Confidence
Am I OK?
“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.”
What does it mean to truly feel naturally confident?
There is a school of thought that may be roughly defined as “fake it til you make it.” Ignore any signs that what you’re doing isn’t working, push forward with an imagined confidence in what you are doing, and eventually the results you want will come to fruition.
Let’s imagine for a moment that this is an effective strategy: doesn’t it sound exhausting?
There is another way of achieving what we might call natural confidence: where we shift the focus to something outside of ourselves, and instead of being the end goal, confidence becomes a natural by-product of what we’re doing. This way it becomes light and full of ease.
So here it is: make peace with the fact that what you’re doing may not be valuable at all.
Often in our work and in our lives, we’re looking for validation, for approval, for praise, for acceptance. How many of the questions we ask on a daily basis are actually saying: “Am I ok? Is what I’m doing ok?”
We can spend a lot of energy imagining that the answer to this question is “no” - and that that is a bad thing. So we either try and avoid finding out if what we’re doing is ok, or we look for ways to get it “right”, or ways to invalidate the person giving us feedback…there are many ways of avoiding the possibility that what we’re doing isn’t valuable.
One of the most powerful shifts we can make is to embrace the possibility that what we are doing isn’t wanted and needed. Whether that’s the job we’re doing, the business we’re running, the relationships we are in - finding out at the earliest opportunity gives us so much freedom and power to make a change. Either by finding out what we need to do differently or what’s missing or what’s in the way - or by walking away.
In the limited time we get to enjoy the gift of being alive, would we rather know if we’re wasting our time now? Today? Or when it’s far too late?
By embracing the possibility that now isn’t working, and making peace with the idea of either changing or walking away, we can feel totally at peace with how we spend our time and the decisions we make. We can call that acceptance, or mindfulness, or peace, or zen-ness…we can even call it confidence.
Try this for yourself. Ask questions about how things are going - we have a list to get you started. Get in touch with what you’re brilliant at, and start thinking of ways to build your life around it - we have a podcast on that.
If you’re ready to give yourself this gift of being truly free in the mind - start now.
Interested in this topic of confidence? We have a whole podcast on it - listen here.
