Confidence

[edg]

It seems to me that there are two components to confidence:

• A persistent belief that you have a reasonable chance of success; and


• A willingness to acknowledge failure and accept its consequences.

(The two are intertwined; acknowledging failure and accepting its consequences doesn't necessarily mean that you can't try again, which is where the persistent belief that you have a reasonable chance of success comes in.)

Lacking any belief that you have a reasonable chance of success is pessimism - you're not only willing to acknowledge failure but expecting it.

Lacking a persistent belief that you have a reasonable chance of success is false confidence - as soon as you fail, you'll be back to pessimism.

Lacking a belief that you have a reasonable chance of success - believing, instead, that you have a perfect chance of success - is arrogance.

Lacking a willingness to acknowledge failure and accept its consequences is delusion.

Lacking both - believing that you can't succeed and being unwilling to acknowledge failure - is also delusion, but one that leads to isolationism; if you can't succeed and won't accept failure, then the only course of action is not to try at all.

As it appears to me, then, the key to self-confidence is to abandon the fear of failure and to acknowledge the chance of success. Ipso facto, the key to gaining self-confidence is to figure out how to abandon the fear of failure and to acknowledge the chance of success.

Any thoughts? Am I completely off-base?

Comments

[telerib.livejournal.com]

That sounds pretty insightful to me, with maybe one emendation. You don't have to abandon the fear of failure. The fear of failure is, in fact, a pretty darn good motivator! But you have to use the fear instead of the other way around.

[edg.livejournal.com]

Okay, point. I was thinking along the lines of a crippling fear of failure.

I suppose the key is being willing to accept failure while still holding it to be a non-desirable outcome.

[chadu.livejournal.com]

I think you're fairly close to the mark.

The "figuring out how to abandon the fear of failure" you mention is unfortunately (in my experience) a predominently visceral thing. You can't think your way to it completely, you've got to feel it.

It's something like "Sometimes you've gotta say 'What the fuck?'" (said in that resigned, hey, whatever attitude).

CU

[spooksix.livejournal.com]

(1) You don't have to necessarily believe that you have a reasonable chance of success. In fact, it's bet not to believe you have a chance of success. Instead, believe that your success is guaranteed. YOU WILL SUCCEED, maybe not right away, but eventually.
(2) Don't accept failures (don't take them as total failures) - merely think of them as failed attempts. These are merely set-backs, they can help inform you about the nature of the problem, which will allow you to succeed FASTER.

I wouldn't recommend trying to make confidence "rational" or "logical" - it's not. It's like any other emotion, irrational and often, in face of evidence, very likely to be wrong.

On arrogance. I believe that arrogance is belief in perfect success, success without setbacks. That, and being an asshole about it.

The key to self-confidence, I believe, is abandon the "chance" of success. Decide that you -will- succeed. Be the captain of your destiny. Seek out every opportunity, every avenue. Stating things as a having a "chance" of success implies automatically a "chance" of failure. Get rid of those "chances." Screw Fate. Screw Luck. This is about the application of WILL, SKILL, and ELBOW GREASE. YOU affect the world, YOU are able to decide what you do, how you react, in every situation.

Now, you can't control how other people react, or what they do, but you can heavily influence them. How you appear, how you carry yourself, what you say, what you do, what you bring with you - all these things help you to influence the decisions of others.

BUT there is ALWAYS more than one way to solve a problem, often several. Decide that you'll solve the problem and then do it.

THAT is confidence.

[archangelbeth]

Accept the chance of short-term setbacks in the overall long-term "I will make something work" sorta thing?

Must run get kid. Will think on this, see if anything else burbles up.

[spooksix.livejournal.com]

essentially, yes.

[wednesday]

Now, see, I tend to view "persistent belief that you have a reasonable chance of success" (or, at least, persistent belief that I might have such) as hell of arrogance, or at least naivete, in most cases.

This results in my perception of self-confidence being more along the lines of "unusually resilient where failure is concerned. Or possibly naive."

This might explain why I can't so much as write a blasted comic strip...

[spooksix.livejournal.com]

arrogance? naivete? hrm ...

They say try and try again, but what they should say is "Try, try again, try a different tactic, take a break from it for a while and then come back to it and try again!"

I can write a comic strip, hell. Not a very good one, but why would my first comic strip be any good, any way??

[wednesday]

'Cause you've done research, you've got prior artistic training, and you have a strong familiarity with other such material?

I admit, I only apply this stuff to myself. Other people I just don't get.

[spooksix.livejournal.com]

If you're trying to write a humourous comic strip ... that'd hard. Comedy is hard, unless you're naturally a funny person who sees lots of funny stuff in life anyway.

I used to be like that. Then ... life sucked me dry and I became bitter and dry like a leaf. Other people's humor makes me laugh, but ... I only seem to succeed with making word-puns and conversational humour.

Drama, I could probably do Drama. Just create some personalities and watch them destroy each other. Ok, gotta go game. Ciao.