Remove This Obstacle to Confidence

Sometimes a need for confidence is not about confidence at all, but about how you give your power away for all the wrong reasons. Here’s how you can build your own case for confidence.

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SOMETIMES WE find ourselves not doing a thing that needs to be done, or that we would like to do, but are unable to act. In my last video I gave the example of the bungee jumper who can still jump despite their sudden flood of negative thoughts and emotions. So we’ve seen that acting despite your thoughts and feelings is possible, and that’s a way to appear and ultimately feel confident—because your feelings will fall in line with your actions.

Notice that word despite: DESPITE your thoughts and feelings. So we’ve learned that approach. The approach that hinges around the word despite. The approach I’m going to show you in this post hinges around a different word: the word WITHOUT.

There’s a scene in the movie Vicky Cristina Barcelona, (here’s the link) when Juan Antonio, played by Javier Bardim, approaches Vicky (played by Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (played by Scarlett Johansson) in a restaurant, introduces himself and following one single sentence of small talk (“What colour are your eyes?”) he invites them to fly with him to Oviedo. To see a sculpture (he’s an artist). For the weekend.

You get the clear sense that whatever happens, it’s not going to affect his day or his sense of self. He couldn’t give a damn about the outcome, whether they come or not. He couldn’t give a damn what they might think of him. And thirdly, he couldn’t give a damn what anybody else who might hear the conversation might think.

In my previous post on confidence, I gave the example of the bungee jumper who can still jump despite their sudden flood of negative thoughts and emotions. So we’ve seen that acting despite your thoughts and feelings is possible, and that’s a way to appear and ultimately feel confident, because your feelings will fall in line with your actions.

So notice that word, “despite”, despite your thoughts and feelings. We’ve learned that approach, the approach that hinges around the word “despite”. This approach, I’m going to show you in this video, hinges around a different word, the word “without”. In the movie we can say that he acts without concern for consequence—for what people think, or for what might happen.

Acting without concern

Let’s examine how that might show up for you.

Are there times when you don’t act—and feel that you don’t have the confidence to act—because you believe that you might:

1. be laughed at, talked about or criticised;
2. damage and possibly lose the relationship; or
3. won’t get the outcome that you’re hoping for;
4. suffer reputational damage.

This can be in a personal setting, like asking someone out on a date, or in a professional setting, like speaking out on an issue that concerns you: activities that in our minds have potentially major social consequences and which happen as conversations.

It follows that if we could reduce the fear of consequence, we might find it easier to act, which we would experience as greater confidence.

If we could reduce the fear of consequence, we might find it easier to act, which we would experience as greater confidence.

Certainly, that’s how it would look on the outside, and because we know that feelings follow actions, we can predict that we will actually feel more confident. If you do this repeatedly, and you gather the evidence from your experience each time (an important step), you can build a case for it and do it again, each time with greater ease until it becomes almost, well, easy, perhaps even second nature.

How would you do that? And remember, we’re focusing on perceived social consequence.

Examine your beliefs and put them to the test

The thought process that’s usually going on when you’re concerned about social consequence is something like this: What will people think if I mess up? What will it mean for my life and my chances in life? What if I only get one chance and I don’t make it? My life will be over.

Maybe at this point you might want to pause and check and make a note of your own internal narrative when it comes to these things.

You can be fairly sure that those are unexamined beliefs. So, let’s examine them.

Imagine you have this blue ball in your hand and that represents you personal power. Your power to act. But now you’re worried what other people are thinking and that’s preventing you from acting. So effectively, you’ve handed them your blue ball. Go on, hand it to them.

Think about a scenario where you’re struggling to act. Now think about the people in that scenario whose opinion you’re concerned about. Now, in your mind, hand them the blue ball. Go over, hand it to them, and come back and sit down.

Now imagine you’re sitting there wondering whether that was a good idea. Was it necessary to hand them your blue ball? So you get out your white coat and your clipboard and you go to each of them and you ask what they were or are thinking—about you, of course.

What do you think you’ll find? Think about this carefully.

Do you think you’ll find that they were or would be thinking about you as much as you are worried that they will be? No. You’ll probably find that they weren’t thinking about you at all (or that if you did what you’re planning to do, they wouldn’t think about you). At least not for very long. Chances are greater that they’ll be doing what you are doing, which is worrying about what you think of them.

And if they do think of you, you’ll most likely find that they won’t be thinking what you are concerned about. Believe me, I’ve been around, I’ve been coaching for two decades. When you coach, you ask questions, you inquire what the other person is thinking. How they are interpreting things. I can tell you that 90% of the time the other person is not thinking what you think they’re thinking.

Build a case based on evidence

You really ought to test this out so that you don’t have to convince yourself of it. Just naturally, in your day-to-day conversations, instead of assuming what the other person is thinking, ask them, inquire. What is your view on this or that? And then shut up and listen. You’ll find, and I guarantee this, that it’s different from what you had assumed. And the more you do this, the more you will naturally dissolve the assumption that you know what other people are thinking of you or will think of you. And it won’t be about convincing yourself. You’ll shift that belief based on solid evidence.

Of course, people are not always honest. They might not tell you exactly what they were thinking. So, you might have to coax it out of them. Then, even if you don’t get the whole picture, and even if people say exactly what you had feared, you can move to the next step, which is to calculate what impact their thoughts or opinion might have on you.

Look into the lives of famous people and see how much negative opinion they have survived.

Have you heard the saying, sticks and stones might break my bones, but words can never harm me? Well, that’s true, but don’t try to convince yourself, really look at it. Those people who you are “interviewing” might seem like your whole world and like they have a lot of power over you by spreading their opinions, but, once again, do some research. For this one you can look into the lives of famous people—sportspeople, movie stars, politicians—and see how much negative opinion they draw. Yet they’ve managed to succeed. Yet they still perform and maintain their careers and have success. They find their way. They really do.

Play out your worst-case scenario

The evidence is strong that every successful person you see out there, even the best-selling authors and biggest movie stars, have experienced rejection along the way. Do you think you could be the exception that would impress everybody bar none? If you’re still not sure, play out your worst-case scenario in your mind. Ask yourself, What’s the worst that could happen. And then (play out that scenario)? And then (play out that scenario)? And then (play out that scenario)? Until you get to the end of that road.

When, in your mind, you’ve lost your job and been kicked out of your social circle, ask yourself how you would respond. Would you learn from what happened and try again, with the same audience or a new one? I hope so. In fact, I know you will, just as many of those famous people did. Just as many people have done. In some ways you’d have no choice. Would you survive? Would you learn and grow and be a better person for it? I believe you would.

So then, if that’s the case, what do you have to worry about? Go and take that action. But don’t be foolish, of course. That voice is there to guide you. This is not about rejecting or ignoring that voice but managing it. It’s about acting without—there’s that word, without—fear of an imagined social consequence. Do you want to go and ask for your blue ball back? If you’re with me on this, I suggest you go and do that now! Actually play it through in your mind.

From social to situational consequence

Another consequence we concern ourselves with and which impacts our experience of feeling confident is the situational consequence—the actual outcome of the situation. In other words, will I succeed? Will I get into the team? Will I get the girl? Or the boy? This is much the same as social consequence because it still involves other people, but instead of worrying about mere gossip and the emotional elements of relationship, we’re worried about reputation and what decisions those people might make. So, in a way it can be more serious than a mere social consequence. Still, the same principle and practice applies.

As before, we really believe that this is our one and only chance in life, that if I don’t get this one, my life will be over, I’ll never get another chance.

The person who has less to lose—because they’ve decided they have less to lose—has the upper hand and appears more confident.

Once again, that’s based on an unexamined belief. If we turn that belief over and look at it from all sides, we’ll see that life is a marathon, not a sprint, and we have many chances. If you’re unsure, you know by now what to do: go back to those sportspeople and celebrities—and we choose them because their life stories are visible and available—and read their stories. Or ask some of the older, more experienced people around you. And if you are one of the older people and still struggling with this, look at your own life. I’m sure you haven’t only had one chance.

The fact is that when we’re less attached to the outcome, we feel less pressure, we can feel more confident. This is something that is known to apply in sales negotiations. The one who wants the deal the most is the weakest negotiator. They will also appear less confident. Conversely, the person who is willing to walk away from a deal—who has less to lose, because they’ve decided they have less to lose—has the upper hand and appears more confident. For a man approaching a woman, this is also true. If you appear desperate, you come across as lacking confidence. If like Juan Antonio you’re unphased by what happens, you give off the air of confidence. And I’m willing to bet that you will be feeling it.

Summary of the steps you can take

So, in summary, here’s what you need to do:

• Build a case based on evidence that:
  1. you don’t know what other people are really thinking;
  2. even if they think the worst things, it doesn’t matter; you can find other people and you can still succeed and prove the naysayers wrong;
  3. if you don’t succeed with this attempt, you’ll get more chances to prove yourself, keep practising and you’ll succeed eventually.
• Act based on the evidence and evaluate the outcomes. And don’t ask did it work, because you might not always get the outcome you were hoping for. Especially the first time, it might well backfire, ha ha. Instead, ask, did I survive? Will I live to fight another day? If you’re asking that question, then the answer is necessarily yes.
• After you’ve done this maybe six or ten times, then start to evaluate the evidence, and build a more realistic set of beliefs around the consequences of taking action.
• Then notice how much more confident you not only appear to be to others, but how much more confident you feel inside now that you’re not so afraid of what might happen.

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