If Confidence Is A
Choice, Why Aren’t I Choosing It?
Why aren’t I choosing confidence? I had to think about this for a long
time.
I think the first problem I had to overcome before I could consistently choose confidence is that I had to first believe, really
believe that it is, in fact, a choice.
I don’t think I always perceived it as an option. Rather I was much more apt to think that you
either had confidence or you didn’t. You
were born with it or you weren’t. It was
one of the tools in your toolbox, or it wasn’t.
And it definitely wasn’t one of my tools.
When I started to understand confidence a bit more, I
started to realize that with hard work, confidence could be gained. It took me a long time to get to this point,
but with a bit of research and lots of reading, it started to
become more clear. Confidence could
be one of my tools. But I needed
to stop making excuses for myself.
“I believe confidence
is a choice. And I always choose to believe that I am always going to come out
on top.” Max Scherzer, pitcher for the Detroit Tigers
So once I realized that confidence is a choice, why am I
still not choosing it? Perhaps the
answer to this issue is a bit more complicated.
But in its simplest form, the answer is: I don’t choose confidence
because it’s not the easiest option for me.
It’s not where my mind automatically goes. To choose confidence is hard work. And up until this point, I apparently have
been choosing the easy way out.
I think that my “confidence muscle” is weak, probably from
years of not being exercised. In the
past, I had only “symptomatic confidence” which is the type of confidence that
is built only on recent success. This
isn’t particularly hard to come by and doesn’t require much work from the
confidence muscle. But it’s also not
particularly useful because it’s very easily destroyed. It only takes one injury or even just a
string of poor workouts to wipe away symptomatic confidence. Instead, I need to build “sustainable
confidence” that which comes from within and is not built on external
events. This is the type of confidence
that will withstand the storms of life and still remain intact, but also the
type of confidence that requires some muscle behind it. It’s that muscle that requires hard work and
commitment, both of which I have neglected.
I must exercise this muscle. I must constantly
and consistently correct self-doubt and negative thoughts. This is a difficult process and seems
tedious. It’s not something I enjoy or
want to do. But in order to develop the
sustainable confidence that I so desperately want, this is the type of work I
must get busy doing. Without it, the
physical work that I so enjoy, is wasted.
On a deeper level, I think choosing confidence requires a
strong self-worth, a trait that I’ve likely never possessed. Or at least a trait that I never remember
feeling.
“An athlete’s
self-esteem and self-worth are intimately related to their self-confidence.
When athletes feel good about themselves, they are more likely to perform well,
especially when the pressure is on. An essential key to developing an
unbreakable self-confidence is to cultivate an “inside-out” approach to
confidence. This begins by teaching athletes to feel good about who they are
and how they do things and ends with them feeling good about themselves
regardless of outcomes.” (Vernacchia,
2003)
Do I feel good about who I am? That’s perhaps a question that I’d rather not discuss, or even think about. But it is also central to this topic. Growing up my self-worth was not high. I ran cross country and track during those years and with success in
sport, I found a reason to justify my worthiness. But the dangerous mistake in this, is having
performance so intimately tied to my self-esteem. When one took a nose dive, so did the
other. And this is not favorable for
sustainable confidence. It easily
follows why I fear failure. With failure
comes a significant loss of self-worth.
It seems to be a very tough cycle to break.
Perhaps then, building self-worth is the way out. With a higher self-esteem, which is in no way
tied to performance, fear of failure can be removed. Even if I fail, I can theoretically still
feel deeply good about who I am. If this
is the case, what is there to fear? With
the removal of this fear, pressure lifts and confidence can improve. When I feel good about who I am, no matter
what is going on around me, I am not worried about what people think or say,
and I don’t depend on others to make me feel good. Perhaps the cycle isn’t very tough to break,
after all.
I must believe that self-worth is a choice too, then. Just as with confidence, I must commit to
improving my self-worth with positive self-talk and with the refusal to believe
that it’s something that I cannot change.
This will be very hard, very uncomfortable work for me. Just as with confidence, my mind does not
automatically go to feeling good about myself.
Instead, I more easily hear the voices that say I’m not good enough,
that I do not deserve success and that I will never measure up. I’ve surrendered to these thoughts for a very
long time. I don’t suspect I will be
able to quickly turn them around.
Fortunately, I have never shied away from hard work. I guess then, that it’s time to put my head
down, or rather, learn to hold it up high.
