Self-Help Myths: Confidence
Today I’m starting a new series here at Organize IT where I take fundamental self-help lessons and stick them under a critical microscope. I believe it’s important to look at all sides of an issue and hopefully this series will make you rethink the more popular self-help topics. In this first post I will talk about confidence, one of the most important topics of any good self-help guru’s repertoire.
Confidence can be an attractive quality and displaying a confident demeanor is held in high regard in many Western societies, especially in business circles. A confident person is charming, knows what he wants and believes in his own abilities to get it. Unfortunately, confident people can also be those who cut you off on the road, act arrogant and cocky, and become blind to their own weaknesses. You won’t read many books telling you about the unwelcome side of the characteristic they are encouraging in you.
Of course you can’t just become confident. Self-help books will say you can build up your confidence with positive thinking and affirmations. The problem with this is it is superficial confidence because it’s not based on how you compare to other. It’s almost like a placebo effect. All it takes is one unpleasant situation to bring it crashing down again.
Some argue confidence is primarily down to genetics, others say much of it is down to how your parents treat you at a young age. But one thing for sure is that a lot of confidence when you’re older comes from numerous external factors – how you compare to others, people telling you how entertaining you how, how well you did that presentation, how good you are at sports… Consider how a football striker who suddenly stops scoring goals is always said have low confidence.
A popular student who is confident in so many other circumstances may quickly become reserved when put in front of a computer in IT class alongside a techie student. However if you put those two in a loud, crowded bar the roles are likely to be reversed. In each circumstance one of the students compares favourbly in his area of expertise and thus feels confident about his abilities.
To gain solid confidence you firstly need to gain competence in your skills. If you know how to do something and have built up these skills over time, then you will create a natural self-belief in your abilities. A great, confident public speaker won’t always have been that way. He’ll have practised and refined his abilities so that he’d be sure he could cope with all situations. If you are not competent in an area (and hence not confident), whether it be public speaking or socializing, ask yourself if you actually have much experience in it and then take the appropriate measures to learn and improve.
If you think you know all you need to know, then you are over-confident and likely to become that rude, cocky person I previously mentioned. As good as you might be, you can always improve. Taking that attidude with you in whatever you do will allow you to tread that fine balance between confidence and arrogance.
9 Comments
It’s nice to read an honest view on a trait many of us need to improve on, rather than reading some new-age wishy-wash.
If someone is cocky, arrogant, a bad driver and blind to their own weaknesses it does not mean they are confident. It means they are cocky, arrogant and unaware. Confidence is not the same quality as competence. You can be competent and not be connected to your confidence at all. No matter how much you work on your skills. And if you do become highly skilled and confident in a certain area, you’re only confident in your ability to do that skill.
My definition of confidence, which I just defined over at my blog, varies a lot from your own. Please check it out.
Thanks for the comment Nancy, it’s interesting to read an alternative viewpoint. I do actually think our message is similar, we are just coming from different angles.
I should stress I am not saying confidence and competence are the same quality. The latter leads to the former, providing you compare favorably to others. For example, if you are skilled at something yet unpleasant people constantly berate those skills you won’t have high confidence.
Another example is social confidence. If you are average at it, yet you are primarily in the company of those who are uncomfortable socializing, your confidence will be much higher as a consequence. That’s why people of similar social skills gravitate together.
Confidence (maybe even the type the gurus are talking about) isn’t necessarily just about being confident that you will succeed at a particular task or project or career. It may be more about being confident that you will be emotionally/spiritually fine even if you don’t succeed. Looked at this way, confidence is not the two-edged sword you describe.
Ron, confident that you will succeed at your career, confident that you can perform a task, confident that you will emotionally/spiritually take the knocks that will come your way… it’s all the same because you have to develop the mindset, tools and experience. Using your example, if you let every problem drag you down, not tell yourself to move on or look at the positives, then you won’t be competent at dealing with those knock-backs.
I do feel that you are very much mistaken when you say confidence comes from how you compare to others. Confidence is how you feel about yourself inside and is quite independent of how others see you or, indeed, how you feel others see you.
My friend thought he was really good at football. His basis for this was his performance in thrown together games during lunch breaks at school, and playing alone at home in the garden. He was very confident about his abilities and decided to join a proper team. As soon as he started playing with people who were organized and professional he realized how lacking his skills really were and his confidence took a knock.
I’m not saying confidence is always 100% based on how you compare to others, but it does play a large part in that.
I agree with Nancy. If you are arrogant it does not mean that you have confidence. It’s the same with self esteem. The noisier, the louder and the more arrogant you are, the lower your self esteem is. Arrogance comes from insecurity, so people who look overly confident are exactly the opposite; they lack self confidence. In that sense I don’t think there is such a thing as too high self esteem or confidence.
Thanks for the comment Zoltan, it’s hard to believe this post is over a year old now. While I think the fundamental message of my article remains true, it would probably be a good move to re-visit this topic with an updated post.