The True Meaning of Confidence

 Confidence is one of those things which we ‘feel’. There are days when we feel mysteriously confident, and days when we feel inexplicably invisible. We feel strangely low and inadequate. And we can’t quite put the finger on what the reason is. No tragedy has occurred of late. No one has criticized us either. Nor are me faced with a formidable task to accomplish. 

So, why the low confidence ? 

When I saw this happen to me reasonably often, it annoyed me no end. I felt strangely subdued. Inadequate. And I didn’t know why. 

I tried to raise my awareness. To reflect. To review what I had been doing the last few hours/days to see if I could notice certain patterns. 

The answer however, didn’t reveal itself to me until one day, I learnt about the origins of the word confidence. Today we associate the word confidence with the feelings of a winner. But the word confidence has its roots from the Latin word Confidere which means “self-trust”. 

Now, this led to introspect in a new line. I asked myself

 “ Why do I feel low self-trust today?”. 

The next natural question was 

“Have a I broken my own trust in any way recently?” 

And the bulb glew. 

I had gotten into a certain pattern. I would make a to-do list of sorts each morning, listing down my tasks for the day. I prepared this list with a lot of thoughtfulness. I would consider my priorities, and listed down what I believed were tasks, which if accomplished would move me forward. Now, these were’nt tasks that were particularly important . Often, they were things like 

• Wash my socks 

• Clear the clutter on the table 

• Call a friend I haven’t spoken to in a long time. 

• Get to bed by 10 PM 

Nothing life-changing.  Nothing that would change the world . Now, as I went through the day, other ideas would pop up into my head. Other things I could do. I would do those instead, and disregard the list I had so thoughtfully prepared earlier in the day. 

I remembered the day I had promised myself I would get to bed early and yet, had stayed up late to watch a movie.

I remembered the time when I kept postponing washing my socks for an entire week. 

I remembered the day when I decided to clear the clutter on the table, and ended up adding to the clutter instead. 

None of these had a drastic impact on my life. 

Except.. That the thoughtful list-making morning-Me felt deeply let down by the distracted-uncommitted-‘rest-of-the-day me. The morning ‘Me’ would began each day full of hope, only to be let down again and again. To be not taken seriously. To have his wise ideas disregarded in exchange for a silly random temptation that had taken over my brain. 

The morning -me had enough evidence to not trust the ‘rest-of-the-day me’. The ‘rest-of-the-day me ‘ wasn’t reliable. Didn’t follow through. Was distracted. Lazy. 

This, to me , was an epiphany. The very next day, which happened to be a Sunday. I wrote down a list of 3 tasks I wanted to get done that day. As soon as I finished writing them down, I dove straight into the first task. With the momentum going, I got all the three done by lunch. I felt like a winner. 

The ‘rest of the day-me’ had lived up to the ‘morning-me’s expectations’ with some time to spare. 

Do you want to build confidence ? Start by accumulating evidence that you can trust yourself to do the things that you say you will do. Follow-through. Be reliable – to yourself. 

Confidence is a feeling, alright. But it’s not a feeling that we wait for, to embark on a new activity. Rather, confidence is the feeling that is a byproduct of reliably completing a task that makes us trust ourselves even more. 

Confidence cannot be built without commitment to self. Keep the commitments you make to yourself. But there is another secret. 

At a sales training, I had once attended, the trainer taught a powerful way to build trust with potential customers. He said ‘Create some sort of commitment, and follow through. It could be something minor’. Maybe you tell the customer, that you will call them at 4 PM. Then follow through and call them at exactly 4 PM. Maybe you tell them that you will send them an article that may be valuable to them the next morning. Then send it the next morning. This builds trust. Reliability and follow though in minor things makes a huge difference. So few people follow through on the commitments they make, that the ones who do immediately stand out in other people's minds. 

The key is that the trust wasn’t created by chance. It was engineered, by making a promise, and then following through. The trainer suggested that we somehow find a promise that we can propose to the potential client. A promise that we can follow through in order to build trust. 

I couldn’t quite tell if this plan was ingenious or somewhat manipulative. Nevertheless, this gives us a supremely powerful method to build our confidence. 

Let me rephrase that. 

This gives us a supremely powerful method to build our self-trust.

Make commitments to yourself and keep them. Keep score. Track your progress. Your identity will transform into ‘someone who gets things done’. 

Your ‘morning me’ will have confidence because it knows that it can trust the ‘rest-of-the-day me’ to follow-through. 

Find opportunities to create a commitment to yourself. Follow through. You trust yourself more. Repeat.