Confidence isn't the problem you think it is
View this email in your browser (|ARCHIVE|) Creative people are notorious for struggling with confidence issues.
But it’s not the problem you think it is.
Most of us frame confidence as some kind of missing element: we assume that once we gain it, problems will go away.
They mostly don’t. And that’s good thing. I’ll explain.
The standard definition of confidence is “the feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something.”
What that really means is having the ability to predict outcomes of our efforts.
The easy outside
The easy part of that skill is being able to demonstrate to others we are indeed in control of what we do.
Hands on the wheel. We’re headin’ that-a-way. We can do this thing.
Know what I mean, |NAME|?
The best way to achieve that outward confidence is to have a process by which you gain an understanding of the problem you’ve been hired to solve, and implement it. Stick to it. And repeat.
Your process can be a system of conducting tasks or a method of undertaking research.
Whatever you choose, it backs your thinking.
The closer you stick to your process, the stronger you will be in projecting that outward confidence.
The difficult inside
The more difficult part of confidence is what goes inside of us.
The typical advice you hear in that regard is “don’t doubt yourself.”
But that is a mistake. And there’s good evidence to back that up.
Daniel Kahneman, a leading authority on cognitive bias and author of Thinking Fast and Slow cautions that one of our greatest dangers is overconfidence. “The confidence people have in their beliefs,” he writes, “is not a measure of the quality of evidence [but] of the coherence of the story that the mind has managed to construct.”
In other words: we can trick ourselves into believing pretty much anything if we’re not careful.
You really should doubt yourself more often. Not in a way that shuts you down: rather, in a way that pushes you a little harder than before.
Doesn’t get easier
I like the way Carol Dweck tackles this in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. “The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it,” she writes, “even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset.”
By that way of thinking, |NAME|, embrace self-doubt rather than confuse it for a lack of confidence.
New York Times bestseller Tim Ferriss talks about how the only thing harder than writing his first book was writing his second one. My friend James Altucher mentioned something in a similar vein on his podcast recently. They both overcame that sense of doubt and went on to do great work.
Inner confidence isn’t something you solve. You manage it and make it grow. You have to.
The deeper you get into you work (and your career) the deeper you have to dig for the confidence to get the job done well.
That is as it should be. Because you standards get higher, your knowledge grows and your sense of fearlessness gets stronger, too.
Very best, Patrick
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