I’ve spent some time reflecting yesterday and I realized that. When people want you to be confident they don’t want you to be actually confident, they want you to pretend you are. It is idiotic and makes no sense, but it explains a lot of situations in which I behaved the wrong way.
confidence to me means the opposite of that. it means questioning your asssumptions, approaching things from a different angle, reflect, recalculate, asking for a second opinion. Because I’ll end up with greater confidence that my assertions are more truthful. But apparently doing all that makes people think I’m insecure. Shit!
Being confident doesn’t necessarily mean being correct. It means you think you are correct.
If you are double checking your answers, that ensures you are correct and you can then be confident because you’ve double checked. But if you had to double check your answers, that means you weren’t initially confident.
Acting confident in front of people reassures them of your expertise because it signals that you’ve done something enough that it’s become ingrained in your memory or habits.
An example is a bus driver. I would want them to be confident about the route they are driving. If they are constantly checking a map at every intersection, I would be afraid they were not familiar with the area and might miss a turn if they misread the map even once.
Another example would be walking. Do you check your balance with every step you take? I’m sure you don’t. And people around you don’t actively watch you to make sure you don’t fall. My infant, on the other hand, rebalances himself with every step and constantly holds onto steady things around him. Most people that watch him will be concerned about him falling because he’s communicating a lack of confidence, a lack of experience.
You should definitely question your assumptions and approach things from a different angle. You will definitely end up with greater confidence. But if you do this in front of people you’re displaying insecurity in your own assumptions and reasoning.
Some of the dumbest idiots are also the most confident.
They’re not pretending. They actually believe in themselves. If you tell them they’re wrong, prove it with data, show them clear evidence that they’ve made a mistake… they’ll continue believing they didn’t make a mistake.
Some of these idiots end up running large companies or even countries. Which is a problem, because very big mistakes get very expensive, especially when the people in charge refuse to accept a mistake was made.
Never be ashamed of being self-critical. It’s a sign of intelligence, and the world would be a better place if more people were like this.
This being said, sometimes it’s important to make a decision and roll with it, because if you had to double check everything it’d take too long and you’d miss opportunities or fail to avoid pitfalls. Like taking too long to dodge an obstacle while driving.
I disagree with this. There is such a thing as true confidence, and imo it mostly comes from the knowledge that whatever happens you’ll be able to handle the right way. “Fake it til you make it” confidence is called arrogance (and will never turn into actual confidence).
Right. I’ve made the same observation. Very annoying.
