The Year of Fun #41: A 12 Rules For Life Book Club

What the heck is confidence, really?

Your confidence is made up of three areas:

This is our judgement of how valuable we are, and how comfortable we feel being our self. So you can imagine low self-esteem statements are things like ‘I’m not good enough’ or ‘I don’t deserve this awesome thing’ and you can also see it when people reject compliments or self-sabotage.

Sometimes referred to as self efficacy, this is how capable we feel at performing tasks, solving problems and achieving goals. So low competence might exhibit itself as imposter syndrome - so not feeling capable of the task at hand, feeling like you need MORE training or MORE knowledge or MORE skills. It’s different from low self esteem in that with competence you’re focussing on the skills or knowledge required, which are of course learnable - whereas with self-esteem, the feeling is deeper - more to do with your inherent worth as a human being.

This relates to how well we feel accepted by others. This is more outward focussed, more to do with how others perceive us and how we ‘fit’ into society, our community or even a small group like you might find in a workshop or classroom.

It’s quite common that someone who is low in one of these areas tends to be low in the others, but it’s also possible to have low self-esteem but have high competence and/or a sense of belonging.

For example, as a ‘recovering perfectionist’ myself, and having spoken to many others this combination can pop up frequently. Perfectionists may be overly-critical and negative about their personal traits (low self-esteem) and yet see themselves as quite capable in certain areas (high competence).

A perfectionist architect might consider themselves competent at technical drawing, but feel unattractive and uncharismatic as a person. It’s easy for this to happen, because we might get encouraged in a measurable, outward-facing skill early in our lives, so we continue to excel at that because of the encouragement and validation we’re given.

But, we might not have been given or might not recognise all the positive reinforcement from the less-measurable, less-tangible qualities we have. Unconditional love is just love for the sake of love, not for performing at a certain task - is something we all need, and that’s what boosts self-esteem. The problem is, even if we have it, whether it’s from a parent, grandparent, lover or friend - it’s harder to spot.

Someone with high self-esteem can show up fully in projects and engage with people because they aren’t crippled with fear of failure or rejection. Of course they still get hurt and disappointed when things don’t go to plan, but their setbacks don’t diminish their sense of self. They are resilient, open to new experiences and relationships, have a higher tolerance to risk, and are accepting and forgiving of themselves and others.

If we hear encouraging words from those key care givers early on, whether it’s encouragement in certain tasks (competence) or in words of unconditional love (self esteem) then we can develop a strong sense of belonging. This is the only element in the triad of confidence that I can’t see being cultivated from within. This really is dependent on those around us.

Which is a bummer if you’re a highly independent introvert. On the upside, I’ve seen a STRONG correlation between raising competence and self esteem (even if that’s generated from within) and a rise in belonging. Why? How? Well, the more competent and sure of themselves a person is (er, to an extent) the more likely others are to approve of them. That’s how our monkey minds work.

It’s hilarious really, when you think of some of the ‘guru’ figures out there. Whether it’s a rock star or some spiritual leader, they tend to have an abundance of self-confidence, and that alone attracts people. Even if those guru characters are full of hot air in reality.

I’ve been trying to analyse what it is that draws me to certain thought leaders, and repels me to others. Regardless of their personality type or their talents, I have to admit they all have an air of confidence about them. However, this also comes with a limit. Someone who is overly confident and doesn’t back it up with skills (so high self-esteem without the competence in an area I can measure or observe) I’m repelled.

The thing is, this is all relative. My judgement of someone’s competence says more about my tastes and values than it does about that person. And naturally, someone could look at my work and deem me incompetent, and therefore see any self-esteem I show as unwarranted, and therefore they won’t approve of me. Therefore, I don’t get rewarded by that sense of belonging from them - they’re effectively saying: I don’t want you in my tribe, thank you very much.

For this reason, m...