On Finding Confidence

When it comes to con­fi­dence, no one has an answer that works for every­one. For some the issue becomes being more self-com­pas­sion­ate. Oth­ers may see it as a deep­er access to faith. Some may need to explore the many psy­cho­log­i­cal things that have hap­pened to them that cre­at­ed neg­a­tive con­di­tion­ing — aka their voic­es of self-crit­i­cism. And some may need to do all of the above and more. So we all, in our own way have to fig­ure out what works for us, what our vocab­u­lary of self-con­fi­dence will be, not mak­ing the assump­tion that a sin­gle answer can be universal. 

But if I could add one piece of advice it would be this, that there is no res­cue from the loss of con­fi­dence. Noth­ing and no one can take the prob­lem away. There’s no mag­i­cal reprieve. All the pow­er and fame you might be giv­en, all the mon­ey, all the drugs, all the reas­sur­ances and approval of oth­ers will not make your insides dif­fer­ent. It is up to you to fig­ure it out. 

The Zen bud­dhists call this, “jump­ing right down the drag­on’s throat.” And that may seem like an incred­i­bly daunt­ing, if not frankly impos­si­ble task. So let’s talk about what that real­ly means. 

It means get­ting to the point where there is a rebel­lion, a thor­ough men­tal and emo­tion­al mutiny against all of the inte­ri­or feel­ings and thoughts that pre­vent you from stand­ing up in your own life. It means using your will as a human being to defeat the neg­a­tive voic­es of self-crit­i­cism, the painful warp in your self-judg­ments. Usu­al­ly, a per­son has to be good and sick and tired of the inner crit­i­cism, sick to death of it.

The trick­i­est part is know­ing how to man­age this inner rev­o­lu­tion. When I’ve worked with clients on self-con­fi­dence issues, they say, “but I don’t want to become arro­gant” or “I don’t want oth­ers to see me as ego-cen­tric or insen­si­tive” or “I’m not strong enough.” But, of course, these voic­es of self-crit­i­cism can be just the sec­ond lev­el of the same dynam­ic, the sup­pressed demon show­ing up in oth­er dis­guis­es, some of which can be very con­fus­ing. One of these cer­tain­ly can be as an arro­gant brat. So this means the fight is on sev­er­al fronts, and you must keep going on all of them until they are defeat­ed. This notion that one part of your­self is fight­ing anoth­er part may be dis­turb­ing. After all, aren’t we sup­posed to be whole, to feel a deep sense of inte­gra­tion, to not repress anything? 

It’s an inter­est­ing conun­drum. But at a cer­tain point in our devel­op­ment, call­ing out this inner war for what it is, and the part of the inner world that is work­ing against a more pos­i­tive des­tiny, must be tackled.

If it helps, you may want to con­vert the image from some­thing war­like to some­thing a lit­tle more peace­ful — har­ness­ing an inner wild­ness, for exam­ple, or car­ing for an inner wild child. In this con­text, there’s a parental mes­sage — “no absolute­ly means no” — to both the crit­i­cal self-mes­sag­ing that con­tin­ues to shame and the shame­less brat that can show up near­by. You can see that both voic­es are immature.

What we do with these “chil­dren” is love them, and sim­ply help them grow up through con­tin­u­ing guid­ance. Per­haps you rec­og­nize both in your­self, one a par­a­site called shame, one a shame­less brat. You may notice the brat and end up with the shame, or see the shame and then end up with a brat.

So first you have to set the bound­ary and stick with it, build­ing your strength as you con­tin­ue to push through, and see­ing all the dis­guis­es. Noth­ing can get you out of that respon­si­bil­i­ty. It may well be an act of pure self-dis­ci­pline, and indeed you may feel like you are in the army. But then, as insight comes, you see that the “train­ing” is pay­ing off, and you know this — that no one saved you but yourself. 

And that can lead to an enor­mous vote of inner con­fi­dence, just you to you.

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