What is confidence?

 

Clients will often say to me, “I want to have more confidence” or “I want to be more self-confident.”

 

 

Confidence as skill

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But what is confidence? What are people really asking for when they say they want more confidence?

On occasion, they are simply saying they want to have more skill in a given area. That’s easy enough; it just takes more learning or more practice.

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Confidence as acting without fear

 

However, what they are usually asking foris the ability to act without fear. They want to somehow jump over the process of choosing courage entirely and go directly to a state of fearlessness. Confidence, however, cannot be accessed directly. It is a by-product of choosing courage consistently.

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How I went from "shaking in my boots" to "this is a piece of cake"

 

Allow me to illustrate with an example from my own life. 

 

When I lived in Phoenix, Arizona, I would often eat lunch at a fast-food Asian restaurant near my home.

Typically, after receiving my order on my tray, I would look around the restaurant at all the people sitting by themselves. If there were six such people, I would then ask myself the question, “Which of these six people

am I most frightened of approaching?”

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Choosing courage

 

Then, I would take a deep breath and say to myself (silently, under my breath), “Holy moly and jeepers weepers, am I scared!”, while patting myself on my back in my mind for being willing to choose courage.

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Empowered by my choice of courage and thus feeling good about myself, I would walk up to that person and say, “My name is Dwight. I eat here often. I thought it would be much more interesting to meet somebody new than to sit by myself. How would you feel about that?”

 

During 23 different luncheons, I approached 23 different people. Eighteen said I could sit with them and five said that I could not.

 

Did I feel confident when I started doing this? No, of course not! I was almost "shaking in my boots" the first time I did it.

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Confidence was the automatic outcome of choosing courage again and again

 

Did I feel confident after choosing courage to do it 23 different times? Yes, I did. Not confident in being able to guarantee everyone would say "yes" to me. But confident in that, even though it was still fun and exciting to do, I no longer felt nervous about doing it. Choosing courage was no longer needed in order to be able to do it as often as I liked.

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Confidence and courage are inversely correlated

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Having confidence and choosing courage are inversely correlated. When confidence is low, then the choosing courage to take action is high. When confidence is high, little or no courage is required to take action.

 

Courage is something we create. Courage is something we choose. However, we cannot directly create or choose confidence. Focusing on choosing courage; confidence will take care of itself.

 

In what areas of your life would you like to feel more confident?

 

How might you begin to choose courage today so that, over time, you will feel that confidence?

 

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See also Confidence.

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