Guaranteed: Self-Confidence
This article details the true underpinnings of confidence and thus makes it clear what creates confidence, how to develop more of it and when you won’t have it. This article is 700 words long and will take about 3 to 4-minutes to read.
Guaranteed: Self-Confidence
Self-confidence doesn’t occur simply from desiring it or pursuing it and so you can’t just conjure it up from somewhere. It is a by-product of another factor and that factor is competence. When we have total competence in a sphere of activity such that we can unquestioningly depend upon it, we have no doubts about getting the result that we set out to obtain because we have total command over what it takes to deliver that result.
For example, do you lack confidence in walking, in reading, in writing, in finding your way home, in making a telephone call? These are things that most of us can do without consciously thinking about them. These are routine processes that we can do day-in and day-out time after time and pretty much without fail. However, at one time, we couldn’t do any of these things. There was a time when we couldn’t walk, couldn’t read, couldn’t write, couldn’t find our way home along, or couldn’t make a telephone call. At one time they were literally impossible for us to do. All of these processes had to be learned. We go from having no ability to a faltering ability where sometimes we can do it and sometimes not. Then we get better and more consistent (but we still have to consciously think about these things) until finally we can do them automatically and without conscious thinking. When we have this level of competence with any sphere of activity that we choose to engage in then we automatically gain self-confidence.
Thus, if you want more self-confidence, forget about any deficit of confidence that you might feel. No matter how much you focus on that it will not have a direct effect. Instead think about the ability that you want to have about which you currently do not feel sufficiently confident. This should do three things for you:
1) It gets you to focus on the real problem (a lack of ability) and hence,
2) Leads you to solutions that can build ability and also,
3) Gets you to realise that your lack of self-confidence is not a total and absolute description of you – it only affects you in certain areas and by keying into areas where you already have confidence you can use that resourcefulness and those skill sets to build abilities elsewhere.
Developing skills (as opposed to learning a new process with skills that we already have) is perhaps one of the most difficult things that we can do because it often requires developing hand, eye, and body movements as well as gathering and learning a new body of knowledge. That means a lot of trial and error and a lot of frustration before we transfer these new and faltering attempts into automatic responses. The following article gives a detailed approach to learning new skills in a highly effective manner: supercharge-your-learning-pt1
Be careful with what you display in public of your new found skills. I recommend that you don’t attempt to go for the max of what you can do immediately because you won’t have that as a robust skill and you might well fail and humiliate yourself, which will do no good for building your confidence. Instead do the things that you have well-mastered – this will automatically give you confidence and allow you to focus on getting a good result rather than also having to focus on the process of getting a good result at the same time. You can read the embarrassing story of how I learned that lesson the hard way here: antidote-to-perfectionism
Remember, relying upon robust capabilities for getting real world and public results casts off confidence like a shadow from a tall monument. You don’t even have to think about confidence because it follows as the natural outcome of acting upon robustly reliable skills, knowledge, methods and experience. You cannot bolster long-term confidence through focusing on it alone. Instead focus on developing ability at doing whatever it is that you want to have great competence at doing. Focus on the knowledge, skills and resources necessary to create competence and when you have dependable abilities you will have confidence by default – guaranteed!
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#1 - Permalink Total Self Confidence December 30th, 2007 at 11:42 am[…] Guaranteed: Self-Confidence […]
#2 - Permalink Chris January 5th, 2008 at 2:03 amYes, so true! It’s funny that I’m having a semi “Aha” experience when I read this article. I think I’ve always known this but the way you put just clarifies it.
I have a fair amount of interests and as a result I’m just mediocre in all of them. Because of that I’ve always been hesitant in applying for jobs in a certain area. Now I decided that I want to pick one area that I enjoy and specialize in that area. Competency does determine confidence.
Wow.
Chris
#3 - Permalink AnnMarie Peterlin March 27th, 2008 at 12:52 pmChris, same thing here–I was sort of a mediocre jack-of-all-trades but never really competent at anything till I started to focus.
Nick, what do you think of those people who naturally have what might seem like confidence (ego etc.) and therefore think they can do everything? I know it is not a true confidence and I often can see through it. However, I suspect that a person like that is still a faker until they actually gain competency. But, in the end if they never realize their faked confidence, can they ever really become competent if there is no realization that they did not have it in the first place? Does that make sense? I am mostly thinking of students or even teachers who act like they are competent but are not, and therefore they do not try to become competent. Thanks.
#4 - Permalink AnnMarie Peterlin March 27th, 2008 at 1:06 pmOK–I found this in another blog. Right on!
We strive very hard to cover up our incompetence and often engage extensively in personal and public denial of our deficits in ability. We lie to ourselves and continuously describe reality falsely and act against the conditions of reality in a vain attempt to bend it to meet our desires. This creates a form of madness and most behavioural maladjustments derive from this denial. Yet, perversely, it has become so common place that we consider it normal.
#5 - Permalink Chris March 27th, 2008 at 4:10 pmAnnMarie - Yeah, Nick uses a more solid definition for “confidence” than most people. A lot of people seem to have confidence when doing things, but I think they just lack certain needs (like the need for approval). Some people seem so natural at getting up in front of others and performing not because they have experience and skills but because they just don’t care what people think. Sometimes when learning new endeavors, I think, it takes to have this type of confidence. Later, true confidence will come as competency, skills, experience develop.
#6 - Permalink Chris March 27th, 2008 at 4:15 pmAs for your second post: Yeah, denial is used because the difference between the desire and our abilities produces negative emotion. Denial then is a quick fix for the solution: developing skills. I think denial happens a lot when the desire is large - i.e. pinnacle goals. I think people stay in the “fake confidence” mode because their desires are too high and they procrastinate learning the necessary skills. Combine that with their lack of concern for what others think and you get what you observe.
#7 - Permalink Nick Pagan March 28th, 2008 at 2:40 amChris!
You make some very astute observations and you’ve really taken on board, understood and applied the central concepts of what I write about. I’m delighted not just to have a great supporter but also to know that someone else can perceive events and the reasoning behind them in the same way as I do. It gives confirmation that the conclusions that I have drawn about how to interpret reality work and are very valid - many thanks!
You are quite right that I have a more narrow specification of confidence. Because we have different levels of competency for different activities then our levels of confidence will vary accordingly. To have generic confidence at everything that you do then you either need to only do things that are well within your capabilities (which limits personal growth) or else develop a generic set of problem solving skills along with creating an attitude that goes along the lines of “Whatever happens right now I can handle the consequences.” That means having few desires related to possible results, i.e. detachment from results, and instead set up desires to focus on responding well to problems and events.
#8 - Permalink Nick Pagan March 28th, 2008 at 2:57 amAfterthought: By having detachment from results, you don’t set up desires for things over which you cannot control the outcome so you don’t set up a strong need for the result that generates tension. By focusing on personal responses that you have control over you can adapt and respond better to events without overhanging negative emotions and stress (I feel another blog post coming on…)
#9 - Permalink Guaranteed: Self-Confidence Part II May 7th, 2008 at 4:36 pm[…] article: Guaranteed: Self-Confidence Antidote to […]