I think there’s always been a little confusion about what confidence is. It’s so easy to group all behavior that seems to be unaffected by the opinions of others to be the same category of confidence. This, I believe, is very far from the truth.
It seems to me that more commonly than not, people portray confidence that has it’s foundation in grand illusions of ones self. This however is more arrogance than confidence. Some forms of arrogance are subtle enough to have the appearance of total acceptance of of the subjects self, but this commonly is exactly the opposite. People who are not in peace with themselves tend to create ‘symptomatic’ confidence out of necessity to cope with the world and themselves. These people look for traits in themselves where they believe to have superiority over the majority of people, and build the appearance of confidence over those traits.
True confidence is the free expression of a healthy and matured self-esteem.
I’m a firm believer in the idea that there is no shortcut to confidence. The road-map is the same for every person. Acceptance of ones self, with all the shortcomings and weaknesses, and expression with absolute honesty. Anything else is a gimmick.
The funny thing about confidence is that it does not look the same with every person. Arrogance commonly does. A truly confident person is in touch with their strength and weakness alike, and so is aware of the uniqueness of their personality. It’s hard to find two people with the exact same manifestation of this awareness and expression.
Self-esteem is a bit of a social tabu, for the reason that it is engraved in to our psyche since such a young age that it is crucial to our well-being. This is true. However, expressing ones lack of self-esteem tends to be an instant source of disrespect and/or ridicule. This is why we are so hesitant to bring this issue to light. Just repeating that there’s nothing wrong with our self-esteem doesn’t make it true.
Self-esteem is the foundation of everything else when it comes to our experience as human beings. It affects every interaction between us and the outer world. It even affects the goings of our inner world. And it starts and ends with the acceptance of who we are.
Whether you believe it or not… …you deserve love.
Whether you believe it or not, it doesn’t really matter, you deserve love. Even the word “deserve” has a weird negative implication today. But you do deserve it. And the very moment you realize that the first person you deserve love from is yourself, your journey to a healthy self-esteem and confidence has begun.
We all have an inner child. This inner child is weak by nature. It needs compassion and love to grow and mature. We can’t abolish weakness by suffocating our inner child, this only makes us weaker and weaker. We need to nurture that inner child, that inner weakness, to mature into a strong human being. It all starts with you taking care of that inner child so many of us is trying to hide.
That is the foundation of true confidence. Do you see why I believe there are no shortcuts?
– Eric