Real confidence for men: when the usual advice falls short

A common refrain you may have seen among young men seeking self-improvement advice is this: improve yourself tangibly. Go to the gym, work on your skincare, dress better, and start socialising. This advice, which is mostly externally focused, is rooted in the idea that such behaviour will create a positive feedback loop: fix what’s not working, receive positive attention as a result, feel more confident, repeat.

This sort of advice is understandable and logical. In some cases, it may even be a helpful first-line recommendation. I’m not suggesting that, as a man, wanting to feel capable or wanting to improve is misguided. That drive can play a meaningful role in men’s mental health.

But there is an issue with where that focus is being driven, what it is being asked to solve, and in the messaging that tends to come with it, including a particular idea about masculinity and how a man is supposed to approach these issues.

The unhelpful messaging in men’s self-improvement advice

Much of the advice young men encounter online is not wrong in a simple sense. Exercise can help. Taking care of your appearance can help. Learning social skills can help. Having structure and goals can help. The problem is that this advice is often packaged with a harsher message: that if you are struggling, lonely, anxious, inexperienced, ashamed or unsure of yourself, the answer is to become more disciplined, more attractive, more successful, and less affected by things.

Discussions of masculine norms often point to self-reliance and emotional control as important themes. Self-reliance is the ideal of being capable and self-sufficient, handling problems practically and efficiently, whereas emotional control involves men's tendency to button up their feelings to avoid appearing weak or burdening others. When these norms become rigid, they are associated with poorer mental health and reduced help-seeking. They are also present in what this kind of advice can imply: “sort yourself out, and keep your feelings out of the way of the real progress”.

Another tricky characteristic of this advice is the messaging that can be extrapolated from "improve first, confidence will follow"; namely, "you're not enough yet, and that's why you don't feel good. Become a better man, and happiness will follow." Or, more specifically, that once you become disciplined enough, attractive enough, socially capable enough, sexually confident enough, or successful enough, you will no longer have to feel so anxious, ashamed, uncertain, lonely or worn down.

Whilst there can be something genuinely motivating in this message, there are several ways it can backfire and hurt rather than help men’s well-being.

In the first instance, the work succeeds in inducing a positive feedback loop. Say you improve your aesthetics, feel motivated by going to the gym, feel more socially competent and begin to receive positive attention. But there is a noteworthy risk here: your sense of being OK is now pinned to the result, and it lasts exactly as long as the result does. The moment progress stalls, comparison shifts, or life affects your ability to stick to the routine, the floor goes with it.

In the second instance, the work succeeds but fails to produce the positive feedback loop. Despite going to the gym or working to improve your social skills, the results don’t make you feel better, or are not met with the approval that was originally sought. On paper you did everything right, but the thing it was all supposed to deliver still hasn’t arrived. When effort meets no reward, the conclusion that tends to form isn’t that the model overpromised. It’s that the problem must be something within you.

In the third instance, the work fails. Life demands, motivational difficulty, low mood, social anxiety, financial stress, poor sleep, neurodivergence, or low self-esteem may make the suggested tasks difficult to engage with meaningfully. When the advice is presented as simple, such as “just go to the gym”, “just talk to more people”, or “just stop caring”, the failure can start to read as a failure of character, rather than a sign that the approach asked the wrong thing of someone who was already struggling.

In all three scenarios, the problem is not the desire to improve. The problem is that feeling OK becomes dependent on the improvement working, being maintained, or producing the promised result. Self-improvement becomes less about building a life, and more about proving that you are finally acceptable.

When feeling OK depends on the result

It’s not that these external factors won’t help. They often can. Exercise, structure, better sleep, socialising, grooming, meaningful goals and lifestyle changes can all make a real difference. For many men, these things are not superficial. They can create momentum, restore a sense of agency, and help someone feel more connected to themselves and others.

The issue is not that this kind of self-improvement is useless, but that it is incomplete when treated as the whole answer. There are probably two parts to a more stable relationship with self-worth. One part involves taking practical steps in the world: looking after your body, building structure, developing skills, seeking connection, and creating a life that feels more liveable. The other involves developing a better relationship with the parts of yourself that are anxious, ashamed, doubtful, lonely, hurt, or worn down.

A lot of self-improvement advice focuses almost entirely on the first part. It implies that if you improve enough externally, you will eventually reach a point where difficult feelings no longer bother you. But this is not quite how difficult emotions work.

Anxiety, shame, doubt and vulnerability are not simply signs that we have failed to improve ourselves enough. They are part of being human. We may come to understand them better, respond to them differently, and reduce the extent to which they dictate how we live, but they are unlikely to disappear altogether because we have become more disciplined or externally successful.

This is where the second part becomes important. If difficult feelings are treated only as things to overcome, hide or defeat, then every return of those feelings can start to feel like failure. Feeling anxious becomes evidence that we are not disciplined enough. Feeling ashamed becomes evidence that something is wrong with us. Feeling worn down becomes evidence that we are weak or failing.

A more stable foundation is not one where these feelings vanish, but one where we can recognise them without being completely governed by them. In CBT terms, this may involve noticing the thoughts and assumptions that accompany shame, rejection, or failure. In person-centred terms, it may involve developing a more accepting, less hostile relationship with parts of ourselves that we have learned to reject. In acceptance-based approaches, it may involve making room for difficult internal experiences while still acting in line with what matters to us.

This matters because these internal experiences are not reducible to surface-level improvement. A person can become fitter, better dressed, more socially active, or more disciplined and still have a harsh relationship with themselves. Without attending to this inner relationship, self-improvement can become another arena in which self-worth has to be constantly earned.

What therapy can add

This is where things like therapy can be helpful, though therapy is not the only route. Therapy can offer a focused, boundaried and collaborative space to look at these patterns more directly.

If surface-level advice says improve yourself and confidence will follow, therapy might ask: what happens inside you when confidence does not follow? What do you make it mean when you struggle? Do you become attacking towards yourself? Do you withdraw? Do you assume you are defective? Do you feel you failed because the advice was simple and you still couldn't make it work?

These questions matter because they address the part of the problem that external improvement alone often misses. Therapy can help someone understand not only what they want to change, but why the need to change has become so painful in the first place. It can help a person notice not only that they feel anxious, ashamed or inadequate, but what those feelings lead them to do: withdraw, overwork, compare, become harsh with themselves, seek reassurance, avoid intimacy, or give up altogether.

In this sense, therapy does not have to stand against self-improvement. It can support a deeper form of it. Rather than simply adding more tasks to complete, it helps address the meaning attached to struggling in the first place. This is consistent with a counselling approach that respects the client’s autonomy, avoids one-size-fits-all advice, and works collaboratively with the person’s own goals and values.

For some young men, practical changes may be sufficient. For others, there is a more difficult but equally worthwhile task: learning how to remain capable, connected, and self-respecting while still experiencing the feelings they hoped self-improvement would remove.

You do not get there by having less of an inner life. You get there by being on better terms with the one you already have.

For some, practical changes may be sufficient. For others, there is a more difficult but worthwhile task: namely, coming to terms with an inner world that cannot simply be outperformed, disciplined away, or made irrelevant through success.