The Myth of Confidence

The Myth of Confidence My clients often come to me with the idea that what they need to make their life better is confidence.” If only I had more confidence”, they say, “then I could act in order to change my life for the better. “ They are waiting to have this magical thing called confidence before they take effective action. This is a huge mistake. In order to act you don’t need confidence. In fact, you can’t know if you are going to succeed at something until you have actually accomplished what you have set out to do. The way it actually works is that confidence comes after you do things rather than being a prerequisite for action. if you have never driven a car and have never taken driving lessons, it would actually be dangerous to feel confident in your driving abilities and just get in the car and drive on a busy expressway. However, once you have experienced driving many times, then you are now confident that you can drive, because you actually have lots of experience with successful driving. What people often need instead of confidence is competence. Rather than seek confidence work on becoming competent. Ask yourself, “How can I learn the skills that I need to achieve my goals?” Then work hard to develop your skill. The path to learning a new skill contains many mistakes. You have to be willing to experience feeling incompetent and be willing to get it wrong before you get it right. In fact if you are not feeling some degree of frustration, you are probably doing something you already know how to do not learning something new. Instead of focusing on whether or not you have enough confidence, shift your attention to what you want to accomplish, where you are now in relationship to your goal, and what you need to do in order to get where you want to go.