What is Confidence?

Are you ever around a person, and they just exude so much confidence that you’re like, man, I wish I could be as confident as them? Some people seem like they are born with an abundance of confidence.

And in fact, most children have more confidence than a lot of adults in the room. Have you ever watched a child sing or dance in front of a crowd of strangers, or even in your own living room? Pardon my language, but no fucks given.

But something happens to a lot of us through teenage years and into adulthood. We question our worth and our value and our right to be in a room. Maybe we didn’t learn confidence from our parents at home. Maybe we became uncomfortable in our bodies through puberty, and that just never went away. Maybe we had confidence, but we allowed an unhealthy partner to strip it away. Maybe we have a small inner critic that just won’t stop telling us we aren’t enough.

The truth is, though, we are enough. And even if we lack confidence today, we can work to build it.

I have always been loud and outspoken, and people have taken that for confidence. But they didn’t actually know what the voice inside my head was telling me a lot of the time that I wasn’t good enough. I appeared confident on the outside, but inside I was anything but that a lot of the times. For me, I can honestly say it has taken work – true practice – to learn to be confident, both inside and out.

So what does it mean to be confident?

Being confident doesn’t mean you have all the answers. It means that you stand firm in what you do know and that you are willing to find out what you don’t.

Confidence means knowing who you are, instead of letting other people’s opinions define you. 

It means having the humility to ask for help. It means being wise enough to ask for counsel when you don’t know all the answers. 

It means having the grace to acknowledge mistakes and the willingness to learn from them.

Being confident means doing esteemable things to build up your self esteem.

It means saying no to things that diminish your worth or your value.

Confidence is walking into a room and knowing you have a right to be there, a right to take up space. It means knowing you are not the best thing in the whole room, but knowing that you were not the worst – and that no one is either of those things. 

Being confident means that you no longer compare your insides to other people’s outsides. It means knowing that you are all on your own path, and that you are not less than for being in a different place in life than other people.

So how do you gain confidence?

To gain confidence, you must practice being a confident person. It literally can be as simple as that. Practice, practice, practice: act like a confident person, even if you don’t feel like one, and the feelings will follow.

Quiet that voice inside that says you are not enough. Because I promise, you are definitely enough.

Take note of what people you admire do, people who seem to have confidence:

How do they act when they enter a room?

How do they speak?

What is their demeanor?

What kind of voice do they use?

I’m not talking about people who are overly braggadocios or their egos are too big for a room. But I’m talking about people who are well-rounded and confident. The true leaders – not just in business but in life.

Again – act confident, and your mind will follow. We can’t always think our way into right acting, but we can definitely act our way into right thinking.

Until next time,

Jeri Austin

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