If doing or being something was as simple as believing, this world would be a much different place. True confidence is much more than a belief, it's a deep understanding of your abilities. It's a common misconception that people can do things because they're confident - but rather people are confident because they do things.
Confidence is more than a feeling
In popular self-help culture the phrase "fake it until you make it" has gone rampant. While in certain contexts the phrase certainly has its place, too often I see this concept being used as a consolation prize for a lack of skills. You can't fake being a neurosurgeon if you don't know anything about the brain. But what you do is try to fake your emotional responses to the world.
You can try to be confident if you're terrified - essentially, "fake it until you make it" just helps you push through feelings of inadequacy. But pushing through inadequacies is a vastly different thing from gaining competencies. Confidence overflows from competencies which is why it's so much more than a feeling. Pairing competency with your confidence is the only way to make real progress. Confidence is not a choice, it's a byproduct of your state of being. You can only choose to be confident for so long.
While you can choose your attitude, confidence is far more than an attitude shift. It's a perspective transformation. Confidence is the gatekeeper of taking impactful actions. If you wait for the day you feel confident to take action, that day may never come. Waiting for a feeling to act is like waiting for the weather to clear up before going outside; you're differing the power of your actions to a force beyond your control. If you wait until you feel confident to do anything, life will pass you by.
Furthermore, we don't deserve to feel confident for existing. Just like you don't deserve to be happy, you have to do certain things to get you to that emotional state. Feeling a certain way won't change your life. It's not your emotions that lead to a better life, it's facilitating a healthy relationship between your actions and those emotional responses that will form a better life. Until the life you're leading is aligned with the life you know you should be living, you won't feel confident despite how much you want to or how much you try. You can only live a lie for so long.
Courage is temporary confidence
It's easy get confidence and courage confused; think of courage as a choice and confidence as a lifestyle. Confidence is built upon a history of past successes, and a byproduct of a life well lived. Courage is a decision that you make in the spur of the moment.
True confidence will last as long as your supporting actions do. This is why you can't suddenly become confident overnight; you can't materialize those past successes out of thin air. At its core, confidence is a direct reflection of what you believe about yourself. Everyone wants a dose of confidence in their lives, but not everyone is willing to do what it takes to get there.
Courage on the other hand can be gone in an instant. Just because someone was courageous doesn't make them an eternally courageous person. Courage is not a reflection of your abilities, but what you are willing to face in that moment. Courage can be eroded by fear, while confidence can only be eroded by a lack of belief in yourself and/or the deterioration of your abilities.
Avoiding false confidence
Just like we can't understand what light is without darkness, in a similar way we can't begin to fully grasp what false confidence is without comparing it with true confidence. At its core false confidence is about the perception others have of you while true confidence is less about you and more about your abilities. In other words, false confidence is essentially cockiness.
Confidence that isn't grounded in a history of actions is cockiness. Cockiness is what you want other people to see. Confidence is what you see in yourself. There is no element of faith or chance when it comes to confidence. Confidence is purely a byproduct of actions that support your beliefs. As Drake would say, "My luck is a sure thing because I'm living right." On the other hand, cockiness is misplaced confidence; instead of being confident in your abilities, you're confident in your perceived image.
This is a subtle distinction that is paramount to creating your future. Confidence isn't about you. The more confident you are, the less your life revolves around you. When you're confident of something, it's no longer about the act of you achieving a goal, it's about seeing those goals come to fruition. Confidence means letting your ego fade away and making your goals the focal point.
When you can do something purely for the sake of accomplishing that task, you won't care about people's recognition or approval. Confidence means knowing what you can do and going after more; it means pursuing your goals without any regard to potential praise or recognition for your efforts. Confidence is finding freedom from the opinions of others - freedom that leads you to living your life to its fullest potential. You press into that freedom because you know it's your efforts, not how much others approve of you, which will determine your success.
When you're confident you have the ability to separate yourself from your accomplishments. You no longer measure yourself by how much you've done because you know that your past accomplishments are an outdated measure of your capabilities. When you're truly confident your mind doesn't assure you that "you've got this," your mind tells your body to do it and it does it - no prep talk needed.
This however doesn't mean that to be confident you have to be perfect. When it comes to your weaknesses, confidence means being aware of them while choosing to push into your strengths. False confidence deals with weakness by trying to cover them up, often by stealing respect that wasn't earned. By contrast, confidence is first earning the respect of yourself which will then garner the respect of others.
Confidence is a vessel for achievement
It's nearly impossible to accomplish anything if you don't have confidence in yourself. But you won't build confidence unless you're taking very specific actions in a certain area of your life. But, it should never be your end goal to build confidence - accomplishment through the accumulation of skills should be your goal. This is how you ensure continual growth.
The byproduct of achievement is confidence; but if you pursue it, just like with happiness, it will allude you and you'll end up chasing after the wind. Instead, seek to build competencies that will bring you confidence. For in the end it's not confidence that enables you to accomplish once seemingly impossible feats, it's your competencies.
When people are confident of and competent at their skills, the world begins to bend to their vision. At this point confidence no longer becomes about looking for a way, but it becomes about making a way. True confidence exudes from a person when their actions speak so loudly that they don't have to say a word.
We need to stop thinking about confidence as a binary trait. Instead we should seek to take specific actions that earn us the right to be confident. You must earn confidence because it's a byproduct of your beliefs aligning with your actions. Earning confidence mandates that your actions backup the idea of the person you want to become. Confidence paves the path to your success long before you step foot on that pavement. In the end, you can't cheat that process.
