How to be confident in a competitive world
Confidence. That illusive chemical. That illusive feeling. An abstract and intangible aspect of modern life that comes and goes like the gentle surge of a ocean tide; occasionally roaring but most frequently retreating. Right?
Let’s look at the Oxford Dictionary’s interpretation of confidence (since they are the benchmark and absolute voice of reason):
Clause 1 — the feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely on someone or something.
Clause 2 — the telling of private matters or secrets with mutual trust.
Clause 3 — a feeling of self-assurance arising from an appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities.
We’re really discussing clauses 1 and 3 here, most specifically clause 3. Confidence can be the fuel for the battery of your soul, its just harnessing the stuff that can be tricky.
This is where the problem lies.
Confidence isn’t an abstract whim which floats from our grasp as quickly as it entered, nor is it a personality trait that’s exclusively available to a select band of prosperous individuals (it’s really, really not this so don’t let the hegemony fool you). Some of the most confident people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting have been utterly down and out, outcast but undeniably self-assured.
It’s so much more. It’s so much deeper. Essentially confidence is a perspective. But more specifically, it’s your perspective. The ability to be confident i.e. to be assured by ones abilities and traits, lies in your wider view of the world, your ability to contextualise your exact situation in the grand scheme of the world’s filing system.
Position yourself. View the world like this; instead of a hierarchal system with an embedded, hegemonic ladder of ‘success’ which you must painstakingly climb for status and assurance; picture the world as a broad landscape, where every stroke and every spec has weakness and strength, all of equal balance and weighting, yet all entirely unique and all equally distributed.
Sound complex?
Your confidence comes from within, it isn’t determined by external situations or achievements, it’s a life choice, so make it.
