we are relatively safe in the physical sense of the word. What about mentally? Feeling safe mentally is where you have an existence in which it is safe to express yourself openly and freely on your deepest level. You have little to no worries about money, or people coming to take your children away. Safety at its base level is security in knowing that you are safe. Politicians use safety and security as buzz words yet I doubt they understand its true meaning. Safety is the idea that you won't have to panic for the rest of your life about anything important, for example money, shelter, food, health or expressing yourself. All I can suggest with this one is to pick up a book and learn. Try joining up with Skillshare and learning a new trade, or like on here, learn about blockchain technology and the awesome coins to invest in. $10 now could be $10,000 in six months. Who knows?

You struggle with control

Letting go of control is probably the best thing I have done so far. As a young man, I would white-knuckle control until I suffocated my friendships into non-existence. I didn't like that some things were outwith my control. I hated it in fact. I would do anything in my power to control the world around me and create a perfect version of utopia, but it would unravel regularly and each time it hit me harder than I would have expected. Letting go of control and understanding that perhaps there were things outwith my spindly fingers of manipulation freed me from a lifetime of suffocating the environment around me and hating myself for being weak and not being able to control it. One of the hardest lessons that I ever had to learn in life was to watch a situation unfold in my team at work that was dangerous, toxic and harmful and yet I was powerless to stop it. I could only remove the people from the situation. From there I began to understand that sometimes I have to work with the environment that is presented to me rather than to try and manipulate it. I'm not God, so I stopped trying to be him/her.

You lack acceptance

Acceptance was the last lesson I learned in my quest for confidence. After letting go of control I had to learn to accept that sometimes shit happens, and that by getting angry and upset about it does no-one any good. Accepting that shit happens, to me, and very often, was a turning point in how I dealt with toxic situations that were presented to me. I'm no pinnacle of perfection I assure you and my life is full of ups and downs. My wife has a broken back, I have Mental Health problems and my Son is autistic. Couple that with an education system that's geared up to fail my Son, and an area that's radically underfunded in all public services, I can assure you my life is hectic at times. Accepting that shit happens and dealing with it as soon as it is presented to me has been key to not getting wrapped up in the anger and incompetence that is the UK.

Further thoughts.

A lot of people mistake confidence for arrogance. I too was one of them. I would look on in awe at how people would stand tall and straight and look like they could take on the world but I later realised that is only a small piece of the puzzle. Confidence is so much more than standing tall and defeating your enemies. Confidence is allowing yourself to be vulnerable when most people would put on a show. Confidence is speaking up where most people wouldn't. Confidence is trusting your partner completely when you know that one word from her to the right people would destroy you. Confidence is helping people where others wouldn't. Confidence is much more.

What are your thoughts?