The myth of confidence
Video (0:04:11) by Martin Palethorpe.
Martin Palethorpe talks about the confidence; how to access the natural confidence inside you; how not to get caught up in the myth.
"Have you ever noticed how sometimes you feel extremely confident, and other times you just don't?
So, there you are on a Monday morning at 9:00. You're bounding into the office. You're self expressed. You're powerful. You're flowing. You're connected with people. You're in a meeting. The ideas come out and everybody gets the full power of you. In our world, you look confident.
But then, there's the other scenario. Later that same day, something's changed. Something shifted. Maybe someone said something to you, or something's just shifted inside you, or you read something. Who knows what. But all of a sudden, you're a shell of your former self. You're in another meeting, but you're self conscious. You're worried about what people are thinking. You've got chatter going on inside your head. And actually, you just look like an entirely different person. You look not confident.
So my question to you, what is the difference in these two situations? Because you're the same human being. But showing up as almost two entirely different human beings in the very same day. I'm suggesting to you that the only difference is thinking.
You see, when you're confident, you're not really thinking that much. Think of those times when it appears like you're confident. Psychologists call it being in flow. Sports people call it being in the zone. And in that state, you're not really thinking. You're just operating. You're just out there. You're just operating naturally. It's like your natural built-in design to just be in flow. And yet, in the situation when you occur as not confident, it's different. You've got thinking going on. You've got a whole lot of thinking that says, oh, I'm worried about this or I'm worried about that, or over-analysing and so on. And it's like the thinking is shutting down your natural self.
I was working with a senior director recently on this very topic. There he was, a highly capable person highly respected in his business, with incredible talent and considered someone for the future, for progression and for promotion. Yet, he lacked confidence. He had all sorts of thinking about himself and his capability, and himself in certain situations. So, we worked with him over a period, to help him look at and understand more about the human mind.
And there's two key points that we talked to him about that we'd like to leave you with on this video.
I'd like you to remember that you have a natural, built-in design to be like you are, when you are confident. You've got this natural built-in design to operate in flow, to be self expressed, to be powerful, to be out there.
And the only thing that stops you in any moment is thinking. And the thinking isn't useful or valid or true. It's just noise. So, the more you can remember this, the more you can access that natural built-in ability that you've got.
The second thing I'd like to share with you is that confidence actually doesn't exist. It only exists when we think it into existence. So, what I mean by that is confidence isn't a tangible thing, but it becomes tangible when we say, "Oh, no. I don't have confidence. I won't be able to do that. I don't have confidence." So, the myth of confidence is that you create it to be something that it actually isn't.
So, I invite you and encourage you never to talk about having confidence or not having it. It doesn't exist. Just let your natural ability shine through in any situation."
