I overheard a conversation between two teenage girls. They stood captivated in the shopping mall, staring at some on-the-edge outfit displayed in a fashion store window. One girl said to the other: “I don’t have the confidence to pull that off! But you might”.
So what is confidence? My youthful narrative of confidence was simple: “I will be confident when I’m skillful enough to accomplish what I intend”. I saw confidence as a security born from self efficacy, it was an internal narrative borrowed from my ambient culture which told me: “You will be confident when you are competent”. Though I desired confidence, a form of inner stability, my understanding was ironically destabilizing. My inner stability was held captive to the unachievable condition that: “when I master my influence over external circumstances, I will have inner stability”. When I see my internal narrative, exposed to the light in words, its incongruence is often sobering.
We encounter notions of confidence in a spectrum of contexts: confidence in our self, confidence in others, confidence in future outcomes, confidence in providence. A lack of confidence is just as rich. Some people are more careful than others, unconfident that things are as they seem. Some are hesitant because they notice what others miss. Some are unconfident about their own capability, they recognize their own limitations, or they’re either inflicted with perfectionist tendencies, or blessed and cursed with visions of greater opportunities.
Our confidence dilemma is compounded in the reality of many highly competent people. Perhaps you’re one of them, capable of orchestrating acts of wonder, while suffering painful doubts about your personal value. When we recognize this in others, we feel vertigo, caught in the dilemma of our confidence narratives saying: “what do they have to be unconfident about”?
In contrast, some people exude confidence while possessing scant measurable competence. Some are blindly confident; perhaps they’ve had a fortunate life and educed that “everything just works out”. Some just “believe in themselves”, they enthusiastically embark upon quixotic endeavors, they sometimes conscript trusting and inspired souls to participate in their folly. Some people derive confidence from a learned trust in others; some derive confidence from experience, where other confidence seems innate, assumed, manufactured, or projected.
So what is confidence for the girls in the mall? For them, I suspect that confidence is something akin to attitude, a boldness to assert their relevance by personal force of will. Or, perhaps it’s an internal strength to emotionally repel, or survive, ridicule in the face of fashion failure. I was inspired by the abstract nature in their use of confidence. It contains an honesty; an honesty confessing a capacity less dependent upon measurable competence.
Perhaps some people can find confidence within themselves, and perhaps some bestow it, like currency, on others. Perhaps some people inspire the growth of confidence in others while holding little for themselves. Regardless of how it flows, our ambient confidence narratives obfuscate confidence’s inner source, its wellspring, in mystery and misdirection. Explicitly nourishing forms of confidence eluded me for much of my life. The dilemma posed by ambient notions of confidence confounded my discernment. I’ve suspected that there are forms of confidence that connect with the heart, forms that are foundational for inner stability.
A source of confidence is intimated in a story told by the Dali Lama about a monk who, when asked if he was in danger when he was held hostage for several years, the monk responded by saying: yes he was, he was in danger of losing compassion for his torturers. Pain was inflicted upon his body, and yet the danger of his concern was the danger of inflicting pain on his own mind, through his internal relationship another, and through his internal relationship with himself.
We often relate with ourselves as our own torturers, or as our own antagonizers. This often happens by accident, like when we hold our inner stability hostage to narrative puzzles impossible to solve. The story told by the Dali Lama intimates a confidence derived from a cultivated skill of inner stability, a stability derived from how we relate.
I’d like to suggest that the source of this confidence is derived from our capacity to listen with our hearts to our own inner narratives, and to hold a kind space for our own excitement or shame, willful determination and guilt, pride and harsh judgment, and the entire truth of our experience of ourselves. This kindness begins with the practice of self listening. It is a confidence that grows when I extend my listening to others, when I listen from an intention to hear clearly, to hold their story with soft concentration and patience, while the fear of judgment and consequences relaxes.
I’d like to suggest that our reliable and meaningful confidence is based in a specific trust; a trust in our capacity to return to a kind and empathic listening relationship with ourselves regardless of what happens. I say “return” instead of “maintain” due to the reality of being human. We will most certainly fail if we intend to “maintain” a particular state, but we can succeed in an intention to return to our listening.