Are we born with it? Confidence may have been passed down through the generations within your family. A question of ‘Where does he get all that confidence?’ often remains rhetorical, as the links are eventually made. I am not sure if we enter this world with a ready-made supply, passed over from the other side for good behaviour in a past life. Although, we could arrive along with a well-equipped backpack of emotional toolkits in readiness for an adventure ahead, and confidence just happens to be one of them. If you are fortunate, it could have been packed on the top so you can place your hands on it straight away or it could be at the bottom, making it inaccessible as you have to push the other emotions out of the way first.
If we are not born with it, then where can we find it? We may acquire it as a result of our experiences throughout our lives, which could explain why it comes and goes and why we build it up – only to find it gets knocked down and we lose our confidence.
The teenager who doesn’t seem to bat an eyelid at school but has a twinkle shining in his eyes leaves his peers in awe as he swans around with an air of confidence and has the girls flocking. Whether this has anything to do with his looks or his innate ability to charm the teachers, remaining top of his class – who knows? Is it the stability he thrives on at home, living with a family that encourages him to excel, which allows confidence to grow faster and stick around? Maybe his family had absolutely nothing to do with the start of this beautiful relationship and were never around. It is quite possible that Confidence found him first!
This young man may lose his confidence one day. He may become over-confident and end up annoying people who cross his path, because they are still trying to find theirs. If his levels of confidence are not well managed he is likely to fall down if he doesn’t connect with his surroundings; maybe he could practise ballet and become more present in each moment. We know he is on his own path but he is interacting with other people who will be impacted by his behaviour and he has to find a balance, without doing himself a disservice at the same time. Insecurities can rise up from within and snatch the darn thing away at any time, and over-confident people are not immune to these invasions, no matter how hard they try to hide the fact they are taking place.
Confidence is an admirable quality and it shouldn’t be compromised unnecessarily. If we want more of it, we need to attract it into our lives instead of allowing envy to create a distance between those who have it and those of us who don’t. Confidence can rub off on each other. When you surround yourself with confident people it can leave you feeling empowered and lift your spirits – you feel that anything is possible and the process starts from within.
You can choose to learn from other people’s positive behaviour whilst admiring the way they present themselves and how they communicate, speaking with confidence. Even the way they walk into a room, commanding its attention with warmth and sincerity, gets you thinking, I would like a bit more of what they have. Next time, see if you can drum up enough confidence to ask them to share their secret. Who knows if in that moment, a speckle of confidence is spared and aborts its mothership, beaming itself across to you in readiness to replicate as like attracts like. It’s worth a shot and seems a healthy and humble approach to take.
Of course, it is not unusual for Confidence to sneak off, take a last-minute holiday and forget to tell us, leaving us stranded until it returns, wondering what all the fuss was about, as if it hadn’t even gone away! You can get your confidence back; it just depends on whether you are prepared to go and find it or expect Confidence to find you each time. When we lose our confidence, it implies we had it once upon a time and we owe it to ourselves to go and find it again, especially if its absence is having a negative impact on our own lives.
Confidence is only misplaced even if you don’t remember putting it down anywhere in particular. Maybe you left it on the back of a chair in a waiting room while you were collecting your thoughts before embarking on a new challenge. As you waited for the right opportunity to come along, hoping that Confidence would sit wide awake throughout while you mentally prepared, it probably fell asleep. By the time you left the waiting room, having pondered for too long, you had forgotten beforehand that you even had it on you!
When you lose your self-confidence the world can seem smaller – the room can feel smaller. Whether you are taking up dancing again, returning to studying or going out on a new date, you trust that your old friend, Confidence, will return before you give up and head back to the waiting room. If you do find that a positive part of you is missing and returning to your comfort zone is the easy option, then you may as well just put a comfy chair in that waiting room because you are going to need it.
Confidence likes to know that if it enters into a partnership with you, you will do your best to help it develop and you can feed off each other. It will meet you halfway and even pick you up when you trip over, but it doesn’t support you. It really is a symbiotic relationship and it needs to know you want to make it work; then it is more likely to put in the effort.
Once upon a time you enjoyed dancing; you were improving all the time and for one reason or another you stopped. When you return to the dance floor some years later, your feet won’t move, your heart beats faster and you feel like a lemon. You have lost your confidence. You know that you want to dance and you know that you can. The more you try and summon Confidence back into your life – at that very moment – the more it refuses to help. Why does it abandon you when you need it the most?
You go home to reflect, trying to understand what it is that keeps happening every time you have an opportunity to dance and the feelings of inadequacy become more intense until you give up trying to dance, in fear of humiliation. It is at this point that you realise that maybe it isn’t just about dancing. It is becoming a pattern that you have excused for too long. Focusing on one activity was just the distraction and when you looked at the bigger picture, it was going on in other areas of your life. Confidence was running out on you and it was time to understand why!
Looking for Confidence to accompany you, as and when it takes your fancy, is far too confusing for it to get its head around. If Confidence was restricted to dipping in and out of your activities, just because you couldn’t work out how to build up a reserve, then there will be a lack of connection between the two of you. It likes to see a little consistency, in terms of how you approach your life. Confidence realises that just because it exists in one area of your life, it doesn’t mean it will inhabit every one with the same degree of tenacity. Confidence doesn’t take a one-size-fits-all approach to everything you do in your life and it will feel just as challenged in new territory as you do; it prefers you to take charge. Confidence is your dance partner so learn to lead and it will follow.
It will identify with your patterns of behaviour and mirror whichever one is going on at the time. Positive patterns will have it running towards you for dear life but it will run a mile in the other direction if it senses too much negativity. If you are calling out for Confidence to save you on the dance floor, in the office, in your relationship or in other aspects of your daily life, without understanding why you are lacking it in the first place, it can have a naughty habit of not showing up at all.
It is almost as if it is saying to you, “Look, I’m over here but you can’t see me because you can’t see past the mountain of despair you have right in front of you. How can I come and help you, if you don’t make a shift and get rid of some of the darkness that’s lurking around? Lighten up for goodness’ sake!”
Let’s hold fire and think about this for a moment, before we go on. Is it a possibility that you may have to have a smidgen of confidence before you can attract more of it? I mean, if Confidence doesn’t gravitate towards negativity and your own lack of confidence puts you into negative equity, so it doesn’t come running, then how can you actually get more of it – without having a little bit put aside in the first place? The issue here, though, is you do
n’t have it to start off with; you want it; you don’t know how to get it. If it only comes running, when you have it, why do you need more of it? If it runs a mile when you don’t have any, then what are you supposed to do?
So, what if you don’t know why you don’t have it (yet)? Clearly you are asking for help, which is positivity performing at its best. It is quite plausible that Confidence could task you at a later date to complete some reflective practice, as a token of appreciation, and put on its sneakers now to save the day! It doesn’t have to leave you in the lurch until you have figured out, on the spot, why you don’t have it; but then again will you really reflect later? After all, who likes homework?! Is it not possible that your lack of confidence, in a particular area of your life, is one of those lessons that you are destined to repeat until you have addressed it, head on, and understood its meaning – no matter how painful or unreasonable the reflection turns out to be?
We don’t always start out being negative but, for some reason, the subtle energies at work seem to be rather influential and find a weak spot. What if you simply need some reassurance now that you can be rescued in time to change your mindset, before the darker side lures you in and cynicism becomes easy to practise? Crikey, this sounds more like purgatory! You are at a point called the ‘in between place’, having been greeted with an opportunity to wallow for a moment. This is the place in which you dwell just before picking a side; just before choosing to be Positive or Negative. The ‘I can’ versus the ‘I can’t’ mantras talk over each other. As the word can’t squeezes itself into more and more of your lazier flung-together mantras, you begin to find it increasingly difficult to escape a downward spiral of doom and gloom.
The positive picture you once had in your mind of dancing the tango or dating DiCaprio quickly fades into the background and becomes encrypted. Now your image only bears a mythical resemblance to a colourful legacy left behind by the equally famous ‘da Vinci’, and who happens to share the first same name, Leonardo (both are artists in their own right). Confidence is beginning to get worn out and unable to cope with all the uncertainty… It is certain, though, that a conspiracy is going on behind the scenes, and it is fast entering purgatory to join you! I think Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, would have something to say on this subject as he has written a thing or two about cryptology.
Confidence quickly conducted a thematic analysis on the qualitative data thus far and decided that the number one theme had to be all about ‘hidden messages’. This was probably accounting for the confused state that preceded any decision making. What else could sway anyone to travel blindly into the abyss, taking them on a journey from positivity to negativity, riding back and forth, until they settled for a side through exhaustion or anxiety?! Was Confidence about to fall too? And what or who could finally bring you both back from the edge…?
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“Wake up, wake up! Give me strength… It’s just a bad dream. It doesn’t have to be this way… 3-2-1.” I thought I had better throw in some actual dialogue and count you back into the room. You are not falling down on my watch!
Hidden messages or not, I am sure that on such occasions it wouldn’t hurt for Confidence to sit tight, be patient and offer a little bit more support each time you both meet. This will give you a chance to build up those reserves, instead of it cowardly running out on you when it gets too much like hard work, leaving you to slide down the next slippery slope alone. Even Confidence can’t turn its back on a cry for help, can it? There is good news to follow!
By remaining positive, Confidence will already have knocked on your door – it will do so by default. Sometimes we don’t listen to our own words of kindness tapping away in Morse code internally, informing us that Confidence is, indeed, on its way as a response to our distress signals. It was coming to our rescue after all and impatience was our only distraction. We got caught up in the avalanche of despair that became louder and louder until we literally became snowed under and the Morse code stopped. Confidence will hopefully wait somewhere until you are ready and recall it for duty.
Confidence has to move through that expanse of separation between what is and what could be – the void in the middle is the exact place where Confidence usually gets lost in the first place. It is also the place where you will find it waiting – if indeed it waits for you.
I suggested it could run a mile if it is confronted with your negative patterns of behaviour, although Confidence doesn’t discriminate between positive and negative situations in your life. The behaviour and the situation are two different things. Confidence needs to be attracted to you and not the situation. A negative or positive situation may exist but it is up to you how you choose to engage. If you are dealing with a negative situation with contempt and fuel it with your own negativity, it is this negativity that is forming the barrier. Confidence is unlikely to interfere, at this stage, and is probably watching in frustration. I am sorry to say that it may be witnessing your less than attractive side so you can hardly blame it for not sprinting towards you! You are frightening the life out of Confidence. I feel sorry for this character whose heart is in the right place as it is simply protecting itself, keeping you at arm’s length, and saying, “If you want my help, you need to help yourself as well.”
Once you have learned to befriend Confidence it is a jolly good companion to have around and life can be a lot more fun. Allowing it to youthfully leap in and out of your footsteps along your path ensures that a connection exists at all times and you are both on the ball. Maybe some of you have memories of jumping in and out of oversized footsteps, made by other people, along the beach as a child. You wondered at the time whose shoes you would fill when you grew up. It hadn’t crossed your mind that you’d need to fill your own shoes first. Even now (if you’re all grown up), you may still be prone to window shopping and wondering if you have enough confidence to try another pair on!
What does the ideal amount of confidence look like, so you know when you have just enough? If Confidence has feet twice the size of yours, turning your imprints in the sand into cavities, then this may indicate it could be growing too fast – but can you really have too much of it? Interesting question, because I think it is relative to what it is you are trying to do or even become. There is no doubt that confidence will be high on your list if you want to become an excellent brain surgeon or indeed any other surgeon; that is if taking a scalpel to another human being for healing purposes is the path you have chosen. This is when I would encourage Hope to work with Risk, Expect and Luck; let them integrate to their heart’s content, supported by every ounce of confidence you could muster.
Confidence gets a hard time, because it is often mistaken for arrogance. We have considered the grace that Confidence can humbly reflect and this is the lovely, softer side that has my permission to rub off on me anytime! I reckon arrogance is the tougher side of Confidence. And if I had to have brain surgery one day, I’d probably be OK with allowing an arrogant surgeon to save my life – as long as Luck wasn’t running the entire operation!
Unfortunately, confident people can pose a threat to our own little world and stir up emotions within us when we meet. We don’t even have to speak to each other and still sense that the space in between contains something contagious. You may just feel cautious about this person because they are appearing flamboyant and wearing confidence with the buttons undone, showing off their true colours. You would rather they didn’t display so much of their natural resources even though they probably had no intention of offending you either.
I suggest that Confidence has to be fit for purpose, making allies and not enemies! If there is any surplus floating around once the job is done, then we have a duty of care to rein it in so it doesn’t get up everyone’s nose. On the other hand, it is hard enough to multi-task emotionally to manage our own expectations without the worry of sparing everyone else from their own darker side that they could do with exploring, once in a wh
ile. It is about getting the balance right and you will find it, one way or another, if you take the time to practise.
Suffering from a lack of confidence can be debilitating in your life. I’m sure we have all witnessed a person confess to this injustice at one time or another saying, “I don’t have the confidence to stand up for myself” or “I need to gain a little more confidence first…” At some point in your life, you may have said something similar. It is not important to exude confidence in every part of your life, as we mentioned earlier. It is, surely, about finding the confidence to do the things you would like to do because the lack of it is holding you back.
When you don’t have the confidence to act upon some of the things in life which appear to be holding you back, the doorways to opportunities you only dream about may remain closed. The door could be ajar as you witness the light enveloping the frame, on the other side, like a fresh layer of golden treacle spread seductively over a bronzed piece of toast, but you don’t have the confidence to push it open. It even smells good, yet you feel undeserving of a taste. Our confidence is challenged by chunks of different emotions, rising up from nowhere, each bringing with them a unique flavour to confuse the taste buds.
The impact of worrying about ‘not having enough confidence’ can consume your energy and in the quest to find it you can end up with tunnel vision. You wake up and you are on a mission to find it; you go to work and you search harder; you read more books; join more clubs… or you don’t do any of these and you stop doing anything other than worry. The lack of Confidence in your life has you toing and froing from one extreme to another; the scales are frantically tipping back and forth and there is no respite. Do you do nothing and go back to the waiting room and give up all hope of finding it, watching life dance around you and never asking Confidence to dance? No! You ask Confidence to fill the void. Get it back on its feet. Let it see those footprints in the sand and make it run towards you and get your Latino moves flowing freely again!
Emotional Sandwiches Page 7