What is Confidence?

Lately, I have been thinking about the idea of confidence. I go around the world people watching like some sort of creep checking them out, wondering to myself if what I see is confidence. Does this man in penny lofters and black jacket exude confidence to me? Does that woman who walked by me seem confident? How can I spot confidence? What is confidence, anyways?

I am the most guilty of inspecting confidence within my peer group and friends. Who is confident, I ask myself? Why am I looking for this thing called confidence anyways? Why is it is so important to me? I am not quite sure.

Then there is the inward inspection of confidence. Am I confident? Do I feel confident today? Why do I feel less confident one day and more the other day? Is confidence a feeling? An emotion like being happy or sad? Is it something that changes day to day? Moment by moment, or is confidence static, a constant that never changes, unless something spectacular within our souls happen? The thoughts about confidence floating around my head like I was stuck on a high after eating too many edibles or something. I am obsessed with confidence. So obsessed I tattooed “confidence,” on my arm, etched it in my desk at work, go out a night dressed in black and graffiti “confidence” all over the freeway underpasses. After a long slew of self psychoanalysis, entailing nothing less than strapping myself to my daybed and taping mini suction cups with stapled on strings to my head, I decided in the most professional of manners that I am obsessed with confidence mostly because for a long time I probably did not feel confident. Yes, it took all of that to determine this. I had convinced myself that I was the MOST confident person ever. I had a huge friend group, I had made-out with all these boys and more, I had all these things to show for it. People called me like-able. I was like-able. I was popular. How could I not feel confident with all that propping me up?

But even with all that holding me up, I was highly sensitive and insanely emotional. You could not criticize me. “You must be wrong! I am the greatest, the voice inside my head tells me everyday! If you could talk to it, it would tell you!” I would think to myself. Followed by, “Look at me everyone likes me! I must be cool!” This constant need for validation, a blaring red flag, that I indeed did not own confidence, the way I thought I did.

Thinking you’re confident, when you actually might not be, can be a really sad situation. One starts to look like a wannabe, a wannabe confident person. You can spot the wannabe confident person out like a cactus in dry desert.

I am not writing this piece to hate on people who don’t have confidence or who are faking it til they make it. I am writing this piece because I want everyone to actually find and keep true self confidence. It might not yet sound like one, but this is an inspirational piece, people.

I used to think that having confidence meant, I could define myself based on some cool criteria that I possessed. For instance, I have a lot of friends and I am popular, so therefore I have confidence. Right? My friend group is so big we have to rent out the restaurant everyday for lunchtime. I am that cool people. I see that other people use some of the same techniques to fake it. They drive a nice car when they have no money in the bank saved, they wear expensive clothes when again they have no money saved in the bank, they walk around in big mobs of people just like me, or act in a manner different than they want to act just to outwardly project to the world their confidence. Their fake confidence.

I used to be agreeable and nice to win over people’s affection. The more people liked me, the more it validated me. The more confidence, I thought I had. When someone didn’t like me, it had quite the opposite affect. My confidence would deteriorate a little, that insecure feeling slowly flooding into my soul. I would win the person over no matter what it took, even if I didn’t like them back myself. I’ll make you like me! Challenge on, I would declare to no one, but myself. A lot of energies spent wasted making people like me, especially on people whom I reciprocate feelings of dislike for. Can I have all those hours of my life back, I pled to the Gods above on bent knees. There is no answer. I will take that as a solid, “No.”

It dawned on me during my march up to The Great Pyramid of Giza, agonizing step after agonizing step, okay I was really at Equniox climbing the stairs amounting to what would be enough steps to get to the Pyramids of Giza, but you get the point, that the things I thought brought me confidence were actually killing my confidence and robbing me of the experiences to gain and build actual self confidence. My big mob of friends following me around validating my “coolness” was robbing me of learning how to face the world alone as an bonafide individual. Confidence is gained by going through uncomfortable situations and emerging from it like a Phoenix Bird out of a fire. You never give yourself the chance to grow and tackle things if you have a gang standing behind you murdering everyone that gives you anything but a nice smile and hello. This was a problem that I noticed not just within myself, but the people around me. We needed each other to support our self confidence and self worth and to feel like we had the ability to put ourselves out there in the world. Doing something alone for the first time feels uncomfortable and strange, especially if everyone around you is in groups or seem to know other people. How do you make new friends and feel included and social unless you already show up with a group of your very own? It was a challenge I had to face. Confidence was something I needed to build, I obviously surely didn’t have it for a good while, even if I had managed to convince myself otherwise.

Here is why confidence is so important to me. Confidence is the secret ingredient to a happy and fulfilling life. If one needs constant validation, feels insecure, and questions their own capabilities to do anything, life becomes massively overwhelming, creating an environment where we refuse to step outside our comfort zones. Instead of mastering ones life, time is spent wasted on things and people that do not matter. Who really cares if people like what you have to say, what you are wearing, what you drove to work in, where you ate, so forth and so on. We are put on this planet for this limited time in this slice of history, and I sure as hell do not want to waste my time pleasing others and making sure they don’t have bad judgements of me.

What I learned through my obsession with confidence is that what actual and true confidence looks and feels like is a lot quieter and less demanding than I had originally thought. It is a lot braver and stronger and requires more individuality than I had imagined. It is a person who can stand alone, with self assurance and self love when no one likes them. It wants and needs no validation. It is not popularity, but unpopularity. It needs no one to constantly tell them they are the greatest, it needs no group whether big or small, it is the self all by it self needing nothing. Self confidence is the ability to go into uncomfortable situations for the first time or on repeated occasion knowing no one, needing nothing, facing the masses, the mob, and feeling capable and strong and unmoved. It is being all of the strange person or all of the normal person you are and not caring. It is not caring if you fit in, if you are liked, or worrying what others are thinking. Self confidence wants you to be you no matter who you are with, where you are at, or what you are doing.

I am sensing that you are getting into confidence yourself now, after reading about why this concept is so important. Maybe you’re contemplating getting the “confidence” tattoo too, thinking you’ll one up me and burn the words right into your skin. Before we go ape shit off the walls crazy with our new found love, let me share three important tips I learned about building true and lasting self confidence:

1. Try New Things On Your Own – There is no better way to build actual self confidence than by going out into the universe and trying new things and meeting new people on your very own. Ditch your friend group, or heck, your spouse and go take that class you always wanted to take or do that thing you always wanted to do and do it alone. There’s something about the challenge of being alone in the world that makes you feel stronger and more capable than when you always experience it with a buddy. You have to build up the courage to spark up conversations on your own and learn how to get through the need of always having to have someone by your side to accomplish things. You start to lean on yourself and you start to see that you don’t really need anyone, but yourself.
2. If Someone Doesn’t Like You, Let It Be & Embrace It – It always used to be hard on me when someone did not like me, now I like it when someone doesn’t like me. The reason why I enjoy people not liking me, is that it gives me the opportunity to learn about rejection and how to get through rejection. In this world of 7 billion people plus, statistically speaking, there will be a few people on this planet that won’t like me for whatever reason, legitimate or not. The biggest leap to improving one’s confidence is learning how to accept yourself even when others dislike you, disagree with you, or don’t accept you. Just because someone doesn’t like your outfit doesn’t mean you need to change your clothes, and just because someone doesn’t think you are the greatest human to bestow the earth, doesn’t mean that you cannot continue to think that you are the greatest. Other people’s opinions of us should not stop us from accomplishing the things we want to accomplish or from being ourselves. The greatest inventors, leaders, and minds of the world were ones that faced constant criticism and prevailed through despite the unpopular beliefs of their times. They did not seek validation for their beliefs, but had a strong hold on their beliefs despite all arguments against whatever they were seeking. If you still fight on and continue to prevail even when people tell you that you are no good, that is true self confidence.
3. Fall in Love with Yourself – This tip seems so cliche, yet the one that most people seem to have the hardest time with. Self love is hard for many reasons, and mostly it stems from the need for external validation from sources outside ourselves. We seek to only love ourselves if others love us first. Self love is tough because we are usually our own worse enemies, our shortcomings highlighted in our minds, certain that we know how people perceive us and worrying about fitting in. We cannot stand the judgements of others and seek to minimize the judgements by behaving a certain way, even if it is not truly who we are. This conflict of the self and the self that we feel we need to present to the outside world causes us to love ourselves less because we are not acting and presenting in an honest manner. When we act and present ourselves to the world in a consistent manner in line with who we truly are and receive feedback in a positive way, we feel validated. If we receive negative feedback, we might constantly feel the need to adjust ourselves and our behaviors, losing sight of who we actually are. We start to question if we are acting the right way or saying the right things, but this constant adjustment of the self is not really the self and this act we are putting on makes us feel insecure. To truly be confident, we need to love ourselves first, before anyone loves us. Fall in love with yourself, the way you would another person. Look in the mirror and say nice things about yourself. Talk to yourself in a positive way, with a loving voice, and put yourself on a pedestal the way you would do with a loved one. Learning to see the greatness in yourself will surely build self confidence. When and if you ever receive any negative feedback about your persona, you will not care, because you will be truly in love with yourself. If someone put your loved one down, you wouldn’t love them less; you would just see the person talking shit as a toxic person or someone you might not want to associate yourself with. This goes the same for the voice inside your head. If it sounds negative or is saying hurtful things, it is time to get away from it. So go ahead and fall in love with yourself by spending time with yourself, talking positively to yourself, and affirming yourself. You are the greatest you. Don’t ever forget that.

Life is a lot funner when you possess confidence. Instead of holding back, standing there like a lame wallflower when your insides just want to break free like a jail mate escaping prison, you will be letting loose and being the self you are when no one is looking, because your confidence will be saying F you to anyone giving you a strange stare down. It’s a beautiful thing when one can be truly be themselves. I can’t say that I have fully mastered the art of self confidence, but everyday I work towards it. Some days I might feel that old ping of insecurity trying to knock me down, but I remember to affirm myself and ask what it is that is getting me all hot and bothered. When I realize it’s just my own thoughts, and that I can reframe and let go of whatever it is that is keeping me from feeling secure, I realize that I am powerful and capable and that’s all I need to block out those insecurities that constantly try to infest my soul and rob me of the life I should be living.

If I could wish for one thing of the world and all its peoples, it would be that each and every human, felt secure in their own skin and lived free of insecurities, with a life full of confidence. What a joyous and interesting place this world would be if we just all embraced confidence.