The Art of True Confidence

By Jordan Harbinger | August 1, 2018

Confidence is one of those game-changing qualities—like rapport, empathy and courage—that is both incredibly valuable and highly elusive. As soon as we “try” to be confident, we’ve already failed. As soon as we “act” more confident, we’re already pretending. Telling someone to “be more confident” is like telling someone to be taller. That’d be nice, but how?

The answer to that question requires a new approach to confidence—one that goes beyond the “fake it till you make it!” mentality, and moves toward something more authentic, more grounded and more holistic.

So let’s start at the beginning and get a good handle on what confidence really is.
What Is Confidence, Exactly?
We might not always have a firm grasp of textbook confidence, but we know it when we see it. We know it because we feel it, and we know what it feels like to be around it. Which is one reason the definition of confidence can be so hard to pin down. Confidence is really an experience—both of ourselves and of other people.
We also know when we don’t feel it. In the presence of an insecure person—or, even more telling, a person pretending to be confident—we not only notice their lack of confidence, but also their shaky attempts to compensate for it.
Interestingly, when we’re in the company of an unconfident person, we often tend to feel un confident ourselves. We struggle to organically connect, we begin second-guessing our words and choices, and we notice ourselves feeling uneasy, uncertain and un engaged.

So what is true confidence, really?
"To put it simply, true confidence is a feeling of self-assurance that is grounded in an authentic experience of our own ability, perspective and sufficiency".

 Confidence is an amplifier of quality and success:-
Contrary to the view of many self-help experts, confidence is not a proxy for quality, depth or character. It should not be an end in and of itself, and it will never compensate for good old-fashioned hard work. Even the most confident people need to be confident about something—themselves, their work, their identities—and confidence divorced from content will always fall apart sooner or later.

Instead, we think about true confidence as an essential part of our character and work.