Confidence - what it really is and how to build it

Steven Burns

Inspirational Article

 

 

Confidence

It’s the quality that most people want at some stage of their life: the magical elixir, or cure-all, that we think can rid us of all our angsts, worries and problems.

If we were to just be fully confident in ourselves then we could move mountains; we could overcome the challenges we face and achieve our dreams, desires and goals.

Interestingly confidence tends to be a bit of an oxymoron.

When we have confidence we don’t care about it – it becomes a non-issue.

But when we lack it, it suddenly becomes one of the most important yet illusive qualities associated with successful living.

But what actually is confidence?

Is it a feeling, a skill, a mind-set?

And is it something that is innate, or can we deliberately build it?

Well, it’s a large subject but the short answer is that it can be all of the above.

Confidence is Multi-layered

People tend to think of confidence as a simple, singular entity — something that we either have or don’t have.

When you dig a bit deeper though, you find that there’s a lot more to it than that.

Confidence is not just one thing, it’s many. It has multiple layers to it that can be applicable in some situations and not in others.

Confidence is a feeling, but it can also be linked to a skill. And it can exit as a belief: an inner mind-set that sits in the background of our experience.

Confidence is something we can have naturally and it’s also something we can cultivate, shape and build.

I know this sounds like a contradiction but I don’t think it is.

Confidence has many different elements to it so it can present itself in various different forms.

So let’s take a look at some of these forms, these elements, and explore how we can increase each one to cultivate a rich and multi-layered inner sense of confidence.

Layer 1: Confidence as a feeling

Layer 2: Confidence as a result of Skill

Layer 3: Confidence as a Belief

 

 

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