Growing in Confidence
Writers change their minds, quite frequently actually.
It’s not that we are wishy-washy people, but we are growth-oriented people. We stop and start and try again– within a single project as well as over the course of our careers.
The act of putting something concrete on a page forces you to sort and seek clarity over and over again. Writing is like young love, asking “Is this real? Are we right for each other? Will the intensity of this relationship take over and rob me of who I am without it?” Then, strangely, over time, writing creates an intimacy with a subject matter, a fidelity that leaves you wondering if you know anything about the subject matter at all. Achieve any success with writing and publishing a work, while a birth, disrupts the intimacy between yourself and the subject matter. A shared love, maybe a public love, feels stretched thin among too many people with too many questions. The public work separates you just enough from your beloved thoughts and words to leave you uneasy, returning your brain to the text again and again, asking 2, 4, 8 years later, “Could that have been said differently? Could I have been more clear? Should I have spent more time and given more attention to this segment?”
In this way, putting something into print pokes at your confidence. Writing has also felt to me like giving birth. As my first first babies were born, they were complete and lovely in themselves, not lesser than their later brothers and sisters, even though I had so little concept as to what birthing entailed, how it would wreck and mend my body and soul over the course of time and in a single moment. Yet, my later babies’ births were uniquely buoyed by my prior experiences, made easier and more navigable because I had walked through labor before. Confidence was built in the earlier thing, assisting the later thing into being.
The anxiety of early writing haunts me a bit. If only I could have injected more confidence into my younger self. There are words I have put into print that I wish I could suck back in, re-sort, and re-birth with more delicate care and mostly more ease. I wish I had known then the nature of confidence - which, while related, won’t be built in the knowledge of my subject matter or my connection to an audience, but my belief in my value as a person taking up space and bringing my words to the world.
Confidence is a belief that I am capable, not that I am absolute. Confidence is grounded in my belief that I have potential within my field and within my writing, not the certainty that I will be successful. In fact, more real and alive in the knowledge that I am only human, mistakes will be made, and my voice is an important addition to the world, in youth and in maturity.
Confidence
/ˈkänfəd(ə)ns/
the appreciation we have for our own personhood and skill set, the internal knowledge that we have something to bring to the table, whether discovered or as yet to be revealed
Confidence is not actually an emotion, but it is strongly connected to an emotional experience. People talk about feeling confident or their related lack of feeling confident leaves them wishing for more confidence. It also has ties to other emotions, particularly those of connectedness. I feel more confident when I feel less alone, less on the outside, less confused.
Research shows four components to confidence:
Our current psychological state
We are more likely to feel confident when our emotions are not all over the place, when we are in a state of well-being and less emotional activation. If you are walking into a situation where you feel like people are going to rip you apart, or at the very least offer low support with a side of judgment, confidence will be harder to hang on to. Taylor Swift’s wise words, “Haters gonna hate,” apply here. Focusing on the audiences that want to receive our work or skills and staying away from the dark reaches of social media who want to misunderstand us go a long way in accessing confidence.
Exercise: How does where you go and who are you around on a daily basis impact your emotional state? When you offer a gem, do you mostly feel like it will be received with understanding, given adequate attention, be held in contemplation, or shut down?
Our accomplishments
Past experience does build resilence within us, particularly the knowledge of what we have done well. Even the tiniest bit of fodder - that eighth grade poetry project, your friend’s comment of understanding, a work high five - there is no hierarchy inside of us toward accomplishment. Experiecnes read the same within us: if they made us feel a sense of accomplishment at the time, they build our sense of confidence inside of us.
Exercise: Name 3 of your accomplishments in childhood and 3 in adulthood. Note the internal feeling of confidence each of them bring to your system and simmer in that feeling a bit.
Vicarious experiences
Weare freakishly connected as people, other people’s accomplishments read within our system similar to our own. When we rejoice with those who rejoice and build resilience with those who are working through the mier of life, we receive the same inner benefits.
Exercise: Pop on Instagram or another social media and celebrate 5 “wins” with someone. Leave a comment or clapping emojis and build awareness in your system that one human’s successes are successes for all humans.
Verbal persuasion
Whether in the form of daily affirmations when you don’t believe them, or encouragement to someone else about the space we can fill in this life together, or paying attention to the dialogue running in our brains, our self-talk and others-talk matters. Reminding ourselves that we are capable builds capacity. Attending to the dark and distrustful voices in our head with care and compassion brings more care and compassion to our systems.
Exercise: Consider an upcoming project or something you need to “accomplish.” Contemplate the work and challenges of the project for 2 minutes and give particular attention to your inner dialogue. How do you talk to yourself about the project? What fears or concerns do you have around the project? What lovely things do your body and your mind need to hear from you?
We set higher goals when we believe in ourselves as people, our inherent value and worth, the uniqueness and life we bring to the world in our time and place. We do have skills, but people report the most confidence when they are growing those skills, attempting something they didn’t think they could do and still make it through.
You are worth the energy of the challenges and changes of life. God shines within your growing pains as God guides, restores, loves, and smiles. We are process-oriented people, not product-oriented, no matter the voice of consumerism all around us. The single most efficacious belief in bringing confidence within us is that there is space in this world for our two feet and single nose and gnarly elbows. We are allowed to grow and struggle and change our minds.
This is the work of a confident human, a confident writer, a confident friend, a confident student, a confident anything -
We are trying.
There is room for us, all the complex bits of us, in this world.
I have so much more to say about confidence - tidbits, truths, and ways to be aware of who we are in these bodies we live in. Follow me on instagram to hear more about confidence in the coming month.
For more info on the research behind the four aspects of confidence: