Confidence and how to get it.

“Would you say you had confidence?” she asked.

“Well, not bags of it.”

And I never saw her again.

To be fair, the state I was in, I wouldn’t have dated me either.

I had been in a slump for quite some time: Motivation was off, gym was off, career was flagging and my house was just plain grotty.

It was a bit of a wake-up call, so I got to work. First challenge: clean my shower. Second challenge: What is confidence, and how do I get some?

Confidence is the certainty that a given action will have a certain outcome. At the time of the question above, I was wrestling whether to join two new groups, so confidence was not possible.

This doesn’t stop ‘confident’ people making a quick decision anyway.

That can’t be confidence, as they don’t know the outcome; it can only be courage, which involves not caring what the outcome is.

So how people use the word ‘confidence’ is the opposite of its meaning. Those with the swagger that we call confidence aren’t certain about the outcome; they just don’t care.

How we use the word ‘confidence’ is in pretending to have it when you don’t. Confidence is theatre to mask that all you have is confidence or audacity.

How to get confidence, is seems, lies in taking action without confidence.

David J Schwartz (The Magic of Thinking Big) tells us that the cure to a lack of confidence is to take action. If you overthink on whether this is the right action, then you sap your courage, and courage is the key.

So I joined both groups.

Ah! No! That’s not courage! That’s cowardly avoiding a decision. In joining both groups it cost me money and I didn’t do neither particularly well.

Still, that was a learning experience. Courageously go all-in on one option and make it work. Stop caring so much about outcomes, and throw in on the process unreservedly. Do the actions. See what happens.

Months later, I no longer fret about petty things, but get moving. Many a mistake made, but minding less about short-term outcomes.

Still plenty of work to do, with courage and confidence.

Next week: Confidence vs Audacity