On Finding Confidence

“To build confidence, go where you have none.”

When I was around 8 years old, I remember finally being allowed to use the high dive at the pool my friends and I would go to every summer. I started the climb up its ladder and (in my child's mind) I might as well have been summiting Mount Everest. It took forever to reach the top. Each step up the ladder was another foot planted on the climb towards the clouds in the sky.

When I reached the top, I could look down on everyone. It felt like a million miles to the surface of the water, and it didn't help that I'd already begun psyching myself out on the climb up. Would I jump? Did I have the nerve to do it? Did I have what it took to do a cannonball?

Others had been jumping into the water from the high dive all afternoon, and they were all so smooth with it. It didn't even seem like a big deal to most of them. I wanted to be like those kids. I wanted to feel confident enough to jump.

And so I stood at the top for a long time and just stared down at the water, unsure if I was confident enough to take the plunge.

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In her book Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?, Dr. Julie Smith has a chapter on building confidence. To quote her, "Confident is not the same as comfortable. One of the biggest misconceptions about becoming self-confident is that it means living fearlessly. The key to building confidence is quite the opposite. It means we are willing to let fear be present as we do the things that matter to us."

As it turns out, the key to building confidence is to confront your fears. To quote Dr. Smith again, "To build confidence, go where you have none." As they say, it's not possible to be courageous if you're not scared first.

When you confront your fears like this, they often turn out to be paper tigers or billowing smoke dragons living in the foggy mist of your mind that dissipate when you swing an actual sword at them.

Over time, you start feeling more and more confident. You've confronted your fears, slain the dragon, and come back out of its cave with gold.

But this is also a double-edged sword. When we become extremely confident in one area, we get comfortable. It becomes our domain of expertise, and we can ironically develop fear of the unknown outside it. We're willing to defend our kingdom’s borders and even start repelling anyone we see as a threat climbing the walls that we've unconsciously put up. We may one day look up to find that we're less confident in life due to choosing this comfort.

To quote Dr. Smith one last time, "the only way confidence can grow is when we are willing to be without it. When we can step into fear and sit with the unknown, it is the courage of doing so that builds confidence from the ground up. Courage comes first, confidence comes second." While we shouldn't take this as liberty to push ourselves to a breaking point or risk overwhelming ourselves (or others), it does mean that we should recognize that "fear helps us perform at our best and that we need to change our relationship with fear so that we no longer need to eliminate it before we try."

Fear can be an old friend. Courage always comes first, before we do the things we’re scared of.

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Eventually, I walked to the edge of the high dive's diving board. I stood there looking down, and it felt like I was gazing into the expanse of the universe. I waffled there for a while. Friends yelled at me to jump.

Eventually, I forced myself to put one foot out into the air. Before I knew it, I was falling. What was happening? How long would it take to hit the water? Would I be okay?

And just like that, I suddenly felt a splash of water around me. It was over. I'd jumped off the high dive. After coming back up for air, a wave of adrenaline hit me. Oddly enough, the only thought I remember having in that moment was, "Wow! Let's do that again!"

In reality, the high dive was only 16ft tall. But it wasn't until after I had the courage to jump off that I saw it in a new light and started having the confidence to go jump again and again (and finally try that cannonball).

Life is like that. Don't beat yourself up if you're trying something new and don't feel confident yet. You don't have to be confident to give it your best shot. All you need is the courage to push through fear.

Confidence will always comes after we make the jump, never before.

Don't give up.