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Living
Boldly® e-Zine Archives
Choose
confidence!
March 16, 2005
Have you noticed that some people seem to be naturally more self-confident
than others? Some people just exude poise and balance even in the most
difficult situations, let alone as they move through every day life. Naturally
confident people seem to carry themselves in a certain way, with an ease about
them -- it even shows up in their body language and posture: a confident person
stands tall and sure, where an insecure person slouches down, perhaps even
trying to "hide" themselves. If you stop and think about it, you can probably
think of someone who fits this description. (Audrey Hepburn comes to mind for
me... she was simply the embodiment of poise and quiet confidence. Oprah
Winfrey is another person whose confidence appears quite genuine.)
There is a difference, of course, between natural confidence and "faux"
confidence. The former is something that is just a PART of the person,
something they don't have to force or act out; while the latter occurs when the
person in question is feeling very insecure, so they might come across as loud,
fake, annoying, bragging and a bit full of themselves. I've always felt that
true confidence doesn't need to be "displayed" -- it just IS.
When I
was a teenager, I can recall spending a lot of time being very self-absorbed
(as most teenagers tend to be), examining every aspect of myself, inside and
out, and comparing myself (usually unfavorably) with other people who I thought
had that "je ne sais quoi", which is French for "that special something" or
what we might call the "IT" factor. One of the things I remember longing for
was that essence of self-confidence and poise in social situations -- because
at the time, I clearly felt I didn't have it and it created some social angst
in my life. I looked at other people who I thought had "it", and wondered how I
could get "it". Confidence felt like something elusive, something that was
beyond me, and I was pretty hard on myself for my perceived lack of it.
Confident people get
insecure, too
Over time, as I matured and experienced more of
the world, I came to realize that even those so-called "super confident" people
had insecurities, too... because we all do. I also realized that confidence can
often be situational -- we might feel confident in one arena and insecure in
another. Take, for example, someone who is very confident in his profession,
because he has worked at it for a long time and perhaps has been well-educated
in his field. That same person who oozes confidence when he talks about his
work might feel completely out of his element in social situations, at a party
or even in developing 1-on-1 relationships with others. Or it might be the
reverse: picture the woman who is a wonderful homemaker and stay-at-home mom,
who is active in the community and can take charge of any project -- that same
woman, when she decides to re-enter the workforce after an extended absence,
might be likely to feel extremely insecure about herself. And whenever you see
a celebrity walking the red carpet, wafting an air of confidence, just remember
that they are actors and performers, skilled at "faking it" in front of an
audience; it doesn't necessarily mean that famous person is any more or less
confident than YOU have the ability to be.
Whatever our age, when we
are faced with new situations that are unfamiliar to us, it's only natural that
we will temporarily lack some confidence -- for example if we are embarking on
a new career that requires new skills, or if we find ourselves in unfamiliar
social territory for the first time, like being the "new kid" in school or on
the job. But after we are in that situation for a period of time, and have had
the opportunity to gain experience, our confidence slowly and quietly grows,
until one day we realize we really DO know what we're doing and we don't even
need to think about it any more!
Now as I reflect on it, I realize
that confidence isn't necessarily something you're born with, or something that
some people get to have in abundance while others get little of it. And it's
not something you're going to have all the time. But it IS something over which
you have more control than you might think.
We create confidence through our
choices
Confidence is something we CREATE through our decisions
and our choices in life. It's something that builds with time and life
experience, starting in childhood as we take our first steps, fall down, and
learn we can pick ourselves back up and try again until we get it right -- and
the next thing we know, we're RUNNING... with total confidence! This is our
first life experience where we learn that confidence often comes with practice
and patience.
As we go out in the world, meeting new people and
learning how to interact with others, we have more opportunities to develop
confidence -- not because someone else has the ability to "give us confidence"
or to take it away from us, but because we can choose to believe in OURSELVES
no matter what others do or say to us. As we encounter people who might try and
make us feel "less than" (usually for their own insecure reasons), we can
remember the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, "No one can make you feel inferior
without your consent." ("This is My Story", 1937) Confidence is a CHOICE you
can make, to put your own opinion ahead of the opinion of others.
Any
time we consciously choose to tackle a challenge, we can gain in confidence
even when things don't go well, if we see the perceived "failure" as an
opportunity for growth and learning something about ourselves. A good friend of
mine is dealing with this very situation right now. She decided to change
careers just a few years ago to become a nurse. After graduating from nursing
school, she initially took a very challenging position in a fast-paced,
high-stress hospital ward because she knew she enjoyed a challenge where she
could continue to learn and increase her nursing skills.
But although
she really enjoyed the type of nursing she could do there, there were other
things about working there that didn't fit well with her very busy family life,
and it also wasn't a very team-oriented work environment. After about a year
there, she changed jobs, this time taking a position in a hospital obstetrics
department where she worked with mothers and babies after birth. The position
was far less stressful in terms of the work requirements, her coworkers were a
more cooperative team, and she was on a career track that would lead her to
labor and delivery nursing, a very difficult area to break into because it's so
desirable. However, in order to take this job she had to be willing to work the
night shift, three 12-hour 7pm to 7am shifts, mostly over the weekends.
Initially she thought she could handle this, never having worked nights before;
and she thought she needed the slower pace the mother/baby nursing would
provide. It turns out she was wrong on both counts.
After just a few
months, she realized it just wasn't working out for her. The night shift was
physically too draining and played havoc with her sleep cycles for the rest of
the week, and she was missing out on a lot of important family time and felt
very irritable at home. I also observed that although she was on target to
being able to move into labor and delivery, something she had thought she truly
WANTED to do, she didn't seem to be enjoying the work at all -- in fact she
seemed downright bored with it. After some self-reflection, she decided she had
to change SOMETHING because she just couldn't continue there... Lo! and behold,
a wonderful opportunity has now literally fallen into her lap: a part-time
position on a day shift, in a highly specialized brain trauma unit at another
local hospital, one where two nurses she knows and respects already work. She
will not only be able to sleep better, have more energy, be less cranky, and
participate more in family life, she is very excited about all she will learn
in this new nursing arena.
In talking with my friend about her
decision and her experiences in trying to, as she puts it, "find a home" as a
nurse, a place where she CAN excel and feel confident in the nursing work she's
doing, what I noticed was she has gained confidence in another area -- she is
more confident in her ability to know who she is, what matters most to her, and
she can trust her intuition to guide her in making major life decisions. It
hasn't been easy, but by being willing to face the challenges, her confidence
has actually grown in a very big way!
So, if you are feeling
under-confident, instead of trying to find confidence outside of yourself,
maybe it's time to look within. Do you need to make a conscious choice to allow
yourself to feel confident, even if others are trying to tear you down? Do you
need to take more risks, accept more challenges, try more new things, so that
you can gain confidence in some area of your life? What old belief systems are
you hanging on to, that say "I'm not good enough" - isn't it time to toss those
out and replace them with some new beliefs that will help your confidence grow?
What I am most confident of right now is that YOU have everything you
need within you to be the confident, poised, and naturally self-assured person
you have always wanted to be. You just have to make the choice.
Quote of
Confidence:
"You gain strength, courage and confidence by
every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are
able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next
thing that comes along." ... You must do the thing you think you cannot
do."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt, "You Learn by Living" (1960)
In
reflecting on your own confidence levels in the different areas of your life,
where are you highly confident, as opposed to where you are more insecure? Look
for common denominators in both areas -- are there patterns or similarities,
such as you are confident in professional situations where you are very
experienced, but not in social situations where you know no one?
Can you
track your confidence issues back to certain pervasive beliefs you are holding
onto, beliefs that tell you "I'm not good enough"?
It's natural to
feel a bit insecure any time you are out of your usual comfort zone -- those
are situations where a bit of patience and time can often instill more
confidence. But the trickier challenges are those where our own beliefs are the
root cause of insecurity. That's when you have to be fierce in digging out
those old negative thoughts and replacing them with new beliefs that say "Yes,
I can DO anything, BE anything and HAVE anything -- all I have to do is
DECIDE."
For permission to reprint this
article, please contact me.
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