Gym bros often tell men that just working out and building muscle will by itself build the confidence and self-esteem they need to be attractive to women and improve their dating life. Many will also say that personal development and getting coaching is a waste – “Just hit the gym!” But at FEARLESS, we often see bodybuilding and being in shape – or even straight-up shredded – not working for guys to help them be confident or attractive to women. At all!
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in June 2018.
Does being muscular make you more confident? In this episode of “Becoming FEARLESS”, alumni Joe shares his story of being shredded but insecure before FEARLESS to building real confidence.
Joe had pretty severe social anxiety before FEARLESS, as you’ll see in the video. Even after he spent a lot of his life in the gym bodybuilding and becoming muscular, he wasn’t really building any confidence with people in general, and especially not with women. He was physically attractive, but to women his muscles and ripped body didn’t matter because he was still so insecure. The gym did not help his confidence or attractiveness to women at all.
Joe might be an extreme case of being muscular NOT making you confident…but he’s not even the only major case of it in our client base. We have at least one other client that immediately comes to mind who was shredded and a legit male model when he came to us, but still was severely struggling with women.
And other clients have also reported their own bodybuilding experiences to pale in comparison to the confidence and attractiveness to women they built by working on their confidence directly.
You can most certainly, unfortunately, change the outside (your body and your muscles) without changing the inside. In fact, going too crazy on bodybuilding without any actual attention on your internal confidence can even HURT you, because when you open your mouth and women realize how little confidence or ability to connect emotionally you have,you start to fall into the “meathead” or “dumb jock” category in women’s eyes. And it’s just kind of sad to look at: this big, shredded guy with no confidence!
And on the other hand, we have clients who are physically disabled, short and chubby, bald, old, and on who have all learned to be good or great with women.
So does being muscular make you more confident? Along with conscious, focused internal confidence work, working out, bodybuilding and getting fit can be a great, healthy thing that’s empowering and adds to your confidence and your attractiveness to women, but by itself, we see too often where the results men are looking for from lifting weights just don’t happen.
Enjoy the video!
