I wrote a post on DREWspective a long time ago, simply entitled “Confidence”. It was one of my proudest posts, but unfortunately during my annual pruning it got deleted – so for the benefit of you guys I’m going to do a rewrite.

“Confidence”, along with “positive”, “self-esteem”, “outgoing”, “bubbly”, “sexy” and many more terms you can name, is one of the most popular modern buzzwords. Whether it’s women telling people they find “confidence” attractive, or general advice from people out of nowhere telling you to “be more confident”, just about everybody has something to say about confidence.

Including me.

But what is this thing called “confidence”? And how does someone become confident? Nobody actually has an answer, and I asked myself this question a long time ago.

To understand what “confidence” is, let’s break down the word itself:

  • the suffix -ence is Latin for “trait or characteristic”.
  • the word confide, made from the prefix con- (Latin for “with, together, combine”) and the word fides (Latin for “faith”), means to put trust in something.

Confidence = the ability to have faith.

If we put the pieces together again, we see that confidence is the ability to trust, or to have faith. So to have confidence in something means to believe in it (to believe that it’s true) and to have faith that it will be reliable.

It then becomes obvious that “confidence” isn’t a generic, catch-all thing – it’s possible to be confident and not confident in different areas. For example, you may have complete confidence in the idea there is a God, but none whatsoever that a shiny new car is going to arrive in the mail tomorrow, complete with all taxes paid.

Self-confidence – today’s Holy Grail, if you believe the “experts” – is simply the ability to trust and have faith in yourself. It’s basically the ability to think that you are sufficient and a good enough person for yourself; that you can trust yourself to be able to handle almost any situation life throws at you. When people talk about being confident they are usually implying self-confidence.

The opposite of confidence

The opposite of having confidence, as I’ve said so many times on DREWspective, is having doubt: the gradual belief and disillusionment that something isn’t true.

Now, it’s not always a bad thing to have doubts; there are plenty of people (women and politicians) who will lie to your face, and particularly with words you mustn’t take everything at face value. I suppose even then, although you can have doubts about their words and actions, you can be confident that what you’re seeing and hearing isn’t the truth. And if you make a mistake and believe them, real confidence will help you realise it was just a mistake.

The big problem is with self-doubt, or doubting yourself, which can cause a lot of other problems in the long run. Believe it or not, most people actually want other people to doubt themselves, because it’s the only way those people can feel “happy” and get a sense of being “superior” to others. It also results in ease of manipulation and a lot more sales, whether of pharmaceuticals, food or material possessions.

If you’ve ever heard one of these “positive” people, or an “expert”/”guru”, talking about how great they think they are while calling other people names and dismissing anybody who isn’t as successful as they are as being lazy, that’s the kind of person with fake self-confidence I’m talking about.

Confidence is learned.

The main point of my original post was that the ability to have confidence is a learned skill; someone learns how to become confident and develops that characteristic.

Let me set a few of these ignorant, no-knowledge-having people straight…

You can’t “get” confidence.

You can’t go out and buy confidence.

You can’t become confident overnight, much less instantaneously.

Confidence isn’t a feeling or emotion you can switch on and off.

Confidence isn’t a material possession, or this season’s must-have trendy item.

Confidence isn’t the result of spending ridiculous amounts of money on clothes, shoes, make-up, cosmetic surgery, fast cars, expensive food or other items other people claim will make you feel more “confident”.

But most importantly, confidence isn’t a magic pill that will make your life better. Even though people insist that being “confident” makes someone more attractive, whether it’s to women, employers, investors or the like, it’s no guarantee that this someone will get what they want. (You see, other people make excuses for not accepting things too.)

Personally I think that confidence in a specific area is something that has to be developed internally – sometimes from scratch – and probably the best way to do it is through learning and life experience, because other people’s words and experiences are often unreliable.

It all starts from 1 + 1 = 2 (assuming 1 is an integer).