Week 9: Confidence

Today is a big day. This is it – it’s the day everyone is finally going to realize that I am truly, undeniably, a god-honest fucking idiot.

Me, every single day

What does it mean to become confident? This isn’t rhetorical – I’m not sure that I know the answer to this. Of course, there is a dictionary definition for “confidence”, but I don’t find it particularly useful in identifying or becoming confident. It says that confidence means to be “self-assured”. Though, there has not been one single instance in memory where I’ve heard someone who is confident declare that they are always sure of themselves. Confidence is a lot more subtle than that, and yet for some reason we are still really good at identifying another person’s confidence (or lack thereof).

After some thought, I’d say that someone who is confident exemplifies a multitude of specific behaviours that individually do not signify much, but together embody the spirit of genuine confidence. Making eye contact, asking questions unabashedly, dignified posture, confronting change or challenge with emotional ease, strong & clear voice, and so on – these are all traits of someone who is genuinely confident. Notably, none of these things are forced, let alone thought about by someone who is genuinely confident. But do not mistake this list for a guide of things needed to become confident, because it’s not. I know that all these things are what make someone confident – and yet, I still do not know how to become confident. Unfortunately, there are no rules to becoming confident. There’s no strategy, there’s no guide – there just is or there isn’t. This doesn’t mean that one’s confidence is unchanging; I just think it’s not easily navigable or calculable (at least that’s how it is for me).

If I were to use the aforementioned list as a guide to appear confident, I don’t think it would really help much. It is unhelpful for me to iterate through each item mid-conversation like some sort of robot. Someone who is genuinely confident just does all these things, easily. In the event that I’ve managed to fool someone into thinking I’m confident by using all of these techniques, there is still a difference between this “fake” confidence and genuine confidence. Genuine confidence buys time in stressful situations – no second guessing or self-doubt. Genuine confidence allows for more “brain-power” allocated to articulating oneself. Genuine confidence prevents one from being apprehensive to learning new things. Faking confidence buys you the opinions of others, but only temporary.

Needless to say, attempting to appear confident has been a fruitless effort for me. A good example of this is eye contact. I have a very difficult time making eye contact with anyone, so when I do make eye contact it’s the result of some serious background effort. My brain kinda goes like: “Are you making eye contact? Look them in the eye. Nope, not their weird teeth, their eyes. There is nothing interesting about that garbage can, stop looking at it. Okay good, you’ve made eye contac- nope nope nope nope“. If I ever make eye contact with you, you can be certain that I am not comprehending anything that you are saying because all I’m doing is concentrating on not looking away. This also applies to when I’m speaking; if I attempt to make eye contact I will have a difficult time articulating myself because I am no longer thinking about what I am trying to say. And just like that, oops! sorry! word-soup just fell out of my mouth! What the hell, right? It’s either I choose to appear unconfident or outright stupid. A truly laughable dilemma. A “lose-lose”, if you will.

There are ways in which I deal with my lack of confidence. For instance, It’s common for me to walk into my supervisor’s office at the end of the day with a hand-written soliloquy of thoughts because I know that I otherwise would be too overwhelmed to articulate whatever I need to say on the spot. Sometimes I raise my hand in meetings because I don’t feel as though I could just start speaking. Sometimes when I’ve gotten to know someone, I just tell them straight up. “Hi, I was too nervous to say something about ____ earlier but I’m going to try and say it now”. I know these contingencies are all ridiculous and make it very obvious that I am not confident – but I’d rather be transparent about my lack of confidence than attempt to be confident and as a result, appear dumb. Although, perhaps that’s the pinnacle of confidence – not worrying about others thinking you’re dumb because you’re sure of your own capabilities. Well, I’m not there yet. I worry a lot about what other people think, because I’m not really sure what I should be thinking.

My supervisor tells me that I will find genuine confidence, it will just take some time. I believe him – but I wish confidence was a little more accessible than that. Time has nothing to do with me. A lot of challenges I’ve faced are able to be solved quick enough with sufficient effort and thought, this is not one of them. If anything, dedicating effort and thought towards becoming confident only makes the matter worse. I wish so badly that there were a way to quantify, assess, and improve my confidence – perhaps like I’m some D&D character rolling a D20 for charisma. Though, it cannot be forced. It just becomes.

(September 8th, 2020)