11 Reasons Why Boys Need Confidence in Life
Last week I shot a video about 13 reasons why girls need confidence or they will suffer. I got a lot of great feedback from that, and a couple of the parents naturally asked,”What about boys?” And naturally, boys need confidence too, or they are going to suffer. So today I’ve got 11 reasons why boys need confidence, or they will suffer for their life.
#1 – Boys sometimes have a difficult time making friends. So if they don’t have confidence, they are not able to introduce themselves, and even if they do make friends, it’s just awkward and they have a tough time keeping those friends. So by improving their self-confidence, they’re going to feel better about themselves. They are going to naturally attract people to want to be around them.
#2 – Boys who are afraid to try new things because they identify failure as not an event, but who they are as a person. Boys with confidence realize that we learn through failure. That failure is our friend. This is one of the things we say all the time at the karate school. By being able to develop the confidence to fail, they are not going to worry about failing at something. They are actually going to see that as a positive.
#3 – Peer Pressure – Boys who are afraid to say no. If they don’t have good confidence they give in to peer pressure. Peer pressure naturally is going to lead to making bad decisions. So we definitely want to avoid that. Sometimes the bad decisions are short term or just a little bit of pain, but sometimes they are life-changing, and not in a good way. So we want to make sure that boys develop the confidence so they can avoid peer pressure and just say, “No, I’m not going to do that.”
#4 – Boys who live in fear daily and they end up hiding it by using sarcasm as their main form of communication. We have all seen some teenagers that are just very flippant and very sarcastic whenever you ask them something. That is generally a sign of a mask that they are really nervous, scared, or have anxiety and are afraid of what’s going on, but they don’t know any other way to communicate. By developing confidence, they are going to be able to express themselves better, definitely working on their vocabulary. And they are going to be able to say what they think and what they feel. And in the long run, that’s certainly going to help them lead a better life.
#5 – Not Liking How They Look. With sports, these days, particularly high school sports becoming super competitive, boys end up taking steroids because they don’t like the look of their body. They start comparing themselves to some professional athletes and unrealistic pictures that they see on the internet. They think, well, I need to look like that in order for people to like me. So they end up taking steroids, which ends up negatively impacting them for the rest of their life. The damages to your body, taking drugs like that is just terrible.
#6 – Share Emotions. As boys grow up, their problems don’t go away. That is one of the things a lot of people think, that their child will just grow out of it. They don’t outgrow problems. What starts happening is, if boys don’t develop confidence, they start to internalize pain and it becomes worse. So boys, without confidence become men who don’t know how to share their emotions. And we all know people like that. Maybe it’s a family member or somebody you work with, they just have a hard time expressing their feelings because they have internalized their pain and fear their whole life. They internalize everything and that’s never healthy.
#7 – Boys without confidence become men who have to show you everything in order to have a sense of purpose. They have to show you how much money they have. They have to show you how smart they are. They have to show you how strong they are. Whenever you see somebody doing that, they don’t have any self-confidence. They need other people’s approval in order to feel good about themselves, and that is never a good place to live. It’s very stressful and can create a lot of anxiety as an adult.
#8 – Boys without confidence become men who get taken advantage of in business and relationships, They get passed over for that job promotion , or they are afraid to ask for some time off. In a relationship, they are mentally abused or in some cases, it is possible for females to physically abuse men. It is not healthy for people. Boys with confidence become men with confidence, and they are going to have healthy relationships, and they are going to have a great business life or a career doing what they love to do.
#9 – Boys without confidence become men who are loud and have to yell and scream to be heard. One of the key things that I have learned over the years is that the most influential people are usually the quietest. They don’t have to raise their voice. That is one of the things that I really focus on in the karate school. I have a strong voice and I have to project, and sometimes that can be mistaken as yelling. Every so often a child will say, “You yelled at me.” Kids have never heard me yell. I don’t yell in the karate school. I don’t have to, because I’m able to convey my message with authority and with confidence. Kids know that I’m doing this for their benefit, and I care about them.
Men without confidence really have to be loud and thump their chest and make a scene in order to feel any sense of purpose. That is not a good impression to make on people and not something that parent’s are proud to see.
#10 – Boys without confidence become men who only care about themselves and make fun of everybody else. That’s not okay Because they are afraid of anything they don’t know about, they say, “Oh, that’s stupid.” Anything that, that doesn’t fit into their mold of what they can do, their wheelhouse, they dismiss and call it dumb, or stupid. You may hear them say, “Well, that’s for girls.” Again, they are going to miss so many opportunities. Honestly, I believe moms, dads you would be embarrassed if your child was like that. If your son was out there making fun of other things, that’s not, open-minded, that’s not caring.
How are they going to have a healthy relationship? If they only care about themselves. Now there is a balance that you do need to care about yourself first. Proper respect begins internally with your self. But then you want to be able to expand on that and make sure that you are able to care about others. It’s going to be a much happier and healthier lifestyle.
#11 – Boys without confidence become men who have to control their spouse and children in order to be happy. I see this way too often. What starts to happen is the men want to control everything in order to show that they have power. The only way they can do that is to force it upon their spouse and their children. Who wants to live like that? And who is happy? The dad is not happy because he’s having to force his control all the time, and that’s just stressful. The spouse certainly isn’t happy. Nobody wants to be controlled. The kids aren’t happy because there’s always fighting and walking on eggshells, afraid that they’re going to get yelled and screamed at if they make any mistake. It’s not healthy, and it’s not happy.
It is up to us as mentors and parents to help make sure that our boys develop confidence so that we can avoid these 11 problems.