The crock of confidence
I can’t tell you how many books, talks, papers, blogs, and posts I’ve seen over time about CONFIDENCE. It seems like some crazy code that no one can crack, even as everyone is taking a shot. I’ve spent countless hours debating it with colleagues, talking clients through it, looking around corners to see where we might find it.
FYI, it’s not in that special outfit or that new haircut or that bumpin’ playlist. I’ve checked.
Instead, I’ve come to think of confidence as a specific mix of things that, without the various ingredients, cannot be created. We don’t simply “get” confidence…it builds in us.
First, I think we have to really know what we want. Because when we want something (truly, not just a pipe dream), there is a different kind of fortitude about what we’re willing to do to get it or make it happen. It matters to us more, and it builds resolve within us.
Second, we have to get comfortable feeling hard feelings. Discomfort, disappointment, disapproval, delay…all things we generally want to avoid feeling. But if we can work through those feelings, we won’t be afraid of trying something, because we know we can handle it even if it doesn’t go according to our expectations.
And lastly, we have to be open to the unknown parts of life that happen while we’re living our plan. There is magic and delight (and also, sometimes those aforementioned harder emotions too) when things don’t go the way we thought they would. But if we can take those on with a “Yes, and” mentality (remember that old improv game??), we build up our resilience and capacity to have or create things even better than what we imagined.
Somehow all of these together start to feel like confidence to me. Who knows if it’s right or wrong or somewhere in between, but instead of just trying to “be confident” (oh sure, easy peasy!), I’m going to stay focused on getting clear on what I want, being OK with hard feelings, and letting the magic of the unknown in.
We’ll see what happens next…
