It seems like now a days on the internet we have an endless amount of people telling us how to be confident or to not even worry about confidence and just take a leap. On one hand this is great because sometimes it really is just about getting your feet wet but on the other hand its easy to just listen and re-listen to these messages. If you drowned yourself in the same messages long enough you’ll probably do something about it. Right? Not always the case but it is a nice thought.
Confidence can be uprooted anywhere according to social media. It’s just showing up, its being half (or sometimes fully) naked, its loving yourself (which can be mani-pedi, getting a therapist, going to the gym or whatever new trend comes up on tik-tok), sometimes you just haven’t meditated enough, or you’re breathing wrong, sometimes its just that perfect outfit you havent bought yet…I am sure you’ve heard many others that left you a bit puzzled.
For some reason none of these rang true for me either, it just didn’t feel like the reason why I was confident in the things I was confident in. When I dug deeper into this subject personally, something stood out to me and that was my mom. She always had one saying to me as a child that stuck from a very young age:
“I DON’T TALK ABOUT THINGS I DON’T KNOW ABOUT.”
I loved this, the confidence in the way she said it too made me believe her the very first time she said it. I think I was 9 or 10, I remember it that pretty vividly. How does that exactly relate to building my confidence?
COMPETENCE.
If you only speak to what you know then you can speak clearly, eloquently, precisely and most importantly CONFIDENTLY. That’s when it clicked for me. So many people in recent times align confidence with all of these abstract concepts, things of material nature, or just arrogance. What’s unfortunate about those view points is those are thin vails. Easily pierced with the sharpness of reality.
Competence however is unwavering. IF you are TRULY competent in something then it becomes obvious, it becomes unspoken and the confidence is then exuding from you. It’s not forced out with a half cracked smile, a puffed out chest, and/or endless diatribes that feel like opening statements for a defense in a high profile trial. Another quote that stands out is from Kobe Bryant,
“CONFIDENCE IS IN YOUR PREPAREDNESS.”
Both similarly true. If you are TRULY prepared for something, it means you’ve practiced it at nauseam. You not only know the in’s and out’s but you likely have a plan B and C in your back pocket, if and when, reality strikes.
The struggle for most comes with accepting the process of competency, which is trial and error. In a culture that is slowly being CONSUMED by arrogance, viral regurgitated content, and growing qualities of laziness, this concept of effort over time, with with seemingly no return, is daunting. I think this is largely contributed to the ever growing conveniences of daily life too. We get more and more inclined to wanting things that come easy. Good things rarely do come easy. Additionally, I am sure you’ve heard the saying,
“HARD TIMES MAKE STRONG MEN, EASY TIMES MAKE WEAK MEN.”
It is becoming glaringly obvious this is true. Without understanding this, the delayed gratification needed for success is largely ignored. Leaving a lot of people who simply do not work hard enough or long enough to find the success they are looking for in their pursuits. Not to mention the amount of humility it takes to make errors, recognize them, course correct, then try again. ACTING in spite of our failures is probably one of the bravest things we can do.
This humility, this time spent in trial and error is what develops competency. It is how you develop a global view for what youre trying to accomplish. If you do not take the opportunity to fail then the likelihood of you learning becomes slim; simply because of your lack of valuable and authentic exposure to what youre trying to learn.
Do you have the wherewithal to build competency in the areas you need to in order to find your individual success?
If you do, TRUE confidence will follow.
THIS is VŌLITION.
