Confidence: A Mathematical Approach

(Scooped from the book 'Painting Life With Purpose' by?Miftah Zaman)

We all know what confidence is, so I am not going to try defining that trait. You need to have confidence on your God, on yourself, on your goals! When you set a beautiful goal for yourself, you are going to need all the confidence to pursue that. Know this, the people around you, even your closest well-wishers will not always have faith in you vision. If your goal seems a little stretched and risky, they will tell you to give it up for a safer option. They will probably say it out of their concern for you. And when they tell you to step down from that risky path, they can be very persuasive; you will tend to feel convinced by their thoughts. That’s when you will need all your confidence in your goal so that you can convince yourself and those loving people around you.

‘Why do we fall Bruce? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.’ – Thomas Wayne, Batman Begins

I will be surprised if anyone didn’t watch this one. ‘The Dark Knight Trilogy’ directed by Christopher Nolan is one of the best superhero action movie that I have ever watched. If you haven’t watched it, please do it now.

The above line is said by Thomas Wayne, father of Bruce Wayne a.k.a. Batman. It reflects very briefly, but precisely on how confidence is earned. Confidence is earned and sustained by failures, falls, losses etc. It also doesn’t mean that success is not an ingredient for confidence. But they have very different roles to play in building confidence. We know that confidence means being certain about the outcome, about success. I am not going to illustrate on that, because you know it. I want to talk about how to gain confidence that lasts long and guides through the difficult times of our lives.

The Confidence Equation:

Let me put some mathematics before you that I learned from my life and I call it ‘the confidence equation’.

Confidence = Failure + Success

Let me explain. To have confidence, we need both failures and successes in our lives. But, why? What are their roles in developing the confidence equation? Let’s understand the two variables of the equation.

Failure is obviously an undesired situation of anyone’s life. No one wants it. Now let’s imagine, God forbid, that you failed in your physics exam. So what would you do? You would study physics more, take extra care to improve your knowledge and understanding on the subject, hence improve your skill on the subject. Failure gives your or makes you acquire new or more skill, learning, knowledge etc. So, we can say –

Failure = Skills, Learning, Knowledge (1)

Now, success is achieving your goals, attaining the result by knowing what to do. You have failed in physics earlier and now you have studied harder to pass this time. If you indeed pass, then you know now what you have to do in order to succeed and it gives you an inspiration to keep up the good work; it gives you a sense of self-respect and accomplishment. On the other hand, if you fail again and it becomes a repetitive thing, you might become lazy and get used to being poor student on the subject. So, again in mathematical terms –

Success = Inspiration, Self-respect, Knowing the formula of what needs to be done (2)

Let’s bring in our mother equation again and understand it more.

• Failure + Success = Confidence
• Success = Confidence – Failure
• Success = Confidence – Skills, Learning, Knowledge (referring from equation 1)

See, what happens when we are successful. In most of the cases, when we taste success, we tend to feel very euphoric, happy. We get comfortable. And comfort usually takes away our desperation for learning new things or developing your skills. Hence, our confidence slowly starts to lose the edge of learning, knowledge, skills. Enjoy your success of course, but be careful, keep yourself in check, because you might start making your tools of success dull, as time passes by.

On another note, it also weakens your nerves to future shocks. We all go through both good times and bad times. If you have tasted success most of the time, when bad times come, you might feel a little too broken, terrified. A student who is always doing a good result, if ever gets some bad score, might take it too hard. But I see students who received some poor score at some point, are mentally more equipped to face difficulties. And if they have enough hunger to do better, they can come back really hard and turn the table well.

So, failure on the other hand would look like –

• Failure = Confidence – Success
• Failure = Confidence – Inspiration, Self-respect, knowing the formula (referring from equation 2)

When you fail in life, in any aspect of it, you feel depressed, frustrated and sheer lack of inspiration. We all understand that failure in general is disappointing. Now yes, failure gives you an opportunity to learn new skills, but if it becomes a regular phenomenon, you are likely to feel accustomed to failures. It takes away your self-respect, which was supposed to give you an inspiration to overcome your failures. Slowly, you lose the desire to find out what it takes to be successful.

Some Personal/Childhood Experiences:

Before grade 7, I was always a great student. Usually, my result in class used to be between 1st and 4th, as I have told you earlier in the book. In grade 7, went to Cadet College, a very popular military based boarding school of Bangladesh, and I was very homesick. It caused my class results to fall down drastically and for the first time, I failed in my class. I still remember, I cried so much out of shame. I felt ashamed to tell my parents that I failed. It went worse, when I failed again in the next exam. These poor results greatly diminished my confidence; it was like I got an invisible label that I am a very poor student. It used to bother me at first, but slowly I got used to it. Being a poor student stopped bothering me any further; in other words, that kid who cried out of his enormous self-respect, was lost. It became so bad that even after knowing what needs to be done, I felt like I don’t know that formula to be a good student anymore. I felt dull, shameless, and aimless, and nothing, no one amounted to any inspiration in my life at that time. I was still good at music, good at some sports, but my ship of education sunk somewhere deep in me. My confidence was so busted that even if I had great preparation for my exam, I wouldn’t be able to perform up to the standard still out of nervousness. Those who know about cadet colleges, would know that this institution has historically produced brilliant students; it’s like a power house of brilliance. And then you can imagine that being among them and not doing well in academics can be extremely crippling.

During my preparation for HSC exam/A levels, there came a point when I wanted to turn the table. I remember that day, that memory very vividly! It was during the afternoon time, I was studying with my batch mates. I looked around and was seeing so many brilliant students, trying so hard to excel in their exams. Everyone was concentrating with their utmost sincerity and there I was, sitting in the middle of them, still wondering how to approach my syllabus. Some inner voice reminded me of my earlier days, when I used to be a better student. I asked myself about what happened, reasoned with myself about one thing and that was, ‘Can I not at least try?’ Something came up on me, my lost self-respect sort of revived. I had two months ahead of me and I pushed myself to the extreme point possible. Guess what, my friends got the highest result and I was short by a grade point of 0.1! I was so heart broken. But you know what, it was still worth it, because I found myself, my confidence back!

Later in life, these experiences helped enormously. In university, I never felt nervous before an exam. My classmates used freak out about their grades, their results, exams, etc. and here I was, literally chilling and still making above average result throughout my university life, because I studied smart, not hard. I was usually very confident about my exams, my studies, extra-curricular activities and whatnot. My friends usually regarded me of having a nerve of steel in terms of these things. This was my time of academic success and remember what happens when you get comfortable with your success; your learning, your skills loses its edge. During my final years, I got lazy and my grades dropped a little bit. However, my initial CGPA boost helped me cover up those downfalls.

Some Caution: Arrogance Vs. Confidence

As I see, nowadays people confuse their ego for confidence. Ego is mostly a very negative attribute. It makes you a narcissist, too focused on yourself and limits you from seeing and acknowledging other people and surroundings. Don’t confuse your ego and confidence, because they are sometimes tricky to understand. Confidence will make you fiercely capable, and yet kind. It will make you aware that you are capable of doing something, but there are other people who can do it too. Ego is a trickster who will make you think that you have a lot of confidence. But in secrecy, it will develop arrogance, turning you into a person who only focuses on his or herself, thinks too important of his or her own self. An arrogant person or an egotistic person will think that he or she is the only one who can do things, deserves everything, and no difficulty should be in their path. People like these always keep themselves off the hook and associate false sense of beauty and greatness to their own selves. Be careful about these traits and keep yourself on check whether you have got them. When you feel that you have a lot of confidence or your close buddies are telling you that how inspiring you are, you have attitude of a winning star, etc. do a little soul search before you feel too good. In this era that we are going through, it’s all about showing off now, so I see arrogance is being misunderstood for confidence all the time. Ego will make you arrogant, confidence will make you humble. Humility is scarce these days, but that’s what will make you a better human no matter what. Be humble, be kind and be confident! Arrogance might dazzle people at the first glance, but long term relationships, be it personal or professional, are way better with a humble, kind and confident person or people, in both personal and professional world.

Scooped from the book 'Painting Life With Purpose' by?Miftah Zaman.

Purchase 'Painting Life With Purpose' online from?Satirtho Prokashona?and?Rokomari.com.

About the Author

Miftah Zaman is a Bangladeshi born HR & training, entrepreneur, consultant, musician and singer. Over a long career in HR, he specialized in training and development and worked in various national and international corporate organizations and NGOs. Later, he founded his own organization, ReLearn, a consulting organization focusing in skill assessment, training and development. Also, he performs regularly as a professional singer and music director across Bangladesh and overseas.