Self Confidence

It's a funny thing, confidence. Like money, we all feel at times that we could do with more of it and those who have plenty never give it a second thought. It's an elusive feeling, one that evaporates under the spotlight of attention, but when you've got it, you feel you can do anything. What does 'confidence' mean?

By 'self-confidence', people usually mean the feeling of knowing that things will go well. This immediately gives us an idea of why it can be such a problem - we cannot know the future!

Confidence in your own abilities

The essence of self confidence is having faith in your own abilities. Being able to trust that, whatever happens, you'll be able to deal with it. Why is it then, that we spend most of our time imagining what things will be like when they go wrong, and seeing ourselves being embarrassed, humiliated or failing in some crushing way?

Self Preservation

One reason why we do this is to avoid danger to ourselves. Contingency planning is where you imagine what could happen, and make plans to deal with it. This is fine in business, government or project planning, but in many other situations, such as social occasions or presentations, the possibilities of 'what might happen' are far too numerous to deal with in this way.

Confidence, the myth

People often say things like "I can't do that, I just don't feel confident". By this, they seem to mean one of the following. Either "The fact I feel under-confident is some kind of message that I shouldn't be doing it" or "Before attempting anything new, I have to feel confident about it first." Both of these leave us less likely to be able to tackle new situations in a comfortable way. As stated previously, what we need more is a sense of 'whatever happens, it will be OK'.