How we can be truly confident
We all know that confidence can be one of the most attractive qualities in another person. We are drawn to confidence in others because, in essence, ‘being confident’ means being assured and positive about oneself and one’s life, and in a world filled with doubt, negativity, insecurity and anxiety, a confident person is someone we naturally gravitate towards.
Yet, what makes a person genuinely confident? In the media we are saturated with images of confident people – usually they are beautiful, powerful, funny, charming, determined and get what they want. In many ways, confidence has become synonymous with a certain kind of success. Successful people are confident people.
Yet, any basic examination of this argument reveals how ludicrous this idea is. If success gave us confidence, why does Robbie Williams, one of the most successful musicians, wealthy and desired by thousands of women, struggle with issues of depression? Why did Howard Hughes, one of the richest men in the world, live in such fear that he often couldn’t leave his room?
For the everyday person, we may not attempt to achieve success on such a grand scale, but the belief that our confidence relies on achieving a certain successful end persists - If I had the right boyfriend, or if I get the right promotion, then I will feel confident.
Confidence based on success is what I would call ‘false confidence’ - it is false because it is based on a view of ourselves as being able to be in control of our lives and the lives of others. We view ourselves as isolated egos, struggling to get to a point where we can be secure in the knowledge that if we want something, we can make it happen. I am confident because I know I am attractive and can find the relationship I want. I am confident because I know I’m good at my work and therefore I will become wealthy and influence others.
Yet in reality, often these beliefs crumble. An attractive woman ages and is replaced by another attractive woman. A successful man loses all his money due to an economic slump. Will those people still feel confident? We have all faced these points in our life, and the temptation is to simply find some other external measure to make ourselves feel confident. The aging attractive woman gets plastic surgery. The wealthy man starts a new business. And as such, we simply start the same cycle all over again.
Creating True Confidence
The first step to creating real confidence is to recognize that confidence is not based on achieving external goals, but is related to our conception of our identity, of ‘who I am.’ Our identities are often inherited from our childhood beliefs. The more narrow and fixed our identity is, then the more limited our confidence will be. Some of us start out with negative self-conceptions like ‘I’m fat and useless’ and others with more positive ones like ‘I’m attractive and good looking.’ While the positive conception certainly starts us out on a better footing, in reality both are as limited as each other. They are simply different sides of the same coin. Both are based on a conception of the self limited by a superficial understanding of who you really are.
Confidence requires an openness to change
Lack of confidence often emerges when circumstances no longer allow us to take on a certain identity that we have used to make us feel worthwhile. The empty nest syndrome is an obvious example of this. If the idea that ‘ I am a good Mother’ is the central feature of a person’s identity, then the kids moving away could become a real trauma. We all face this same challenge in different ways.
The test of real confidence lies in our ability to let go of old identities and embrace new ones. Real confidence is based on our ability to be open to change inside ourselves. If you are a person who is stuck, rigid or unwilling to change who you are, then more likely than not you will spend much of your life desperately trying to make your life fit around your identity rather than the other way around. The ‘good mother’ will turn into the interfering grandmother. The ‘great sportsman’ will turn into ‘aging has-been by the bar.’
Creating real confidence requires us to develop a more expansive view of who we are, which is not fixed or limited by our beliefs. For me, I always start out with a basic viewpoint ‘I am a good person, connected and open to the spark of the divine within.’ This conception of myself is not dependent upon me achieving a certain goal or being good at a particular thing, and no matter what situation I find myself in, I can always stop and reaffirm this deeper knowledge about who I am.
Real confidence requires trust in others
A distrustful person can never be truly confident. We can see many examples of this in real life. You cannot be a good business manager if you don’t know how to delegate and trust others to do the job. You can’t win a football match if you don’t trust your teammate enough to pass them the ball. Many of us face moments in life when we feel our trust in others is being challenged. It may be a divorce, or a family feud where we end up feeling that everyone else is selfish and uncaring. We may end up thinking ‘I am on my own, and the only person I can count on is me.’ It is impossible to maintain confidence when we view others with suspicion and fear.
At this point, you may ask, ‘Surely, there are some people who don’t deserve our trust?’ Certainly, but there is a difference between being distrustful and being discerning. Being distrustful is a suspicious and fearful perspective about others. Being discerning is about being aware and clear about others' faults and limitations. When we are discerning we see the risks we make with open eyes. We are aware that we may get hurt, but we take a leap of faith. My father once said ‘ I would prefer to get hurt 1000 times, to experience love once than to never get hurt once, and never experience love at all.’ This is an attitude of real confidence.
In essence we can see that ‘real confidence’ emerges from a deeper and more expansive sense of self that is open to change and prepared to accept that we live in an interactive universe of relationships, where we can not control life, but where we can choose to how we wish to approach it. Being confident in an ego bubble of success and achievement will always expose itself as essentially hollow and meaningless when life doesn’t turn out the way we want it to. Real confidence is a deeper and more lasting confidence in which we know that however circumstances may change, through failures and successes, that we are essentially good, creative and unique and that we are never alone in a universe that is completely connected.