Observations On Becoming More Self-Confident

If you start looking on the internet for advice on making friends, or getting over your shyness, it probably won't be long before you came across some advice telling you that you have to work on being more confident. The implication is that your confidence level is at the heart of your problems. You're shy because you're unconfident, you would be able to meet people if you were confident, if you could just be more confident then everything else would start clicking into place.

That's probably followed by suggestions to do things like make positive affirmations to yourself, make a list of your strengths and review it regularly, or learn to act confidently even if you don't feel it inside, and whatnot. Some sources may suggest you get into self-hypnosis or neuro-linguistic programming.

In my experience a lot of this advice on being more confident doesn't capture the whole picture. It's not that confidence is bad, or that some individual suggestions are inherently flawed, just that confidence is more complicated than some writing portrays it as. Here are my observations about it all:

There are two kinds of confidence. A short-lived emotional kind, and a stable 'logical assessment' kind

I think an issue with a lot of the advice on confidence is that, whether it realizes it or not, it's focusing on the temporary emotional kind confidence.

Short-lived emotional confidence:

You have this when you consciously feel psyched up and confident. You're likely to walk around feeling all strong and powerful. You may even be thinking about how confident you are to yourself over and over. It's great when you feel like this and your improved state truly allows you to accomplish more than you could usually. No matter what your abilities actually are in a situation, you feel like they're sharper than they normally are.

When you listen to driving music before a speech or contest you're trying to invoke this state in yourself. You may spontaneously fall into this mentality after a run of good performance or when you realize you're in a favorable situation. If you read or hear a particularly motivating speech you may start to feel this way as well. Maybe you'll have a little epiphany about life or your problems and feel more charged up about things than you were a moment ago.

But like all emotions, this feeling can't last. Sooner or later you'll have to return to the baseline. Maybe you can remember a few times when you were abnormally confident for a day or two. For that brief time you probably were better with other people. If the feeling lasted forever your life would be a lot easier, but it wore off. I think that's where a lot of the confidence advice falls apart. It seeks to invoke this short-lived emotional confidence in you permanently. That can't happen.

Stable 'logical assessment' confidence:

This kind of confidence doesn't really have an emotion attached to it. It's more of a logical statement-of-fact about yourself and your abilities. It's something that you just know, like you know the sky is blue. If you had to say it had an emotional component, it would be a kind of calm, solid, self-assuredness. You probably have this kind of confidence about something that you know you're better at than most everyone you've met (e.g., playing an instrument, drawing, math).

This kind of confidence is rooted in your life experience, e.g., someone feels confident about their musical ability because all throughout their life they've only met a handful of people who were better than them on the instrument they play. The previous emotional kind of confidence is something that people think you can almost conjure out of thin air to aid yourself. This second 'assessment confidence' is more something that builds up over time. The assessment you make about yourself doesn't have to be, "I'm the best ever at X". It could be something more realistic like, "I know I'm not the best in the world at tennis, but I've won tournaments and I know I can beat an average guy off the street".

As you get more socially confident it will be in this second way. It won't be that you'll be emotionally puffed up, and somehow manage to make the feeling last forever. What you'll gain is a logical knowledge that you're a pretty likable, socially capable person.

Lasting confidence has to be earned

Anyone can psych themselves up temporarily, though not necessarily on command, but to have a lasting positive assessment of your abilities you have to earn it. One day you'll be able to look at yourself and know that you're pretty personable, likable, fun, or whatever. But it won't be that you were totally awkward, and then one day you found the magical self affirmation that made you self-assured forever more. By working on your social issues you'll legitimately start to improve in that area. You'll handle situations well. You'll make new friends. You'll say things that get a laugh, or have a heart to heart conversation with someone and really help them with a problem. People will directly tell you things like, "You're fun to hang out with."

Over time this objective evidence will add up to the point where you can say to yourself, "I am relatively funny" or "I am well dressed" or "I am a pretty good person on the whole". You can say these things to yourself in that knowing, matter-of-fact way because your experiences confirm it. You can, say, go into a party and feel confident about your chances of getting along with the people there because you've done it in the past and know your social abilities are at a level that can handle the situation.

Sometimes someone will lose their confidence in a certain area for a while. They may find it's hard to simply talk themselves into feeling better. What they have to do is get back on the horse and remind themselves through their experience that you do measure up.

Or sometimes a person will have a lot going for them but not realize it themselves. They usually need to get some objective feedback from the world that they're worthy before they start to accept it on their own.

The flip side of this is that if you honestly don't have much going for you at the moment then you won't have a lot of reason to be confident. Yeah, you can psych your mood up temporarily, but objectively you still have your weaknesses. Deep down you know this and you can only be so confident in yourself because of it. That sounds like a downer, but the good news is that as you get over your weak spots your self-esteem will naturally rise.

Lasting confidence is also about being comfortable with yourself

I find being more confident is about being comfortable with your personality traits and your strengths and weaknesses. It's not that you believe you're the greatest person in the world. You just have a realistic, balanced view of yourself, but this is coupled with the belief that you can handle what life throws at you. Again, you gradually acquire this mindset through experience, not overnight.

For example, someone may feel confident about their ability to meet people and make friends. They may realize they're not as smooth about as some people, and that they appeal only to a certain type of person. That's okay though. They've had enough supporting experiences that tell them that even if they're not perfectly compelling or charismatic, if they ever need to make new friends they'll be able to do it. Or as another example, someone may be comfortable with the fact that they're good in some intellectual areas, and not so great in other ones. They're fine with that, and channel their energies into the areas they know they can compete in.

You can improve the individual facets of confidence separately

Many articles on confidence list off some traits of confident people. Different articles often lay out different items as well. The idea is that if you became more confident that all these traits would fall into place as well. But if you think about it, you can work on these supposed facets of self-confidence individually if you want to. Here are some traits I've seen from the various lists:

Being able to take a compliment: If you have low self-esteem then you tend to be dismissive of compliments to yourself. You can get over it just by getting into the habit of saying, "Thank you", and nothing more, when someone compliments you. It feels unnatural at first, but quickly becomes more normal.

Looking people in the eye when you talk to them: Unconfident people are more likely not to make eye contact, but just because low self-confidence could be the root of the problem doesn't mean you need improved confidence to cure it. If you directly practice it you can improve your ability to hold eye contact with others, and feel at ease while you do it.

Being outgoing and charming around people: I think this is a more a matter of having a lot of social experience under your belt than anything. As you improve your ability to socialize, you may naturally find you start acting more friendly and chatty in some situations.

Being comfortable with risks: Again, confident people are naturally more at ease with risk taking, but it's also a trait you can cultivate on its own. You take some risks, see that they're not so bad, and get used to it.

Being able to take criticism: I've found that this is another ability that can be developed rather than something that only flows out of your general confidence. The more you're criticized, the more you get used to it. Also, once people have received and implemented some genuinely helpful constructive criticism their attitude towards be critiqued tends to change. They start to see it as a useful (if sometimes painful) tool, rather than a negative experience that must be avoided at all costs.

Being able to speak in public: To risk sounding like a broken record, confidence helps you in this, but it's something you can hone on its own.

Being able to take rejection: Like with criticism, this is one more thing you can get used to. Once you've been rejected enough you stop caring as much. Experience will eventually reveal that rejection doesn't really affect your life overall. There will also be milestones, like a time that someone initially rejects you and then changes their mind latter, or you get rejected by one person only to go on and have success with your next attempt. All these reinforce the fact that rejection is no big deal.

Just becoming more confident isn't the total solution

A lot of advice on confidence has this underlying message that being more confident is at the core of everything. Get over your low self-confidence and you're set. This may be true sometimes, but at other times you also need some knowledge or skills. Like if you're awkward around people then you may need some specific advice on improving your social abilities. If you're bad at chess, just becoming more confident in your chess playing abilities won't cut it. You may have to read up more on strategy and get more practice under your belt.

And the thing is, when you have the skills or traits to get the job done, you often don't need to be confident accomplish your goal. I think when confidence comes to getting along with people, you need a solid foundation of that assessment confidence, plus the skills to meet your goals. If you happen to get a burst of emotional state confidence then so much the better.