WHY CONFIDENCE IS IMPORTANT | THE ART OF BUILDING CONFIDENCE

Why Confidence is Important?

If you want to know why confidence is important, and learn how to build self-confidence, read the full article to get the answer to your question. 

The article is divided into two parts :

1. The first part will tell you, "Why confidence is important".

2. The second part will tell you, "How to build self-confidence."

You can also skip to the second part directly if you just want to learn to build confidence.

Why is confidence important :

1. What is confidence?

People often relate confidence with self-esteem. But confidence is not self-esteem. Self-esteem is basically 'liking yourself'' or 'loving your own values' and confidence is 'being sure' about liking yourself or about yourself. 

Self-confidence is the trust in oneself. It is the feeling that you are sure about your abilities or skills. Or it can be said that confidence is 'trusting yourself'. You can have a high level of self-esteem with a lack of confidence. 

Confidence is when people criticize you about your abilities but you still know your worth and don't give a fuck about what they think because you are sure about your skills and abilities. 

2. But why confidence is important?

Confidence helps you feel ready for life experiences. When you are confident, you are ready to take opportunities that come to you and don't fear them because you are sure about yourself. Lack of confidence results in fear. You fear an event when you are not confident enough.

Your confidence is so much important to take you ahead in life. If you tackle any situation with confidence, you are more likely to succeed. Most sports matches are won by the team which has players who are confident about themselves and their teammates. 

Sometimes you may have good self-esteem but your lack of confidence doesn't let you move forward. I ask you, "Are you smart?" and you say, "Yes, I am smart." Then I ask you, "Are you sure?" and you be like, "Aa, No." This is where self-confidence becomes so much important. It is important for self-esteem itself. 

3. Dealing with failure.

It is a misconception that confidence is related to success. No, confidence is related to your relationship with failure and is important to deal with failures. 

Let me simplify it for you. Confidence is when you fail and say, "No problem. I will try again because I'm confident that I can make it." Confidence is when you are ready to take on everything for something you want to do. Yes I know this sounds like a motivating speech but what I want to say is that confidence is important to dealing with failure. JK Rowling failed 11 times but did not give up the idea of publishing Harry Potter because she had confidence in her story and writing. Confidence is when you know that you can fail but still, you do it. By the way, you will fail. It is a truth.

4. Confidence in the profession. 

Confidence is also important in your professional life. Every business person is confident in public speaking. Every employee should have confidence in his/her skills before asking for a raise from your fatty shitty boss. 

If you want a raise but don't have the confidence to ask for it. This means you don't have confidence in your skills. Then, asking for a raise is useless too. It may also happen that the boss wants to give you a raise but wants you to ask for it first. If you don't have the confidence to ask for it, oops! 

How to build Self-confidence :

We have seen why confidence is important. Now let us turn our focus toward a problem on how to build self-confidence. Building self-confidence is like the intrinsic motivation that comes from within. It is a long process that takes time. No one can build self-confidence in one day or a week or even one month. It takes time. Let us see how to build self-confidence.

1. The 'Product of Practice'.

Have you ever tried playing a new instrument you never played before? Do you remember the fear you had while playing it? That was a lack of confidence. Whenever you try to do something new, you are not so much confident about it. But gradually, the fear or lack of confidence fades away with time.

Many people think that confidence is an input. They think that they need confidence before doing something. That they cannot do it because they lack confidence. But the truth is that confidence is an 'output' and not an 'input'. The output of what? Practice. You build confidence when you practice doing a task. The more you practice, the more confident you feel when you perform the task. That is the reason I gave it the name, "Product of practice". 

When I started playing football when I was 14 or 15, I lacked confidence because that was new to me and I did not know how to play football. That lack of confidence made me anxious while playing football. But when I played it for more time and did more practice, I gradually started building confidence in my skills. Confidence is built by practicing for a particular task.

2. The Backwards law.

It is the idea that the more you pursue feeling better about something, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only enforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. It's a type of paradox. The more you want to be rich, the poorer you feel. 

Similarly, the more you want to feel confident about yourself, the less confident you feel because by trying to feel confident, you enforce the fact that you are not confident. If you try to tell yourself that you are confident every day in the mirror, this means that you are not confident in the first place. And this results in more lack of confidence.

The backwards law was given by the English writer Alan Watts. You need to understand this law and stop 'trying' to feel confident all the time to build self-confidence. A confident man does not need to tell himself that he is confident. 

3. Self-awareness. 

Self-awareness is important for self-improvement. If you do not know what the fucking problem is, you won't solve it. If you never accept that you have a bad smell, you won't take a bath. Just like me. Similarly, if you won't accept that you do not have those skills and you need to work on your skills and build them, you will never build confidence. 

Go and analyze what is wrong. Why do you lack confidence? Do you need more practice? If yes, go and practice. Practice makes improvement. Practice builds confidence. Trust me. If you lack confidence talking to people, you need to accept that you lack confidence and need to go out and talk to people. This is the only way. Go and talk to random people because I know you have the confidence of talking to random people on chats but lose your shit when the same person comes and stands in front of you. Why does this happen? Let's discuss this in the next topic.

4. Kill your insecurities.

You lose your confidence when talking to other people because you are insecure about yourself. See, confidence is also related to insecurities. Any confident person who can talk to people without losing his/her shit is the one who is completely secure with himself or herself. 

The feeling that you are not confident makes you more insecure about yourself and then you do not try to talk to other people out of fear and then you remain unconfident. That again brings us to our approach. Don't just try to feel confident or secure. Practice and make yourself more confident and secure.

See confidence is never felt by you because it is not a feeling. Confidence is not when you feel confident. It is when you do not feel any fear and do something without even realizing it. And why confidence is important? To make things easy for you. That's it. 

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it and found it valuable. If you feel this is a good approach, thank you. If you feel I talk shit, thanks again I don't care. Because I am confident. 

Also, read my article on how to stop overthinking; Click Here.

If you want to know the habits that make you smarter; gently Click Here.

If you want to read about time management; Click Here. 

Thank you so much. Now you can get lost!