Hi I am 17 years old and just about to graduate high school next month, I am not very good with talking to girls and making new friends and I have very low self esteem and self confidence when talking to people. I'm 5'10 and weigh 190 pounds, I'd say I'm a pretty big guy. I'm still jobless and going into college next September. I love playing basketball and I'm going into journalism for college.

Reason why I'm putting in all this information is because when I graduate I plan to come up with a new identity of myself. I plan on fixing the bad things about me and improving as a person. I want to learn to meet people and do it with confidence. I've never had a girlfriend and I have never been very popular either.

So here is my question, Where do I start in towards making a major change in my lifestyle and habits to becoming a better man in meeting people and gaining self confidence?

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Loving Life -NV

Well, you have already started making the first step by deciding you want to start fresh, I had the kind of opposite situation to you, I started off doing pretty well in life and developed depression some shit got me down and I let it keep dragging me down.

I'm now 27 and only in the last year have I started to fight to get back to where I was.

First of all you need to let go of your insecurity. If you are happy and talk to people they will like you more remember these new people don't know much about you until you show them. So if you go in the right frame of mind and be and stop yourself being negative they will only know the new you.

I suggest you do the newbie mission in the introduce yourself section. That will build your confidence up.

Being confident is more attractive to everyone friends and potential gf's alike. The more you break out of your shell the easier this will be.