On Confidence
“Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent… But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human - however imperfectly - and fully embrace the pursuit that you've embarked on.”
- Marcus Aurelius
Fortunately, you don’t actually lack confidence. In fact, it’s available to you right now. You do, however, lack the idea of confidence that’s been sold to you– the idea that you’re supposed to believe without question that you’re “great”, “worthy”, “unique”, “beautiful”, and that “you can do anything”. And in truth, you struggle to believe this because in many cases you aren’t, and you can’t…
Now bear with me a minute.
It sounds harsh and contradictory, but the fact that you feel so far away from confidence all the time may be a really good sign. You’re in touch with reality. But, this capacity to acknowledge your fallibility isn’t just good, this is where real confidence comes from. In other words, you’re way closer than you think.
It isn’t confident to be, or pretend to be unaware of your flaws. Is it necessarily harmful? Not always. But, when we view confidence as a belief in a delusional, flawless version of ourselves, of course we feel like we’re lacking it. Of course it seems impossible to obtain. It is. If you’ve an ounce of self-awareness, you know it comes with the recognition that you are absolutely imperfect, awfully vulnerable, and certainly can’t just “do anything”. It’s when you lean into these recognitions, accepting them as true, embracing them as your own, that you will find your way to the ever-evasive confidence.
We think the confident person goes into their tests, interviews, and speeches unafraid that they’ll completely blow it. We think they go in without doubting themselves, they perform without doubting themselves, and when they reflect on it they’re certain of their greatness.
Again, of course we think we’re not confident when that is how we imagine confident people.
Now what if that same person, going for an interview or some other kind of important performance, didn’t necessarily believe she’d knock it out of the park? And instead she knew it was equally likely that she’d fail? This person doesn’t necessarily think failure is the only possible outcome, but she knows it’s not unlikely because that’s what being a person is. We do great things sometimes and we mess them up just as much (more), and she is no exception. This person has found confidence. She knows that even if she blunders in the most humiliating way, this means nothing of her value; she has simply acted in accordance with her nature.
When our self-perception doesn’t rely on our performance, or looks, or success, and we’re free to behave like humans— like the fallible animals that we are— we have found confidence. And ultimately this brings about the comforting irony of it all:
Confidence comes to us when we no longer seek it. You’ll have it when you let go of of it.
