The Problem with Confidence
A blog post from 12th April 2018
I was chatting with a friend this week about her teenage daughter and it got me thinking about the topic of ‘confidence’. I often hear from teachers and parents “She’s never been a confident child” or “I wish he would be more confident”. We tend to talk about it as something we either have or we don’t have, like there’s a yard stick of what is perceived as confident and we measure ourselves against it. But I have yet to meet someone who is completely confident or has no confidence at all. I mean it’s not something we are born with, like they can line up the babies in a ward and say ‘that’s the confident one there’.
My friend was telling me that her daughter is doing really well at school and is confident in her abilities and her work, yet the thought of ordering and paying for something in a cafe terrifies her. Is she a confident person or not? She feels confident in some situations and not in others – sounds like a human to me.
The problem with confidence is that we have expectations about what it should look like and when we should have it. But if we really tried to define it, it’s pretty impossible. What looks and feels like confidence to me will be different to what it looks and feels for you. I see confidence as something quiet and strong, when someone listens more than they talk, when they don’t feel the need to prove themselves by shouting the loudest, when they feel comfortable enough in their own skin to let someone else shine. Someone else might call them a wall flower.
If you think about the situations where you feel confident now, they may not have always been that way – your work, being a parent, playing a sport, driving, talking to a stranger, and there may still be times where you don’t feel confident in those situations from time to time, but that doesn’t define you as a person, you don’t have to label yourself as confident or not confident.
So have a think about this for yourself and if you have children, talk about it with them too….
What does confidence look and feel like for you?
When do you feel most confident? How does that feel, how do you behave?
Think of something you find easy now, that would have been hard for you in the past – there’s your evidence that your confidence is not fixed and you can grow it anywhere.
If you have a child you would describe as ‘not confident’, have a good look for the times when they are happiest, most relaxed, the things they find easy – there’s the confidence there.
So that’s my thoughts on confidence. Let me know what you think, I’m always open to a new perspective….