Self-Help Myths: Confidence

June 8th 2007 Self-Help Myths 12 comments

This is a new series at Organize IT where I take fundamental self-help lessons that all the books teach and discuss what’s true about them and where they badly lead us astray. In this first post I will talk about confidence, one of the most important elements of a good self-help guru’s repertoire.

Confidence can be an attractive quality. A confident person is charming, knows what he wants and believes in his own abilities to get it. Unfortunately, confident people can also be those who cut you off on the road, act arrogant and cocky, and become blind to their own weaknesses. You won’t read many books telling you the unwelcome side of the characteristic they are encouraging in you.

You can’t just become confident. Confidence comes from how you compare to others, people telling you how entertaining you how, how well you did that presentation, how good you are at sports. Self-help books will tell you to build up your confidence with positive thinking and affirmations. The problem with this is it is superficial confidence and all it takes is one unpleasent situation to bring it crashing down again.

You firstly need to gain competence in your skills. If you know how to do something and have built up these skills over time, then you will create a natural self-belief in your abilities. If you are not competent in an area (and hense not confident), whether it be public speaking or socialising, ask yourself if you actually have much experience in it and then take the appropriate measures to learn and improve. If you think you know all you need to know, then you are over-confident. As good as you are, you can always improve, and this is how you become a more effective person than any naturally confident person will ever be.

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Reader discussion

It’s nice to read an honest view on a trait many of us need to improve, rather than reading some ‘new-age’ wishy-wash.

Thanks for the positive comment sickr!

If someone is cocky, arrogant, a bad driver and blind to their own weaknesses it does not mean they are confident. It means they are cocky, arrogant and unaware.

Confidence is not the same quality as competence. You can be competent and not be connected to your confidence at all. No matter how much you work on your skills.

And if you do become highly skilled and confident in a certain area, you’re only confident in your ability to do that skill.

My definition of confidence, which I just defined over at my blog, varies a lot from your own. If you want to check it out, it’s here:
http://www.unconditionalconfid.....hives/122/

Thanks for the comment Nancy, it’s interesting to read an alternative viewpoint. I do actually think our message is similar, we are just coming from different angles.

I should stress I am not saying confidence and competence are the same quality. The latter leads to the former providing you compare favourably to others. For example, if you are skilled at something yet unpleasent people constantly berate those skills you won’t have high confidence.

Another example is social confidence. If you are average at it, yet you are primarily in the company of those who are uncomfortable socializing, your confidence will be much higher as a consequence. That’s why people of similar social skills gravitate together.

So you depend on others for your self-confidence!? And you call what comes from within superficial? Here’s what
I think… you suck at blogging… and… so… STOP blogging… it’s ridiculous what you write.

Confidence (maybe even the type the “gurus” are talking about) isn’t necessarily just about being “confident” that you will succeed at a particular task or project or career. It may be more about being confident that you will be emotionally/spiritually ok even if you don’t succeed. Looked at this way, confidence is not the two-edged sword you describe.

I’d actually question my competence at blogging after your remarks histr… if you had… actually bothered to… understand the… article.

Ron, confident that you will succeed at your career, confident that you can perform a task, confident that you will emotionally/spiritually take the knocks that will come your way…it’s all the same because you have to develop the mindset, tools and experience. Using your example, if you let every problem drag you down, not tell yourself to move on or look at the positives, then you won’t be competent at dealing with those knock-backs.

I do feel that you are very much mistaken when you say “confidence comes from how you compare to others.” Confidence is how you feel about yourself inside and is quite independent of how others see you or, indeed, how you feel others see you.

My friend thought he was really good at football. His basis for this was his performance in thrown together games during lunch breaks at school, and playing alone at home in the garden. He was very confident about his abilities and decided to join a proper team. As soon as he started playing with people who were organized and professional he realized how lacking his skills really were and his confidence took a knock.

I’m not saying confidence is always 100% based on how you compare to others, but it does play a large part in that.

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