Confidence

Dear Hunter,

Demonstrating the appropriate amount of confidence in life is a tricky endeavor. On one hand, under confidence can paralyze you and prevent you from tackling life’s most challenging and rewarding opportunities. On the other hand, overconfidence can easily bleed into arrogance, which can make you a social pariah in the blink of an eye. Striking the balance between these two ends of the spectrum is a challenge that I have spent my life attempting to achieve. 

Before delving into a discussion about confidence, we should probably take a moment to think about what confidence is. Confidence, as a personality trait, is the self-assuredness that comes from a belief in one’s abilities to handle the challenges or threats an environment presents. Using this definition, we see that confidence is not just about how we feel about our abilities, but it is also a reflection of our assessment of the challenges or threats in our environment. This highlights a common misconception about confidence. Often, people assume confidence is a reflection of a person’s self-esteem. This certainly can be true. However, I have found that more often than not, a crisis of confidence is related to how a person perceives the challenges and threats in his environment.

Author Charles Bukowski said, “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence." The insightful paradox of this quote makes me smile. While I agree with Bukowski’s assessment at a surface level, let’s explore why this quote seems to be both illogical and true. Intelligent people, or perhaps more accurately, thoughtful people, are more likely to thoroughly assess a situation or environment than those who are less thoughtful. Further, intelligent people are more likely to identify threats and potential pitfalls in a situation. As a result, they may be more timid, careful, or even hesitant in their environment than their less intelligent or thoughtful peers. However, most of the threats that we identify in life never actually manifest. As Mark Twain said, “I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” Sure, it is possible that you may be surrounded by a pack of wild animals in your backyard, but the likelihood is that you won’t be. Therefore, the less intelligent people blissfully, if not ignorantly, bumble their way forward, while the thoughtful people tend to be more prone to paralysis because of all the “what-ifs” circulating in their minds. 

 Often in my life, I have found myself figuratively staring at a map of the road ahead of me while standing still. The map is populated with all the obstacles and pitfalls that I envision on that road. I’m stuck in my tracks because the challenges seem overwhelming, or at least worthy of consideration. Meanwhile, my counterparts blow right by me because they either don’t see the same obstacles that I do or aren’t worried about them. Over time, more action trumps less action, and the “ignorant” folks move further down the road, while I’m stuck staring at the map. In this context, the lack of confidence is not a reflection of the assessment of my abilities, but rather an assessment of the challenges that my abilities will have to tackle. Additionally, there is an issue of standards to consider. If you are an “A” student, your confidence level is likely to be based on your assessed ability to achieve a figurative “A” in any life endeavor. This is the “A-student trap” because outside of your formal education, there are no assigned grades and life does not reward us for having an “A” answer to all of life’s challenges. I have witnessed first-hand how this phenomenon can impact an “A” student’s confidence level in tackling life challenges. Sometimes good is good enough. Don’t let your confidence be buried beneath an artificially inflated standard of performance. 

 After spending years wrestling with this topic, I’ve learned a few things that have helped me to develop a more balanced approach to confidence in my day-to-day life. For starters, there is nothing wrong with having a mental map of pitfalls and challenges. That is a thoughtful way to approach life. However, I’ve learned that I can’t let those concerns stop me from moving forward. Sometimes it means I may not be sprinting through a field of landmines, but it does mean that I keep moving forward. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward." I believe it is okay to let your confidence level act as a throttle to the speed at which you pursue your goals, but never as a brake. 

Further, confidence is not a binary personality trait. Instead, confidence is very contextual. There is acute confidence and general confidence, and it is my observation that these two types are often confused for one another. Acute confidence relates to a specific task or environment. For example, some people may be confident on the dance floor, in the boardroom, or at the gym. This type of confidence relates to your comfort in a very specific arena of life. Acute confidence comes from experience. You would be hard-pressed to convince me that I should be confident wrestling an alligator as I have no experience in doing so. In contrast, general confidence is the confidence that someone exudes in the context of life . . . generally. I think of general confidence as a baseline that we carry through all environments. It is reflective of our assessment of our general abilities to handle life. Acute confidence either adds or subtracts to that baseline, depending upon your environment. 

Be careful of how you value other people. You will have a tendency to value highly confident people above less confident people. This is natural, but it is a tendency that must be acknowledged and often curbed. Life is so full of uncertainty that when we run across someone who is teeming with confidence, we are likely to feel drawn to them because we may, at some level, want to believe that maybe they have life “figured out." Of course, this does not imply that you should hold people’s confidence against them, but it does mean that you should approach highly confident people with a grain of suspicion. Never forget that the expression “con man” is short for “confidence man." These hooligans rely on their ability to gain your trust by exuding high levels of confidence. Don’t be lured into their gravitational pull by the words they use. Instead, hold your judgment based on their actions. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say." 

 The confidence you exude will directly impact how others perceive you. If you are overconfident, you will immediately turn people off. If you are under confident, people will label you as weak or submissive. How do you find the right balance? For starters, learn to establish a confidence level that is based on your true feelings and not on what you believe other people’s expectations to be. One surefire way to lose the superpower of authenticity is to mold your personality to the perceived desires of others. It is a losing strategy because a harsh reality of life is that you will never make everyone happy. When it comes to confidence, you can be sure that there will be people who label you as arrogant from time to time, and there will be people who label you as weak from time to time. What other people think of you is none of your business.          

 Learn to cultivate what is often described as quiet confidence. Quiet confidence is not boastful or arrogant. It is neither meek nor submissive. Instead, quiet confidence is the personality trait that naturally follows from being comfortable in your skin. This may take many years to develop, but I adamantly believe it is one of the most fundamental traits that leads to success, peace of mind, and the respect of others. Quiet confidence means:

 ·        You have the courage to speak up for what you believe in, but also have the humility to accept that you may be wrong. 

 ·        You are striving to be your best self and have given up the losing strategy of comparing yourself to others. 

 ·        You are willing to take risks in life, but you also accept the consequences of those risks, good or bad, without blaming others. 

 ·        Although you are comfortable taking center stage in pursuit of your ambitions, you do not need the limelight to validate your worth. 

 ·        You are authentically “you” and proud, without being boastful, of your abilities, achievements, and dreams. 

 If I could wish that you be remembered as one descriptor, right behind “kind,” I would choose “quietly confident.”

 Love, 

Dad