This year I have been working on a book about how we individually and collectively overvalue confidence. The book covers many aspects of how we think about confidence: the confidence we have in ourselves, the confidence we want to see in others, the confidence we feel compelled to project, our susceptibility to view confidence as competence, and the dangers of overconfidence, especially in an anxious world that craves certainty. I will introduce all of these angles in future blogs, but I want to start with talking about some of the mythology of self-belief.
Confidence is our belief in our ability to accomplish tasks and reach goals. Western culture promotes the idea that if we have enough self-belief we can do just about anything. We are raised on the messaging that in order to do hard things, take risks, and access the big energy required to realize our full potential, we have to believe in ourselves. Children’s shows include endless variations of the message in the famous Cinderella song: “If you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true.”
The imperative to maintain our self-confidence is also embedded in advertising. Numerous brands (Nike, Adidas, Gatorade) present inspirational messages about what the power of belief in oneself can do. Modern beauty campaigns have made an effort to counter the harm of narrowly defined beauty standards by promoting inner confidence as the new beauty standard. Dove offers us a “confidence kit” as part of their “self-esteem project.” L’Oréal Paris offers a series of testimonials from celebrities “to convey strong messages of self-worth to all women” and “share how they have gained strength, courage and confidence…” WHRL offers three shades of red lipstick in what they call “the confidence bundle.” We have commoditized self-confidence.
The self-help industry also stands at the ready with self-belief bolstering wisdom and advice. In addition to best-selling books that advise us on how to bolster our confidence and self-esteem, I was recently sent an article about the nine different confidence boosting apps I could try. Popular motivational speakers drive home the message that overcoming self-doubt and believing in ourselves is foundational to our ability to achieve our goals and become our most fully realized selves. I don’t deny that many people find value in the self-actualizing themes of popular motivational speakers and messaging. What I want to point out is that the accumulated volume of all this messaging makes it LOUD AND CLEAR that to be our best selves and meet our full potential we need to be steadfast in our quest for high levels of self-belief.
Let me be clear: self-belief is awesome. Everything feels easier when we feel sure of ourselves. Feeling confident in ourselves and our capabilities can buoy optimism and resilience, which are lifelines when things feel hard. Helping people build their confidence is part of my job, and I wish healthy doses of self-belief for us all. If you asked me if I’d rather take on any of the challenges I’ve faced while brimming with belief in myself or while battling anxiety and doubt, I’d definitely choose the belief.
But I think it’s important to recognize we don’t need it. We can do hard things, face fears, and overcome obstacles when our confidence has gone fishing. Even when it goes fishing and gets lost at sea for a for a good, long while. We hear so much about how important this self-belief is, and of course it feels so bad not to have it, that when it’s absent we sometimes take it as an indication that we can’t or shouldn’t do something. A loss of confidence can feel like its own crisis to be managed. We become overly focused on what’s missing in us, and that distracts us from seeing what we are moving towards, and what we can do to get there. This is why I think it’s important to expand upon and challenge the notion that we need confidence to achieve or do hard things. We need a new message that doesn’t burden us with the idea that we should feel better about ourselves and our daily disappointments than we do. I tell my clients who struggle with their confidence that they don’t need to believe they’re going to make a killer impression or crush their meeting or presentation. They don’t need to wake up feeling assured about all the hard things they have to do that day. They just need to keep getting their doubting, fearful selves into the situations where they can slowly build skills and experience. There’s a path to the successes they are striving for that includes all the doubts in their brain and rumblings in their belly. Cultural messaging wants us to believe there is an urgent gap to fill when our confidence is low. But we can build our capability, channel our resolve and courage, and do great work, right alongside our floundering self-belief.
When we look around, we see a lot of highly confident people who are successful in their field, and that feeds our assumptions that confidence is a necessary ingredient for achievement. But we don’t know if someone’s confidence is a cause of their success. Their success could be due to talent, luck, discipline, privilege, drive, training, or purpose. Successful people are often confident…because they are successful. Confidence is a result of capability, achievement, and talent more reliably than it is a cause.
There is no consistent evidence that high confidence leads to high achievement or to dreams coming true. Confidence is not a pre-requisite for fulfilling your hopes and achieving your goals. Yes, it feels better if we get to go after what we want fueled by confidence. For some of us, higher confidence and a healthier sense of self-esteem would generate more ease and comfort inside our skin, and that is no small thing. But the idea that this high belief in ourselves and what we can do is necessary for success, whatever success means to you, is precisely that—an idea.
Of course building our self-belief is desirable. There are many ways in which confidence bolsters and buoys us. Yet it is also true that there is a very long, perhaps endless list of people in all fields who have accomplished lofty goals and met big challenges through persistent doubt and insecurity. My time in the arts and as an executive coach talking to thousands of people about facing challenges and building their capabilities has proven this to me over and again. Part of why I am pushing through my own unsettling experience of self-doubt to write this book is because I want to normalize the uncomfortable feelings that come up when our confidence is low. I want to share how that discomfort is adaptive, appropriate and useful. I want to let more of you know than I can reach in my coaching practice that as you grapple with the unease of your low or wildly fluctuating confidence, you are in the very best of company.