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Confidence
is a vital ingredient in successfully beginning, pursuing and completing
difficult undertakings. Lack of confidence is the primary reason for lack of
implementation of good ideas. If we delve into the etymology of the English
word confidence, we find that the prefix, "con," is Latin meaning
"with" or "together." The root, "fido,"
translates into "trust," "believe," "confide in."
Whenever you see an English word that begins with "con" or
"com" it very often indicates that the original meaning of the word
involved a concept that was communally formed: the word was intended to convey
that other people were inextricably interwoven in what happens to the
individual.
We
often refer to self-confidence. However, according to this analysis, this term
is actually a redundancy. The word confidence is sufficient to express one's
positive attitude toward personal competence, capability and self-sufficiency.
The word confidence literally means to trust or believe together with others in
an interdependent community. An individual will find it difficult to be
confident without the positive input and support from others.
The
existence of confidence in any member of a community indicates that that
community has an established culture of mutual trust and respect among its
citizens. This does not necessarily hold true for all cultures and communities
that a person happens to be a part of. For instance, you could be totally
confident of yourself within your home environment but totally lacking in
confidence within any number of other organizations and associations of which
you are a member. This has as much to do with the kinds of input from others in
these respective environments as it does with one's membership qualifications of
family, ability, preparation, experience or knowledge, for example.
We
weave our personal realities mainly from the multiple inputs from others. A boy
was struggling to move a large rock. His father walked by and asked, "Son,
are you using all your strength to move that rock?" His son replied,
"Yes, Dad." His father retorted, "Son, you are not using all
your strength because you have not yet asked me to help you." Our strength
and personal realities are formed and sustained by the contributions from others.
We are not nearly so strong or confident without them. When others are
encouraging and supportive, confidence builds and you are more likely to
stretch as well as strengthen your talents and abilities toward successful and
innovative applications and outcomes.
When
You Know You Know
One
of the ways a community demonstrates its support for its individual members is
to provide solid practical information regarding what it takes to succeed
within the community and beyond. The knowledge that is passed down and around
becomes the foundation for an individual's confidence in making decisions and
behaving in ways that are conducive for success.
After
this knowledge is disseminated, the supportive community will then provide
practical opportunities for the individual to apply what was learned. These
experiences create an internal sense of what works and what doesn't work. When
you know you know how to succeed, your confidence in performing the necessary
tasks that lead to successful achievement soars. Your confidence helps you
assess risks realistically and to bounce back from failure quickly.
Becoming
Confident in All You Do
How
do you become confident in all the situations in your life? It's simple,
really. You give to others what you want them to give to you. Life echoes. It
ripples. What you give out you get back in waves.
Although
confidence is socially constructed, the individual has a large part to play in
creating a community environment in which confidence is engendered and
nurtured. Mahatma Gandhi wisely observed, "You must be the change you wish
to see in the world." I would paraphrase this slightly to make it more
immediate to one's personal environment and also say, "you must be the
change you wish to see in others." If you wish to be around people who
smile more, then smile more! If you want to work in an environment that is
characterized by teamwork and mutual respect, then demonstrate to others how
these characteristics can be embodied and pragmatically expressed on a
consistent basis.
I
realize that to adopt this approach is to invite the possibility of failure,
perhaps even ridicule. Life is full of risks. It certainly is a risk, albeit
rather innocuous in nature, to smile at someone who clearly is in no mood to
smile. They might scowl back! Then how would you feel?
But
it's not about how you feel. It's about how you act. If you want to be around
people who have more reasons to smile, then you should take the risk that the
smile you offer will not be returned at that very moment. You might feel
awkward and uncomfortable. Big deal! By smiling, even when you don't feel like
it, you're giving permission for others to do the same, if not now, then later.
You're setting the stage for their subsequent behavior toward you and others,
not just their immediate reaction to your current behavior. Helen Keller, who
had more reasons than anybody else in history to be grumpy and sad, nonetheless
proclaimed, "Be happy. Talk happiness. Happiness calls out responsive
gladness in others."
Changing
Others By Changing Yourself
You've
no doubt heard that you can only change yourself and not others. This is true
if you try to change someone else's behavior without first trying to change
your own. It has been my experience that you can, in fact, alter other's ways of
acting by altering your own first, just as Gandhi noted. William James,
pragmatist philosopher & psychologist (1842 - 1910) said, "The
greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives
by altering their attitudes of mind." I would go further and say that
human beings can alter other people's lives by altering their own personal
attitudes of mind, as I've described above. When you change your attitude of
mind, that is, the way you habitually think (an attitude is nothing more than a
habit of thought), then you alter the way you behave and this, in turn, alters
the ways others behave toward you.
There
are two ways to change yourself that will also result in changes in others.
When you change something about yourself, especially your behavior, others are
naturally challenged to change their responses to the new you.
By
changing yourself you are also altering the social environment from which you
receive your cues and clues about how to be confident. In effect, you are
setting up a virtuous cycle (as opposed to a vicious cycle) that creates the
conditions for perpetual mutual benefit for both the individual and the
community.
Here
are the two ways to change yourself:
- Think your way into a new way of
acting
- Act your way into a new way of
thinking
It's
true that habitual behavior stems from habitual thought and that the quality of
your actions flow from the quality of your thinking. This is the "garbage
in - garbage out, excellence in - excellence out" notion in behavioral psychology.
Thinking your way into a new way of acting is effective. However, it often
takes a long time because you must think the new thought repetitively in order
for it to erase and replace the old way of thinking and for this new way to
finally change your behavior. Often there is not enough time to allow for this
way of changing to work itself out.
More
immediate change can be achieved by simply acting the way you want others to
behave. It's a curious fact of life that by doing something, even if you don't
feel like doing it, you make it easier to do again. Smiling elicits a desire,
no matter how small or subconscious, to have reason to continue smiling.
Treating co-workers as colleagues of equal worth even if they aren't of equal
status creates in their minds a reason to want to collaborate with you in the
future. This sort of risky behavior engenders trust and tames the tentativeness
toward teamwork because it results in the experience of mutual respect that
fosters the desire to repeat the behavior. The action gives rise to the
thinking that guides and supports future actions. This is the virtuous cycle
out of which confidence and achievement flow.
Be
Sure You’re Right, Then Go Ahead
General
Robert E. Lee, widely respected for his military and personal leadership, said,
"You have only always to do what is right. It will become easier by
practice, and you enjoy in the midst of your trials the pleasure of an
approving conscience." As a young child, I listened to the song of the
story of Davy Crockett countless times while sitting on the floor of my bedroom
in front of my little record player. I recall the spoken words that immediately
preceded the beginning of the song. "Be sure you're right, then go
ahead." This was Crockett's philosophy of life. It was his personal motto.
It shaped his behavior and tuned his integrity throughout his life.
In
fact, doing only always what you're sure is right is the only true source of
confidence. When you possess the pleasure of an approving conscience in all
that you do, you feed your soul with the necessary nutrient that keeps it
strong, resolute and successful, even in failure. We esteem General Lee today
because of his strength of confidence, character and wisdom even though he
failed to win a great war that he believed was right to fight.
Doing
right means that you do things you don't always feel like doing. It means that
you do things you don't have to do. But it's precisely these things that
determine what you'll be able to do more easily and with greater impact in the
future. Doing right creates the inspiration to continue to do right and the
confidence that you are doing right. The great early twentieth century
composer, Igor Stravinsky, said, "Just as appetite comes by eating, so
work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the
beginning."
Self-Made
Communities Count, Too
We
can now say with confidence that community, within which confidence is born, is
not merely something into which one is born and therefore has no control over.
It can be more than that. A community can be formed in the mind of an
individual by means of reading and meditating. We learn how to be confident
from the mental and spiritual communities we form throughout our lives as well
as the physical communities of family, neighborhood, city, school, church,
synagogue, mosque, associations and job. And we have control over these inner
communities in that we can continually modify our sources of wisdom and
understanding of what is right and worthy of our efforts.
Getting
It Right From the Start
Confidence
is telling the truth in advance of experiencing it. You can lead with
confidence when you start something even if you've never done it before because
your confidence is a predictor of the successful completion of the endeavor. Confidence
is a term to describe belief in one's ability to succeed in life. William James
comes again to aid our understanding: "Our belief at the beginning of a
doubtful undertaking is the one thing that insures the successful outcome of
our venture." And again, "Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is
worth living, and your belief will help create the fact."
In
the September 22, 2006 issue of the USA Today newspaper, an article on the soul
of a champion quotes Patrick Cohn, sports psychologist and President of Peak
Performance Sports, on the need for confidence in order to attain championship
levels of performance. "Self-confidence is probably the number one mental
skill that championship athletes possess. Simply put, it is their belief in their
ability to perform. They see themselves as winners." Confidence is seeing
yourself as successfully accomplishing something you haven't yet done, bringing
that future positive self-image into the present and then using it as the
impetus and inspiration to succeed at doing it.
So
Then, It Works Both Ways
Confidence
arises from and is fed by both the past and the future. It begins in the
communities that the individual participates in, both visible and invisible. It
is nurtured by history and visualization, by experience and expectation, by
fact and dream, by knowledge and hope, by achievement and aspiration.
Acquiring
and growing confidence is the responsibility of each individual. You are in
charge of how confident you feel and how confidently you act by choosing what
to focus on in your past and in your future. If you're sure you're right in
your focus, you'll be sure to bring about what you’re thinking about. And the
realization of this confidence will contribute to the community the confidence
others need to do what they're sure is right. And thus the virtuous cycle is
formed that results in increasingly greater achievements and benefits for
humanity and the world. |
