Charismatic Confidence - Little Fish Big Impact

How important is confidence?

Making our career dreams come true requires buckets of charismatic confidence.

Anything affecting the fragility of our self-concept can damage our confidence. So let’s begin by stating what confidence is and review some examples of how we can misunderstand confidence.

What is Confidence?

Confidence comes down to being satisfied with ourselves, with our own knowledge, intelligence, abilities and skills – not much then! Of course, this means if we are confident, then we are free from doubt. We manage our positive and negative life experiences to protect our confidence. We remain rest-assured in our capabilities.

This understanding of confidence explains why some people never seem to be confident. It also explains why some people seem to always be confident, even if they place limitations on themselves.

The “wise someone” will be always be confident because that “wise someone” will be sure of themselves in a situation.

They will know and master themselves well enough to never stray into a position, where they are not sure of their abilities to navigate the situation. Thus, they minimise the risk of their confidence being attacked.

Nurturing Confidence

Nothing kills confidence as much as a poor self-image. If we don’t like ourselves, how can we be confident in our own abilities and skills?

Failing hurts our confidence, but sometimes it’s for the best. Though no one likes to see their plans go sour or their hard work go to waste. Sometimes mistakes happen.

The next time things don’t work out the way we want them to, we should not feel humiliated, instead we should feel humbled. Be grateful for the learning experience and we keep going.

With confidence, you have won before you have started.
(Marcus Garvey) 1

Our expectations of others can influence our confidence. If we come from a supportive family, we might be very confident in both our own abilities and confident in our family’s tendency to help us out of tough spots. Our supportive family will give us encouragement to deal with life’s knocks. Being more confident comes from our support network, be it family, friends, or work colleagues.

We get the chance to build confidence in others too, which can come full circle as we get positive feedback or see a person succeed, which reflects well on us.

Overconfidence

Of course, there is such a thing as overconfidence. Because confidence has to do with perception. The overconfident person is not likely to admit, or rather to know, they are overconfident. They may, of course, recognise in retrospect that they acted in a way that exhibited overconfidence.

Overconfidence can lead someone to make mistakes because they overestimate their ability to handle a situation or operate under certain constraints. We all have witnessed some examples of this.

Overconfidence is a one time lapse in judgement occurring because someone believes because they succeeded in one thing, then it means they may keep up their overconfident attitude until they fail at something. Even when they fail they may blame others instead of reassessing their abilities and skills.

Blind Confidence

People who talk about “blind confidence” are not talking about confidence, so much as they are talking about arrogance. We build confidence on trial and error and knowing how we will think and behave in a set of circumstances. Blind confidence means feeling that we can handle any situation without question.

This kind of confidence is common in children, because for a child everything is new. Without this kind of false confidence, we would not be able to develop real confidence as a child growing-up.

Once we have reached adulthood, we should have an understanding of our knowledge and abilities. Trusting decisions to “blind confidence” is just acting or performing something with no control or preparation.

Toxic People

The people around us have a tremendous impact on our confidence. If we don’t have the support of a caring family and friends, then this can have detrimental effects on our confidence. Toxic people like to put us down and insult us. It can hurt our confidence. Sometimes it can be subtle put downs or “drip feed” of insults.

Change your thoughts and you change your world.
(Norman Vincent Peale) 2

Sometimes, the best thing to do is to remove these toxic people from our lives. Other times, however, knowing why they treat us this way can help us help them.Some people put other people down because they are insecure and belittling others makes them feel more important.

These insecurities make it difficult for them to feel valued. So giving some praise and encouragement goes a long way to making them feel more secure. So they don’t feel the need to put down others to lift them up.

Although there is the option to play nice, this does not always work though, and it does not always have to. If someone is putting us down, our first responsibility is to ourselves and our own physical and psychological safety. If cutting out a toxic person is the only way to protect our mental and emotional health, then it is right to do so.

As many circumstances can affect our confidence, then checking in with ourselves daily to review our confidence is vital to stop any runaway emotional trains, which can demolish or damage that precious charismatic confidence.

References:

1 Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) Jamaican Political activist, author, journalist, entrepreneur

2 Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) American minister, author