How To Deal With being Low Confident(3 Things To Remember)

How To Be Confident When You Have No Confidence

Remember the time when you wanted to feel confident, only to freeze and blabber? Remember the time when you wanted to say hi to the cute girl, but you found your legs behaving like concrete slabs? Or the time before facing an interview, monologuing over and over about "You can do it", only to bomb in the actual interview?

These are all the times we wanted to have some confidence. Confidence. Ahh, that word. A word that feels like a magical solution. A potion that would maximize your esteem. Without confidence, everything feels so bleak. Being low-confident feels like a weakness. Everyone wants to be confident 24/7.

And why not! I mean, if you can get a raise, talk to that cute girl(or guy), or walk like Peter Parker in Spider-Man 3 because of being confident, then why the hell not?

Look at that swagger!

Thing is, however we want to be eternally confident, reality won't allow that. We won't be able to remain confident all the time. Sometimes our confidence will fade. And, you know what?

That's okay.

Here's why:

REASONS TO REMEMBER

Confidence is a feeling which fades no matter what you do
Confidence gets hammered in tough competition
Acceptance of imperfection brings peace of mind

Confidence is a feeling which fades away

Remember feelings? Yeah, those pesky mental bastards which disrupt every logical decision we ever wanna make? Confidence belongs to that family. It is the feeling you get when you learn something new, do something successfully, or mark yourself safe and stable.

Do you know how to play the guitar? Great! You will feel confident when you try to play it.

Do you play guitar in front of your friends? Excellent! You’ll feel confident when you try to play it in front of your friends.

Do you play as the lead guitarist of an international band? Well, playing guitar in front of a million people is nothing for you.

But just like every other emotion, it fades. You might feel like a Rockstar when you are playing for your band, but when you face a job interview for a 9-5, you might feel your stomach churning. Just like happiness fades away the moment you face a crisis, confidence poofs the moment you face uncertainty. And unless you leave your comfort zone to face adversity, your confidence might not return to you.

So like every emotion, you can’t control confidence. Forcing or faking doesn't magically generate organic confidence for you. In fact, Force will keep your confidence low.

Confidence gets hammered in tough competition

Let’s say you can talk to people well. You feel immense confidence in your communication skills. Your social circle also validates you for your communication skill. But one day, you meet another person. His communication skills are twice as good as yours. You feel a little bit of jealousy. To add insult to your injury, the people who used to validate or complement your communication skills seem to start liking that other guy. Suddenly, you don’t feel that much confidence anymore. The thing that used to make you feel like a superstar now starts questioning your ability. My point is, no matter what you do or where you go, you’ll always find someone better than you. And in front of that person, about that particular skill, you will feel less confident. In a way, that is a good thing. Because if you feel low confidence about that skill, you might understand that you are not the best in the world. It might feel bad, but it will push you to grow. Eventually, you might find that there is no best one.

How To Be Confident When You Have Low Confidence

Image by Sammy-Williams from Pixabay

Acceptance of imperfection brings peace of mind

We aren’t perfect beings. We have flaws, we have ugly sides, weaknesses, regrets. The beautiful thing about this imperfection is that accepting that brings peace in our lives. Now, you might not be very confident. You might lack that swagger that your friend or the coolest dude in your class. But you know what? That’s fine. It’s fine to have low confidence in some situations. It’s fine to feel uncomfortable in a new situation. It’s fine to fear adversity. Life is not a movie, where everything is perfectly scripted. She’s unpredictable; she’s random. Most of the time, we have little to no control over our situations. So, why bother forcing ourselves to be confident all the time? Why bother trying to feel awesome when it feels the opposite? Why not just accept that sometimes we suck, and we feel terrible, and it’s okay to feel that way? Why not accept the imperfections of us?

And the beauty of this acceptance is that the moment you accept that, you make peace with yourself. You start to care less about being confident all the time. You start to see confidence as real as it is. It seems not a magical potion anymore, but a feeling that fades away, so who cares about how to be confident all the time? And weirdly, that’s how you become more and more confident with yourself over time.

So, the bottom line is, you don’t have to be confident all the time. Remember, if it is not coming naturally, then forcing it won’t help. So, take a deep breath and just do what you need to do.