
Ask HN: How to become confident and take risks? - ye5o
I am extremely risk averse. I haven&#x27;t invested in stocks (except 401k) and lost all gains over the years. In general, I am highly skeptical of everything and don&#x27;t take risks. How do I increase my risk apatite?<p>How do I become more confident? I lost almost all hair and I am only 5&#x27;5&quot;. It&#x27;s not a good combo tbh. I feel people judge me more often than not. As soon as I realize, I am being judged or denied opportunity due to my looks,  I lose confidence. How do I overcome this feeling?
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ironix
Consider that risk aversion is not a bad trait — google “three fund portfolio”
and the theory behind it. Stock speculation is time consuming and akin to
betting. Know when to appreciate your aversion to risk.

Another way of phrasing self-confidence is “self-validating.” Social
confidence is essentially not looking to others for validation. It starts with
rewiring how you perceive the world (see: CBT). Isn’t it odd that you
construct stories of your failure that link back to your physical attributes?
What if you told different stories? This one is hard to grok until you start
to realize how much your brain filters out information to fit your core
beliefs about yourself. I didn’t believe this until I realized that my
negative self stories kept popping up while talking to people with strabismus
(eye misalignment). I was literally looking them in the damn wrong eye, and
telling myself how disengaged they were and how uninteresting I was because
they “weren’t looking at me.” Most of what we perceive is what we already
believe. It is unnerving, but valuable to know.

You mention the word “feeling” a few times. Is this in reference to anxiety?
We’re all templated to feel social anxiety, but some more than others —
especially those running negative self-talk reels in their head. Try to first
start seeing that anxiety when it happens, even if you can’t halt it. Foster
the skill of emotional self-observation.

Just trying to offer some new starting points. No easy answers here. Try
loving-kindness meditation for a start — you’re going to have to come to love
and respect your 5’5 balding self in the end.

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darawk
> I lost almost all hair and I am only 5'5".

I won't speak to your primary issue...but maybe the first "risk" you should
take is getting hair plugs. Seriously. A friend of mine did that and the
transformation in his appearance was _night and day_. If I ever start to lose
my hair, i'm 100% doing that. It's not crazy expensive, and the results are
incredible. I think a lot of men are for one reason or another shamed into not
doing things like this, but I think that's silly. It's completely worth it.
Let this be your first venture into unknown territory, and then maybe you'll
gain some confidence to start taking risks in other areas.

~~~
whb07
Or... take the bolder move and conquer your emotions (shave it off) or be
subservient to them. A weak man with hair is still a weak man.

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shostack
A big part of becoming less risk adverse, and getting more confident, is
having success to build upon as a reminder that while you won't always win,
you won't always lose, and that's ok.

Specific to your problems, consider this:

1\. Would you pay money to fix your problem? If so, consider taking that
money, automating its investment into a 3 fund portfolio (do some Googling on
Bogleheads and read 'A Random Walk Down Wallstreet' if you're skeptical), and
forgetting about it for a few years. Check back in on it annually and see what
you've learned. More importantly, even if you've lost money in an economy that
looks like it may start cooling off, be ok with it. You're investing in the
experience to prove to yourself the world won't end, not in an expected
return. If you get a return, you'll have some success to get excited about and
grow your investment.

2\. I'm not super tall and started losing my hair in college. If you can get
yourself to take the plunge and shave it all off, it can be one of the most
empowering things you've ever done. There's a period where people you know get
used to it, but then you'll find a lot of people have only ever known you with
a shaved head. You'll inevitably get some positive interactions out of it and
will stop worrying that people are looking at your hair loss.

And if you REALLY want to go all in, take the savings you get from investing
in a good pair of electric clippers and never going to a barber again, and use
that as your investment capital.

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macando
Find somebody confident you can relate to. Neil Patel on why he shaved his
head:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoqhUhDyE9w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoqhUhDyE9w)

The dude is more confident than Elon Musk. Unless you are a Thor you will
always have some prejudice working against you. That some people had a better
starting position than you means you will have to work harder and smarter than
them. Every beginning feels crappy for everyone. Having a realistic goal and
being gritty sure helps.

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mkbkn
I was in the same situation some time back.

"Decided" it was time I must change myself.

Picked up "The Magic of Thinking Big". I get the general hate towards self-hep
books, but in many cases they do create a positive future image and that is
essential to take the next step.

Get an accountability buddy. Search reddit or discord for that. And go. Use
the 5-second rule.

Go out in the morning sun. Take the unknown routes. Spark your creativity. Go
out of your comfort zone once in a while.

It will take time but you'll eventually get better.

Spend $100 on a random stock. Learn, improve, adapt.

Make notes.

You do not need to prove anyone else. Make a commitment to yourself and stick
to it.

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tucaz
I see two separate things here. One is aversion to risk and another is the
perception that someone is denying something for a reason you don’t control.

They have to be handled and treated separately.

When talking about risk, we are usually afraid of the unknown. Let’s say you
want to take a riskier approach with your investments. Start by understanding
what could happen in a given scenario and where the risk could come from. In
other words, risk aversion is usually remembering remedied by knowledge.

As for the other topic, it probably requires more work on your part to
overcome it.

Even though there are all sorts of prejudice and judgement from other people
there is nothing you can do since it might come from someone else.

The best path here, in my opinion, is to see what YOU can do and where YOU
might be lacking.

Take responsibility for what happens to you and figure out how YOU can change
the situation. A simple example would be of a person that “is denied” a job
because lack of qualifications and blames the other because the person thinks
it is some sort of prejudice.

It might be. But if you always assume that is the case there is nothing you
can do other than complain and victimize yourself.

As soon as you start taking responsibility for everything that happens to your
life, even things out of your control, you start to improve and things get
better fast.

Good luck!

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quickthrower2
If it is risks with money that you want to take you have to accept losing
money. Our attitudes to money run deep and I lost out on making a lot of money
in crypto due to ‘fear of loss’. On the other hand risk aversion is what keeps
the person with $1m from unnecessarily losing it all so there is a balance.
You could use a context like “I’ll live in a shared house and save $1000 a
month in rent and put that on the share market” to help justify risk, at worse
you are swapping one dead money for another.

I also recommend letting go of regret in not investing if you have any. It’s
not worth it; move on.

Also being risk averse is not a bad thing in itself by the way.

If you want to stay risk averse and have a chance of getting rich then
skilling up and trying small “mvp” style projects is the way to go IMO.

I recommend the free stuff Amu Hoy puts out for a general idea but she leaves
a lot of gaps so you’ll need the course. I’d of happily paid for that course
but I don’t like waiting lists for stuff I want now so I just started taking
action on a side project and learned from experience.

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Rainymood
Become aware of your spotlight bias:

>The spotlight effect is the phenomenon in which people tend to believe they
are being noticed more than they really are. Being that one is constantly in
the center of one's own world, an accurate evaluation of how much one is
noticed by others is uncommon. The reason behind the spotlight effect comes
from the innate tendency to forget that although one is the center of one's
own world, one is not the center of everyone else's. This tendency is
especially prominent when one does something atypical.[1]

In other words, no one (save for your closest friends/family) cares more about
you than you do. This is both terrifying but also extremely liberating.

Do you remember your friend's cringy rejection from 2 years ago? You probably
can, but your friend might've mulled over it every day for the last 2 years.

Hope this helped.

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muzani
You have to be in control. Have you ever played something like poker or
blackjack, confident of your next move?

That's how proper risk taking should feel like. It should not feel like a
gamble. It can fail but you should be confident that things will turn out well
in the long run.

The key to this is to learn more. Learn about the environment. If you're
investing in a business, learn the market, learn what they're doing, learn who
the best player in that market is and what their unfair advantage is.

In fact, if you're investing, find the unfair advantage. Unfortunately,
investing does involve a lot of research. The best stock investors I know will
learn every company in the stock market by heart, pick out the best, and wait
for the right moment.

Also don't be too worried about your looks. Josef Stalin was about your
height, not very good looking, and he was able to intimidate soldiers bigger
than him.

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danieltillett
Cocaine would solve your current problem, but with the high probability of
giving you an even worse problem.

Beyond drastically changing your brain chemistry, the way to solve your
problems is the way all large problems are solved - break it up into small
chunks. Start taking a little risk each day and slowly move on to bigger and
bigger risks.

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gesman
_Action_ that goes against your current beliefs will help to instill new
beliefs and overcome challenges.

So to answer "How to become confident and take risks?" \- is to take risk
without waiting to become confident first.

"True Power = Ability to Take Action" (Tony Robbins)

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coolvision
Start small, and do the opposite in small things, like food and clothes:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SclV-
UWM4Gw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SclV-UWM4Gw)

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tmaly
I think the best approach is to make small reach goals. Try things just beyond
your comfort zone.

When you do this, you train your mind that it was not so hard and you build
confidence on each step.

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ScottFree
Read the book Absinthe & Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of
Living Dangerously. It goes through how to intelligently take risks and why
you would even want to.

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eiriklv
Hit the gym. Increase Testosterone/DHT.

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xfitm3
Don't fear failure, welcome it. You don't learn without failing. Exercise.

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adultommy
In essence do not avoid any risk (except accident), no matter what you will
know the coming risk.

People know a kettle is hot when they touch the hot kettle with their hand and
then they will not touch it again because they realized the hot kettle was
hot.

How do you know risk will be right or wrong before you take it. you are doing
just a guess

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johnsimer
Skimming over these comments, I didn't see any answer that seemed like it
would be helpful.

As someone who dropped out of college (gave up a full-ride) to startup a
business (without a plan, customers, or much code) and 4 months runway in my
bank account this is what I did:

-anchor myself to something much more extreme than my daily fears. My daily fears were running out of money and building a product that everyone would laugh at. So I would write down in my journal each day something even more extreme: "I am willing to die broke, alone, and hated in pursuit of {{YOUR_GOAL}}".

-Reframe the concept of risk via death, via sort of nihilistic perspective (e.g. in the grand scheme of the universe what you are doing whether you succeed or fail really won't matter). I would tell myself "There is no risk. One day I'll be dead". I think about death a lot and every time I see someone famous in the news I write their name down in a list as a reminder that we are all ticking time bombs.

-anchor myself to fearless people and ideas. Books I read: 50th Law by Robert Green, Moral Courage by Rushworth Kidder. People I like thinking about: MLK JR, Ghandi

-Be skeptical of your skepticism. doubt is in proportion to # of and magnitude of questions you ask about something. Become brutally skeptical of the safe thing you know deep down you should avoid. Will doing X really make me happy? Is X really the right thing to do? Perhaps everyone doing X is crazy. Would {{INSERT ROLE MODEL}} do X? Why does everyone actually do X? For more on this see Awaken The Giant Within by Anthony Robbins

-Brainwash yourself via repetition. Cf. the familiarity bias. Your brain mistakes familiarity and ease of retrieval for truth. This is how cults make people feel that something is true by simply saying it 1000 times. Develop extreme faith and confidence in yourself by pure repetition. One tip is writing down a goal or affirmation 15 times a day. "I am a very attractive person" or "I am the most attractive person in my city. Everyone". Remember your brain perceives ease of retrieval as truth, and repetition improves ease of retrieval. Maybe combine this with some extreme-anchoring: "I could be the ugliest person in the world, and I could still win this opportunity through charm and persuasion". Or turn it into a positive: "This person WANTS to interact with me because they'll feel so attractive being around me".

\- Anchor to other people who had the same issue that you think you do. Abe
Lincoln considered himself to be ugly (and so did many other people in his
time) (and he had a high pitched voice too) and he still went on to be
president, and not only president, but one of the best presidents ever.

-Burn any bridges. When your back is against a corner, evolutionary instinct will kick in and give you a natural fire. For me this was dropping out of college.

-Ensure that the 5 people closest to you are risk takers and confident.

-Have a super intense goal that pretty much everyone in the world would think is impossible. "I will be the richest person in the world". "I will fix {{INDUSTRY_NAME}} by 2030". etc.

> "I feel people judge me more often than not"

IMO when you think about death alot and have a burning passion for your goal
thoughts like these never even cross your mind.

For what it's worth I used to be very risk averse too. Would jump through any
and all hoops society/school would set. Only invested in Total Market ETFs.
Didn't want to start a company until I had 1.3m in the bank and was age 31
etc. Becoming courage was a very deliberate and continuous process I had to
(and still) go through.

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Sevii
Go somewhere where you are a big fish.

