We all hit those moments when it feels like we are about to jump into the deep end, when we don’t know exactly how the next moments are going to play out. We might feel this way before an important conversation or presentation on which future prosperity or happiness appears to hang. Clients often use me as a sounding board to test-drive their approach to such crux moments.
Those who are most successful approach such moments with confidence, an instinctive conviction that things are going to turn well.
Sometimes people think of confidence as an attempt not to feel nervous or vulnerable. They suggest you “put on a strong face” in an attempt to look composed on the outside, while you are feeling your guts rumble internally. Others seek confidence in analysis: predicting the odds that success is the most likely outcome. Others seek it as a belief in the superiority of their own abilities.
Almost everyone I meet wishes in some way that they could be more confident.
Yes, we could train ourselves to feel more composed, calculate the risks more accurately and develop our communication skills. I suggest, however, that there is a deeper access to confidence, a confidence that is not conditional on how we and others perform, not conditional on how circumstances treat us at all.
This unconditional confidence is trained by remaining open, aware and vulnerable right through our experiences of disappointment and defeat. We develop a spontaneous understanding that something good will come out of even the most challenging experiences.
For example, a client dealing with a rather aggressive female colleague felt some significant amount of fear. The colleague picked up on this and called him out on it: “You’re afraid of me, aren’t you,” she said. To which he replied, “Yes, but I’m not afraid of being afraid.” Unconditional confidence actually allows you to have more feeling, and more expression of whatever you are experiencing, rather than subduing it.
When we aren’t afraid of experiencing fear or disappointment then the very intensity of these emotions can become an advantage to us, heightening our perceptions and sensations and the vibrancy and liveliness of our behavior. Far from diminishing confidence, anxiety felt intimately and admitted openly is a passionate experience. People feel the real strength of our character.
People feel our confidence that we will ultimately find benefit in any event that arises.
My wife recently had a fall and we ended up in the emergency room. Eventually, in surgery to re-set a bone fracture. Hospital experiences, physical pain and weeks before you can walk normally will trigger plenty of challenging emotion! Right in the middle of all this, we both looked at other and acknowledged how we were being humbled and strengthened–perhaps to an extent that could not have happened any other way.
Confidence in your abilities is good. Prepare well for those important or challenging presentations and conversations. Consider also training yourself in the kind of confidence that will be there no matter how intense you feel or difficult a situation looks.
Here’s an exercise to develop unconditional confidence:
Make a list of the three worst things that have ever happened to you. Reflect on and write down some benefit that came out of each of these situations, some learning you have come to appreciate or how you changed by going through these experiences.
Write down one thing in your life that is not going according to expectations right now. Inquire into and record some possible benefits of this situation, whether short term or long, even if the worst scenario comes to pass.
Eventually such reflection becomes habitual and goes way deeper than just seeing the silver lining. We become willing to be disturbed, willing to feel fear and disappointment, as well as all other emotions, completely. Willing to experience life all the way through. Such experiences are the proving and strengthening ground of unconditional confidence. While unconditional confidence can be practiced, in the end it has to prove itself in you. When you approach your next challenging interaction, the fear may not magically disappear. Stay intellectually aware and emotionally open, attentive to the situation at hand. Use it to deepen your instinctive trust in yourself and in life.
As unconditional confidence becomes a reality in us, we find others will increasingly want to trust and find inspiration in us.