How to Be Confident In Everything You Do
Confidence is a vital ingredient in successfully beginning, pursuing and completing difficult undertakings...
Lack of confidence is the primary reason for lack of implementation of good
ideas. If we delve into the etymology of the English word “confidence,” we
find that the prefix, “con,” is Latin meaning “with” or “together.” The
root, “fido,” translates into “trust,” “believe,” “confide in.” Whenever you
see an English word that begins with “con” or “com” it very often indicates
that the original meaning of the word involved a concept that was communally
formed: the word was intended to convey that other people were inextricably
interwoven in what happens to the individual.
We often refer to “self-confidence.” However, according to this analysis,
this term is actually a redundancy. The word confidence is sufficient to
express one’s positive attitude toward personal competence, capability and
self-sufficiency. The word confidence literally means to trust or believe
together with others in an interdependent community. An individual will find
it difficult to be confident without the positive input and support from
others.
The existence of confidence in any member of a community indicates that that
community has an established culture of mutual trust and respect among its
citizens. This does not necessarily hold true for all cultures and
communities that a person happens to be a part of. For instance, you could
be totally confident of yourself within your home environment but totally
lacking in confidence within any number of other organizations and
associations of which you are a member. This has as much to do with the
kinds of input from others in these respective environments as it does with
one’s membership qualifications of family, ability, preparation, experience
or knowledge, for example.
We weave our personal realities mainly from the multiple inputs from others.
A boy was struggling to move a large rock. His father walked by and asked,
“Son, are you using all your strength to move that rock?” His son replied,
“Yes, Dad.” His father retorted, “Son, you are not using all your strength
because you have not yet asked me to help you.” Our strength and personal
realities are formed and sustained by the contributions from others. We are
not nearly so strong or confident without them. When others are encouraging
and supportive, confidence builds and you are more likely to stretch as well
as strengthen your talents and abilities toward successful and innovative
applications and outcomes.
When You Know You Know
One of the ways a community demonstrates its support for its individual
members is to provide solid practical information regarding what it takes to
succeed within the community and beyond. The knowledge that is passed down
and around becomes the foundation for an individual’s confidence in making
decisions and behaving in ways that are conducive for success.
After this knowledge is disseminated, the supportive community will then
provide practical opportunities for the individual to apply what was
learned. These experiences create an internal sense of what works and what
doesn’t work. When you know you know how to succeed, your confidence in
performing the necessary tasks that lead to successful achievement soars.
Your confidence helps you assess risks realistically and to bounce back from
failure quickly.
Becoming Confident in All You Do
How do you become confident in all the situations in your life? It’s simple,
really. You give to others what you want them to give to you. Life echoes.
It ripples. What you give out you get back in waves.
Although confidence is socially constructed, the individual has a large part
to play in creating a community environment in which confidence is
engendered and nurtured. Mahatma Gandhi wisely observed, “You must be the
change you wish to see in the world.” I would paraphrase this slightly to
make it more immediate to one’s personal environment and also say, “you must
be the change you wish to see in others.” If you wish to be around people
who smile more, then smile more! If you want to work in an environment that
is characterized by teamwork and mutual respect, then demonstrate to others
how these characteristics can be embodied and pragmatically expressed on a
consistent basis.
I realize that to adopt this approach is to invite the possibility of
failure, perhaps even ridicule. Life is full of risks. It certainly is a
risk, albeit rather innocuous in nature, to smile at someone who clearly is
in no mood to smile. They might scowl back! Then how would you feel? But
it’s not about how you feel. It’s about how you act. If you want to be
around people who have more reasons to smile then you should take the risk
that the smile you offer will not be returned at that very moment. You might
feel awkward and uncomfortable. Big deal! By smiling, even when you don’t
feel like it, you’re giving permission for others to do the same, if not now
then later. You’re setting the stage for their subsequent behavior toward
you and others not just their immediate reaction to your current behavior.
Helen Keller, who had more reasons than anybody else in history to be grumpy
and sad, nonetheless proclaimed, “Be happy. Talk happiness. Happiness calls
out responsive gladness in others.”
Changing Others By Changing Yourself
You’ve no doubt heard that you can only change yourself and not others. This
is true if you try to change someone else’s behavior without first trying to
change your own. It has been my experience that you can, in fact, alter
others’ ways of acting by altering your own first, just as Gandhi noted.
William James, pragmatist philosopher & psychologist (1842 - 1910) said,
“the greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter
their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” I would go further and say
that human beings can alter other people’s lives by altering their own
personal attitudes of mind, as I’ve described above. When you change your
attitude of mind, that is, the way you habitually think (an attitude is
nothing more than a habit of thought), then you alter the way you behave and
this, in turn, alters the ways others behave toward you.
There are two ways to change yourself that will also result in changes in
others. When you change something about yourself, especially your behavior,
others are naturally challenged to change their responses to the “new you.”
By changing yourself you are also altering the social environment from which
you receive your cues and clues about how to be confident. In effect, you
are setting up a “virtuous cycle” (as opposed to a “vicious cycle”) that
creates the conditions for perpetual mutual benefit for both the individual
and the community.
Here are the two ways to change yourself:
• Think your way into a new way of acting
• Act your way into a new way of thinking
It’s true that habitual behavior stems from habitual thought and that the
quality of your actions flow from the quality of your thinking. This is the
“garbage in - garbage out,” “excellence in - excellence out” notion in
behavioral psychology. Thinking your way into a new way of acting is
effective. However, it often takes a long time because you must think the
new thought repetitively in order for it to erase and replace the old way of
thinking and for this new way to finally change your behavior. Often there
is not enough time to allow for this way of changing to work itself out.
More immediate change can be achieved by simply acting the way you want
others to behave. It’s a curious fact of life that by doing something, even
if you don’t feel like doing it, you make it easier to do again. Smiling
elicits a desire, no matter how small or subconscious, to have reason to
continue smiling. Treating co-workers as colleagues of equal worth even if
they aren’t of equal status creates in their minds a reason to want to
collaborate with you in the future. This sort of “risky behavior” engenders
trust and tames the tentativeness toward teamwork because it results in the
experience of mutual respect that fosters the desire to repeat the behavior.
The action gives rise to the thinking that guides and supports future
actions. This is the “virtuous cycle” out of which confidence and
achievement flow.
“Be Sure You’re Right, Then Go Ahead”
General Robert E. Lee, widely respected for his military and personal
leadership, said, “You have only always to do what is right. It will become
easier by practice, and you enjoy in the midst of your trials the pleasure
of an approving conscience.” As a young child, I listened to the song of the
story of Davy Crockett countless times while sitting on the floor of my
bedroom in front of my little record player. I recall the spoken words that
immediately preceded the beginning of the song. “Be sure you're right, then
go ahead.” This was Crockett's philosophy of life. It was his personal
motto. It shaped his behavior and tuned his integrity throughout his life.
In fact, doing “only always” what you’re sure is right is the only true
source of confidence. When you possess “the pleasure of an approving
conscience” in all that you do, you feed your soul with the necessary
nutrient that keeps it strong, resolute and successful, even in failure. We
esteem General Lee today because of his strength of confidence, character
and wisdom even though he failed to win a great war that he believed was
right to fight.
Doing right means that you do things you don’t always feel like doing. It
means that you do things you don’t have to do. But it’s precisely these
things that determine what you’ll be able to do more easily and with greater
impact in the future. Doing right creates the inspiration to continue to do
right and the confidence that you are doing right. The great early twentieth
century composer, Igor Stravinsky, said, “Just as appetite comes by eating,
so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the
beginning.”
Self-Made Communities Count, Too
We can now say with confidence that community, within which confidence is
born, is not merely something into which one is born and therefore has no
control over. It can be more than that. A community can be formed in the
mind of an individual by means of reading and meditating. We learn how to be
confident from the mental and spiritual communities we form throughout our
lives as well as the physical communities of family, neighborhood, city,
school, church, synagogue, mosque, associations and job. And we have control
over these inner communities in that we can continually modify our sources
of wisdom and understanding of what is right and worthy of our efforts.
Getting It Right From the Start
Confidence is telling the truth in advance of experiencing it. You can lead
with confidence when you start something even if you’ve never done it before
because your confidence is a predictor of the successful completion of the
endeavor. Confidence is a term to describe belief in one’s ability to
succeed in life. William James comes again to aid our understanding: “our
belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that
insures the successful outcome of our venture.” And again, “be not afraid of
life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create
the fact.”
In the September 22, 2006 issue of the USA Today newspaper, an article on
the “soul of a champion” quotes Patrick Cohn, sports psychologist and
President of Peak Performance Sports, on the need for confidence in order to
attain championship levels of performance. “Self-confidence is probably the
number one mental skill that championship athletes possess. Simply put, it
is their belief in their ability to perform. They see themselves as
winners.” Confidence is seeing yourself as successfully accomplishing
something you haven’t yet done, bringing that future positive self-image
into the present and then using it as the impetus and inspiration to succeed
at doing it.
So Then, It Works Both Ways
Confidence arises from and is fed by both the past and the future. It begins
in the communities that the individual participates in, both visible and
invisible. It is nurtured by history and visualization, by experience and
expectation, by fact and dream, by knowledge and hope, by achievement and
aspiration.
Acquiring and growing confidence is the responsibility of each individual.
You are in charge of how confident you feel and how confidently you act by
choosing what to focus on in your past and in your future. If you’re sure
you’re right in your focus, you’ll be sure to bring about what you’re
thinking about. And the realization of this confidence will contribute to
the community the confidence others need to do what they’re sure is right.
And thus the virtuous cycle is formed that results in increasingly greater
achievements and benefits for humanity and the world.
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