Confidence.
It can be a love-hate relationship. Something that lifts you up, but can also bring you down. I write this blog with a bit of fire because the concept of confidence is a personal one. It’s been both my greatest ally and biggest enemy. But what is it they say about befriending your enemies; ‘keep your friends close but your enemies closer’. And why? Because in befriending your enemy you come to understand them and the power they have over you.
Most people see confidence as an ability. An ability to speak, perform, create, and act with utmost ease. Someone who has little fear or doubt. I also used to believe this. I thought confidence was a trait that was measurable through what I did, how grand the action were and what the result was. But I have since learned this is not confidence.
If you are someone who has spoken on a stage more than 50 times, that’s no longer confidence, that’s embodiment and a skill. But, if you are someone who has never spoken on a stage but decided to give it a go, that is confidence.
Confidence starts as a willingness. The willingness to try something even when uncertainty is present. It’s the ability to say ‘yes’ when other parts of you are saying no.
Let’s talk about these parts that scream ‘no’ because it seems to me that these parts play more of a role in prevention or the perception of not being confident than the actual phenomenon itself.
For some context - I was recently told I wasn’t ready for an opportunity and that I needed to work on my confidence in order to do so. And it sparked such a fury in me because I began feeling a sense of shame for not being able to ‘do it all’. The difficult part was I felt ready within my self, I was ready for the challenge and I was ready to show up and give it my all, but a moment of freeze, a moment of panic and a moment of “I don’t think I can do this” led to a conclusion that I wasn’t ’confident enough’.
Luckily I know myself well enough to know were my strengths lie and where my not so strengths are and I knew this particular setting would trigger a part in me that would make me feel unable. The thing is, this setting was tied to a past experience that made me feel unable to perform. It’s not that I didn’t want to but there were certain elements that my body wasn’t able to overcome. To be quite frank *and this is a warning for potentially triggering content* I was assaulted in a group setting, so most situations involving groups where all eyes are on me and I feel a sense of pressure to perform often triggers a sense of threat. Now you might be thinking ‘what an excuse’ but the funny thing is I was able to speak in front of a few hundred people just days after with no shutdown response.
So I spent a lot of time reflecting on these experiences and questioned;
“Was I lacking confidence or did something prevent me from showing up?”
“Did I have willingness to engage in this opportunity?”
“If I were in a different setting could the outcome have been different?”
It enables the conversation of understanding who you are and how you show up in different situations, what your triggers are and how they become a barrier.
Don’t let the idea of confidence be your story - you can do things even with ‘low’ confidence. Yes confidence aligns with energy and when that energy is present you can become a magnet for certain outcomes (but that’s another story). But not everyone is born with a natural skill of confidence. It is something that needs to be nurtured, refined, and practiced.
Confidence is not measured through what you can and can’t do, or how well you do it. Confidence is the willingness to try and that is progression in the self. You are learning to build a felt sense of trust in yourself so you can create a steady relationship with your abilities, your judgement, your worth and your capacity. Confidence is less of an act but more an embodiment.
But the part that sticks with me the most is how much of the time do we think it’s our lack of confidence that prevents us from trying new things or exploring opportunities? When do we notice if it’s fear based.
There’s another side of me that says sometimes we aren’t ready for certain things, and there’s an element of self-compassion and self-acceptance that can allow this. It’s okay to not always be ready for something that presents, maybe we do need time to build our confidence. But time to build does not equate to lack of confidence. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the very idea of confidence meant to be about not being 100% certain but still doing it anyway? By doing something once, three times, ten times, sixty times, this is how we build ease because we learned to trust ourself and our abilities.
I never considered myself a ‘confident’ person. I often boxed myself into this space because maybe it felt protective. That if I didn’t try something or succeed in something it’s because I wasn’t confident. But what good did that do? It kept me at a lesser version of who I was. But in the end I realised it wasn’t that I lacked confidence, I always had a willingness, but fear was often the enemy standing in front me. When I reflect on my past 12-months I travelled alone for 12-months, I ate alone in restaurants, I walked in foreign countries with no maps, I interacted with people who didn’t speak my language, and just yesterday, I gave my first public speech in front of a few hundred people. So I ask myself, is it confidence that I lack or is it self-doubt and lack of belief and other barriers that sometimes get in the way. Confidence and fear can tie together. But confidence can be a decision, and fear is often a response.
I had to learn to stop myself from saying ‘I’m not confident’ or ‘I’m not a confident person’ because it started creating a belief that I was unable. When we attach to these sorts of beliefs we teach ourselves to be that way. When challenge arises, the idea of lacking confidence automatically tells you ‘no’ like those parts I mentioned earlier.
We think confidence is getting up and standing in front of a crowd, but actually it’s in the moment you decided to say ‘yes I will stand up and talk in front of a crowd’ even though your heart was racing and your stomach felt sick.
We think confidence is the action of leaving an unsafe relationship, but actually it’s in the moment you decided within yourself that you deserved better.
Just because you can’t show up in the way you were expected to doesn’t mean you can’t in another. But this is how it grows. Saying yes, showing up even if you don’t feel 100% ready and acknowledging your willingness.
It’s a reminder that you can struggle with confidence, it can feel split, but you showing up for yourself is in fact the very point of confidence and it is how it grows. To get to the point of effervescent confidence, you have to learn and embody it.
It’s been a journey with my confidence and I’m still growing it. But I learned that it wasn’t that I never had it, I just didn’t understand it.
Learn your blocks, learn your behaviours and ask yourself:
Do I have a sense of willingness?
Are there any blocks or barriers that come up for me in certain situations that prevent me from moving forward?
Can I decipher whether this is a feeling of fear or readiness?
And if you answered yes, particularly to question one, then congratulations you have confidence!! And if you answered no, that’s also okay, you may be on your journey of understanding what it means to be willing and that is a good, explorative place to be.
Love,
WYSEbymonique
Xx