One the one hand, confidence is great – an internal belief that you can achieve what you want to achieve. That you’re worthy of what you are worth.
But as with many things, there is a grey area. And that grey area can mean many different things, depending on who you are, or where you are from. How do you know when you have too much, or too little confidence?
In a world where the standards are changing constantly (though technically, non existent, depending on the way you look at it), how do we know where we stand?
The answer is we don’t – at least not really. We as humans are having to consistently adapt to these constant changes. That’s partly why in some situations you might feel more, or less, confident.
There comes a point, whether from ‘disobeying’ social standards or not, where we feel ourselves feeling ashamed, hurt, or embarrassed that we dare let ourselves feel this way.
Every experience we go through shapes and changes the way we look at something. For example, somebody who has experienced both the best and the worst of life can be very cynical, because an association of a particular circumstance can trigger a stress or apathetic response. That’s how it seems to work with me, anyway.
Now why is that?
I find the concept of confidence has become, once again, very binary; if you are not confident enough you’ll apparently never amount to anything, but if you’re too confident you are automatically deemed a narcissist. There’s quite a difference between believing in yourself, and believing you are higher than everyone around you for no concrete reason.
That’s where the fear of being judged comes in. Everyone has different values on what is good or bad, so if one person has achieved running 5K in 25 minutes (an achievement in my eyes), another is ready to jump down your throat and tell you how they just yesterday ran 5K in 15 minutes. Why are we judging something that is such a vast spectrum in such a black and white way? If we are basing our ‘successes’ or ‘failures’ on someone else’s successes and failures, have we really done anything at all?
I’ll let that sink in.
Photo by Harry Cooke on Pexels.com
To me, as I’ve said before, confidence is something that you have to learn. An example of me using that learned confidence is during my discussion on mental health with Hands On Mindfulness – which you can watch here.
If you learn it, you are able to compare the highs and the lows, having experienced them both. And who doesn’t like to adapt our ‘strengths’ and ‘weaknesses’ to a situation? That is powerful in itself. You are powerful.
During my hours in a counselling room, there is plenty that has resonated with me. But there is something that the counsellor told me so succinctly that I was left sitting in the chair, dumbfounded.
That is the idea that the ego itself is a spectrum (we do love spectrum here, don’t we, they are so inclusive). The counsellor described it as a hill: made up of the top, middle, and bottom. The people deemed as “popular” are at the top. These people are competing with each other to be the best of the best. The people in the middle are okay being themselves, but also keep themselves to themselves. The people at the very bottom essentially are again trying to protect their ego, as they are not having to compete with those around them.
This idea is by no means set in stone, it is just an analogy to explain how the ego presents itself in different people. In fact, through different periods of our lives we fluctuate between the different “stages.”
Photo by Harry Cooke on Pexels.com
So having come to the end of my ramblings, confidence can be a scary thing because there is always that worry that we are going to be deemed mad or delusional if we even dare to have confidence in ourselves. So essentially everybody in the world is never going to totally agree without feelings of confidence. And I don’t mean that in a bitter or defensive way, it’s just an observation.
I think the trick is to recognise your own achievements and not outsourcing the gratification. Because you have achieved a lot in your life. I know that because if we strip it right back, the simple act of living and breathing is a very complex function of the body and well-being that most of us take for granted. If you compare that against everything you have done in your life, everything seems that little bit lighter – doesn’t it?
– D
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