Before reading on, I’d recommend reading our article “Solving the self-confidence riddle“, where we answered a very basic question: “How can I be confident in myself if I’m not confident in myself?“
Would you trust someone who doesn’t trust themselves? Would you put your money in the hands of someone who doesn’t trust their own ability to manage money? Basically, we’re saying that to move forward in life or to succeed, you need unshakeable confidence.
But confidence, as we explained, isn’t tied to any tangible external measure. Even a model can feel insecure, and being promoted at work to a position of great responsibility could make you feel less sure of yourself in that role.
Confidence can be very fleeting
There are times in life when you feel unstoppable, usually when everything is going well. But then you get fired, or your partner leaves you for someone else, or you hit financial trouble you can’t see a way out of in the short term, and that confidence can vanish, pulling you into a cycle you need to get out of as soon as possible.
Most people have only a small supply of confidence in themselves and their abilities, a supply that runs down as things start to go wrong. Runs of bad luck or good luck? It makes no difference.
Following a Quora thread that asked “what is the core of self-confidence”, I’m going to take one of the answers and expand on its points to set out the three essential pillars of true confidence. Once you understand and absorb them, you’ll never question your aptitudes, abilities and self-confidence again.
1. You are not what you have
Your job, your clothes, your car, your looks. All of that can disappear in the snap of a finger. That’s why some people, when they lose their job, avoid going out so they won’t run into anyone.
Their confidence has gone. I knew someone whose situation you could read without talking to him: you could tell whether he was out of work or had found a job just by the way he walked.
When he was unemployed, he walked listlessly, hunched over, barely lifting his eyes from the ground. But when he found work, he walked with broad swings of his arms and energetic strides, looking at everyone and greeting people left and right.
We had a confident “me” and an unconfident “me”, and you could see it in his body language.
Alex Liang tells an anecdote about a speaker who came to give a talk in one of his classes. The speaker was Safwan Shah, president of PayActiv, who, as often happens, came across as somewhat arrogant, because self-confidence and arrogance are separated by a very fine line that audiences sometimes misread.
He said, more or less: drop me anywhere, in the Sahara desert, in the jungle, it doesn’t matter where. I won’t be afraid, because I’m sure I’ll do fine. And it’s the same in business: take everything away from me today and I’ll succeed again.
Is it arrogance or self-assurance?
It doesn’t matter, because that is the essence of entrepreneurship. This speaker was giving talks because he had been part of 3 very successful companies. But he wasn’t just proud of what he had achieved; he was proud of how he had achieved it.
He had started at a disadvantage, he’d had his stumbles and failures, and even so, by staying ethical and holding on to his values, he managed to succeed again and again.
He trusted himself when he succeeded and also when he failed, because he knew it was just a stumble and that he would make it again as many times as it took.
And that is unshakeable confidence
Fame, money, your clothes, your job… none of that measures a person’s confidence. Confidence comes from within, so you won’t get it by designing or altering your outside world, but by changing some things about the way you think and feel.
The oldest saying that explains this would be: “Whether you think you’re worth a lot or think you’re worth nothing, you’re right.”
2. Each person’s code, values and beliefs
Beliefs matter more than we think. Often, they’re the first thing we need to change or question. And we’re not talking about believing or not believing in God (although whether you believe or not, it would be good to spend some of your time answering a few whys).
You have to be very careful with beliefs, because they can change our values and our code enormously. In other words, we could have unshakeable confidence in our beliefs, and therefore in ourselves through those beliefs.
This power of beliefs works the same way when it comes to self-confidence. Beliefs can be just as beneficial or just as harmful. If you believe you can do something, you’ll do it, and nothing will stop you. If you believe you can’t, you obviously won’t.
Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Nelson Mandela are examples of beliefs, code and values, to the point of having been willing to give their lives for them, though in a far more peaceful way. They didn’t know whether they would succeed, but they decided to do it anyway.
That is where unshakeable confidence comes from: our beliefs and our values. So make sure your beliefs are the right ones.
Maybe you think losing your job is a bad thing. Why?
I suppose you’ve linked losing a job with financial problems, struggling to pay the mortgage, the electricity bill and so on. Looking back, many successful businesspeople say that being fired was the best thing that could have happened to them, because if they hadn’t been, they would have stayed at that company all their lives and missed out on what they found after losing their job.
I know, it sounds like cheap motivation and a sales pitch for positive thinking, but… I’ve always said that once misfortune strikes, whether you sink into depression or celebrate it, the misfortune is there and isn’t going away. People who decide not to go under usually find a way out much sooner than those who lament what happened.
In the same way, you can see a breakup as the worst thing that could happen to you, or as the chance to find someone else with whom the relationship works. And yes, of course a breakup hurts, but killing yourself or harassing your ex won’t fix things.
See also: The power of positive thinking, according to science
3. Don’t doubt yourself, but be aware that you can fail
Have you ever thought you wouldn’t do something well, and when you got down to it, found you were right and did it terribly? Self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course, to be honest, at other times you’ve probably thought you’d do well and it went badly.
So clearly, changing our thoughts doesn’t work 100% of the time.
Plenty of self-help books advise changing the way we think by telling ourselves “I can do it” or “I’m awesome. Nothing can stop me.”
And the truth is that that kind of positive thinking is necessary, but it doesn’t build confidence, because if you pump yourself up with overconfidence and then fall flat on your face, you could also lose your self-confidence.
So think positively and change the way you think, but… cut the talk and just do it.
If you think you have to do something, forget your insecurities and your self-pep talks, and just do it. That’s the best form of confidence known so far: take a deep breath and face the situation, focusing on solutions rather than problems.
As someone once said: “The smallest action beats the greatest intention.”
So you’ll have successes and you’ll have failures. But in the end it’s practice that will help you increase your successes, reduce your failures and build confidence. Practice and, of course, constant discipline.
See also: This is the discipline of success
Featured image: Dimitry B., CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
