The Anatomy of Confidence

Everybody wants to be more confident. Everybody. Questions about confidence come up a lot, “how do I build more confidence?” and today this question came up in a different way.

“What is the easiest way to improve your confidence?”

What is the easiest way to become more confident? The wording of this question is interesting and I think it warrants a much better question.

What is the most effective way to improve your confidence?

I think too many people see easy and effective as the same thing which kind of seems to be par for the course when it comes to the helicopter parenting generations that handed out the participation trophies. How do you get the greatest reward with the least amount of effort?

The truth is, about life, is that what is effective isn’t usually easy and what’s easy isn’t usually effective. This is especially true for personal growth and especially true for something like confidence.

“Easy,” points to what is simple, effortless and painless and I’m sorry folks but the anatomy of confidence is the opposite. Confidence is complex, requires effort and is almost always, to some degree, painful. If you’re seeking the path of least resistance to confidence then perhaps you need to start by questioning your basic understanding of the term.

If you had never tasted salt, it would be quite impossible to describe to you what salt tastes like and the same is likely true for confidence. Confidence is emotional and mental strength. Like physical strength, it requires heavy lifting. There is no easy way to build physical strength, there is only effective. What’s effective is hard and what is hard is effective. That’s how physical strength works and that’s how confidence works.

“You gotta want it…”

With confidence, you gotta want it. You have to be willing to push through the pain and for those that have experienced little or no confidence, it’s important to understand that there are so many benefits and rewards to gaining confidence. It’s kind of like when you put on a pair of jeans that you haven’t worn for a while and finding money in one of the pockets. There are expected benefits and unexpected benefits. But you have to want it and you have to endure the pain of getting it, trusting in the fact that there are unexpected benefits waiting for you. Sometimes, that’s the best part.

The Greatest Growth Comes from the Greatest Pain

Pain is an extremely effective teacher unless we get in it’s way. Our failures teach us better than our successes do and while there is some pain that we should absolutely avoid. Most of our pain will teach us, make us better and make us more confident. But most of us are too busy lamenting over our failures and fretting over what we’re afraid of what kind of person we might be because we have failed. If you never learn from your pain, of course you’ll avoid it but running from pain is the same as running from growth. Not to mention freedom because we become so much freer when the pain no longer effects us.

If we focus on what our failures taught us, the sting of those failures is far less difficult to bare. Confidence builds when we learn every possible lesson from every last mistake and failure and get better from it. Our increased resilience that inevitably results is how our confidence cultivates and grows. The anatomy of confidence includes the requirement that we examine our pain and dissect it so that it teaches us.

Effort

The growth of confidence requires effort. And sacrifice. It seems natural that a generation that received prizes for sitting on the sidelines lacks this understanding. Confidence happens when you dive in and when you participate. The more you do something, the more confident you become in that area. The pain of failure is unavoidable and those who have built true confidence have learned that this process gets easier. The pain of failure gets so much easier to endure and we learn that ourfear of that pain was only in our heads. And the truth about confidence is that while everybody wants it, very few are willing to do what it takes to really get it.

Experience

Experience and expertise seem to come from the same word. Experience builds confidence because it creates the type of understanding that only comes from doing something and becoming good at it or becoming an expert at it. Experience truly is the confidence builder. Do things. Over and over again. And when you’re good at it, keep doing it; don’t stop. Confident people are confident, in part, because their experience has cultivated their confidence. Experience often also creates different forms of muscle memory. Confident people are able to execute challenging things with remarkable precision. And that is true confidence.

Facing and Overcoming Fear

There’s little else that will build our mental and emotional strength than facing and overcoming fears. It builds and empowers us in ways that we won’t truly understand unless we do it. In our modern world, so many of us are afraid of things that pose little or no real threat to our physical safety but because they feel scary, they seem dangerous. People need to take some risks, they need to face danger, in whatever forms they may appear to be. Confidence is guaranteed to result when we take our fears on. We don’t always have to face fears alone but it’s almost always more beneficial when we do.

Do what’s hard

The reason why so many of us hate the participation trophy culture and endlessly mock it is because the participation trophy culture completely missed the point. Children don’t feel good about themselves because they got a gold painted piece of plastic mounted on a small piece of wood. They feel good about themselves because they did something. Because they accomplished something and they reap the fruits of growth. Participation trophies are a lie and a counterfeit. The real reward is the confidence that builds from doing, failing and learning. We feel better about ourselves when we pick ourselves back up but participation trophy culture has taught us an insidious lie. That we get the greatest rewards from the least amount of effort. It robbed those children of the gratification that comes from picking themselves back up.

We must climb the mountain. There is no other way.

The bottom line is that confidence happens when we do what’s hard and hard is the opposite of easy. I know, no duh, but for those who are looking for an easy road to confidence, I hate to break it to you. Confidence and easy can’t coexist and I think that perhaps what people might be overlooking is this.

People want confidence so that they can take on what is hard and what is scary and what they don’t realize is that the opposite is true. Confidence is what happens when you take on what is hard and what is scary.