How to Be Confident I
Climbing Confidence Mountain
Many of us think about confidence like this:
We view it as a mountain that we need to climb. We believe that when we get to the top of confidence mountain, we will Be Confident. We will FEEL confident.
We look around at people who we think are confident, and we can see them standing proudly at the top of confidence mountain, being confident.
Then one day, we get to the top of confidence mountain…
And we don’t feel confident.
Here’s the issue…
If you are the kind of person who likes taking on new challenges, developing new skills, doing new things… you’re going to get to the top of confidence mountain and, from your new viewpoint, you’re going to see a bunch of even bigger mountains.
For many of us, due to our natural drive, and in part because capitalism demands it of us, we just keep on climbing.
And at some point you wind up on Zoom with me, and you’re saying “ZJ, I don’t feel confident, I never feel confident, when will I feel confident??”
But you ARE confident.
You’re confident at basic skills. You’re confident at intermediate skills.
You’re over here on EXPERT SKILLS mountain like, “Why hasn’t anything changed?!”
This isn’t your fault. Our brains are inclined to focus on the next thing and bad at holding space to acknowledge our accomplishments as they fly by.
To put it another way: As you stay in your growth zone, your COMFORT ZONE increases. You get comfortable with your basic skills, your intermediate skills, and now those are in your comfort zone.
Find more about your growth zone in my Guide to Learning More Effectively.
You might look back on those things that used to seem really scary, and think, “Pfft, who cares about those things, those things were easy anyway.”
As long as you stay in your growth zone, you may never get that confident feeling you’re looking for. Because confidence isn’t really a feeling so much as it is the absence of a bunch of feelings - nervousness, embarrassment, etc.
“Confidence isn’t really a feeling so much as it is the absence of a bunch of feelings.”
And if avoiding those feelings comes at the price of staying in your comfort zone all your life, never getting better, never learning new things, never taking on new challenges… do you really want it?
So if we let go of the idea that we will one day achieve this static state of “confident”, where does that leave us?
It leaves us with:
SCARED
But doing it anyway.
And Scared but Doing it Anyway is the bravest thing a person can do.
This passage is an excerpt from my keynote talk, How to Be Confident. Looking for confidence? Bring me to your group or schedule one on one coaching at zjhadley.com/book
