🦸‍♀️ The Key To Confidence
- We are all at the bleeding edge of our understanding.
- And we are all learning every day whether we realize it or not. It could be learning the new route to the grocery store you took last week. It could be learning how you look in beige. It could be learning how to do better in Call of Duty. You could be like me, learning how I can better serve my team or my family every day…how can I make their lives better? How can I help?
- Sure, there are people learning in more “conventional” ways. Sitting in class. Reading a book. Paying for school. But learning is not limited to a particular format.
- We are all acquiring and processing information, then incorporating it into our world views.
- Another example: Earlier this year I read a personal finance book and learned how to get better results in the stock market during a downturn. It sorta worked. And another one: Earlier this evening I binged the show Cobra Kai to learn karate. Nah okay, that one was for fun.
- Or was it?
- While watching Cobra Kai I could’ve been studying the camera angles, the set design, the script writing or, yes, even the karate. Learning is not pre-determined based on environment. Learning is a result of your perspective applied to new situations and information. It’s making observations and testing those observations.
- When I started my job as a software consultant after university I was jealous of the experts on my team (and not just because they made more money than me). I was jealous of their minds.
- I was jealous of their domain expertise.
- Domain expertise is a phrase that describes your level of expertise within a particular domain (duh). At work it’s all the knowledge you need to do your job, or in my case, the knowledge you need to support your customers. At home it’s the procedural knowledge you possess for what chores need to be done and how to do them. When reading, it’s your understanding of all the intricacies of Westeros as you read through Game of Thrones.
- With domain expertise comes confidence. A sense of “I’ve been there before, I know what I’m doing.” Swagger.
- The thing about confidence is that it’s tremendously helpful in the work place and in life.
- If confidence increases our chance of success, how can we get it if we’re still learning? Well…
- Confidence is believing you can before you’ve done it. It’s believing in your ability to figure it out.
- It naturally comes when you learn more within your domain.
- (And can evaporate when you step outside your domain).
- But how can I be more confident now before I have the experience and domain expertise?
- The answer is belief.
- It doesn’t mean believing in yourself to the point of delusion. BSing your self won’t spark confidence in yourself or others. You want to be honest about your limitations…
- …But you also want to believe in your ability to grow beyond those limitations.
- Keep in mind that progress and success does not occur in a straight line. There will be failures, but don’t get mired in them. Think like the ancient Skeptics and reserve your judgement. That most recent failure isn’t a destination. It’s a stop on your journey. A learning. And when you look back in 6 months or even years later, what you perceive as a failure now may be a necessary stepping stone in your success story.
- Back in college I took an acting class. In that class I learned that when acting it’s about “always actively doing something.”
- Don’t be bored or be excited or be mad. Do the actions that people would do were they those things.
- So don’t be confident.
- Instead…Believe in your ability to figure it out and you will find that confidence will emerge as a by-product.
- You’re still at the bleeding edge of your understanding, but you’ll find that that bleeding edge is expanding more and more as you continue to grow and master your craft be it chores, your work, your school, or anything else.
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Thanks for reading,
-Michael
P.S. — Take it from a guy who used to really struggle with OCD (aka the uncertainty disorder). Anyone can be confident. It may or perhaps will feel unnatural at first (it definitely did for me), but stick with it and over time you will find it to be true. Like a snowball rolling down a hill, confidence will accrue. Best of luck.
“All confidence is acquired, developed. No one is born with confidence. Those people you know who radiate confidence, who have conquered worry, who are at ease everywhere and all the time, acquired their confidence, every bit of it.” — David Schwartz in The Magic Of Thinking Big
