By thinking like Edison. Remember the story about his failures building a light bulb?

He was asked how he found the courage to keep trying in the face of failure and he said something along the lines of that he didn’t see it as a failure because he found 999 ways to NOT make a light bulb.

That’s the kind of thinking you need to have confidence.

Say you want a partner. The partner you want is going to be, more or less, specific to you. That means that although there are potential partners all over the place, they’re not what you’re looking for. Nothing wrong with that, it’s not all about you. You’re not the only one looking for a partner. You need to find what you’re looking for and not get hung up on what’s going on with everyone else out there.

Approach it like a geologist. Say you’re out in field looking for geodes. There’s rocks everywhere, right? But you’re not looking for any old rock, you’re looking for a geode. You pick up a rock and examine it and then put it back. It’s too irregular, the coloring is wrong, whatever.

How is this a failure? That rock was not what you’re looking for.

How many rocks do you reckon a geologist will pick up and examine to find a few precious geodes? Dozens, maybe hundreds, yeah?

Why doesn’t the geologist give up after picking up 5 rocks and not finding a geode? Because maybe he knows that everytime he picks up a rock that’s not a geode, he’s increasing his skill level to spot one correctly? Because maybe he knows it’s one step, the one that requires the most patience, toward the ultimate goal of finding a geode. Because maybe he knows that he’ll find what he’s looking for eventually, it’s just a matter of time. In the meantime, he’s out enjoying the day and being in the field.

A lot of confidence is keeping things in their proper perspective and not letting yourself get all wrought up over bad or incongruous, overly emotional thinking. Not making mental traps for yourself, in other words.

Our imaginary geologist here has confidence. Translate and adopt his perspective and thinking to the dating field and you’ll be more confident in dating because you’ll be able to keep yourself out of those mental traps.

Obviously, we’ve gendered our geologist here because we were talking about men lacking confidence in dating and using an analogy. There are NO implications beyond that.