Is confidence over-rated?!
Not what you were expecting from a confidence and leadership coach, right?
So what prompted this musing?
Last week I had a full day of talking about confidence. It started with a webinar I delivered on business confidence to a cohort of creative business, followed by 2 meetings and a networking event where confidence were the hot topic, and finally another networking event about finding your voice and public speaking.
It was in this final networking event that someone asked how to be more confident with speaking and the facilitator said "confidence is over-rated".
Well...my face was a little frowny to say the least 😂 What do you mean confidence is overrated?!
What the facilitator meant is that the traditional idea of confidence is overrated, or at least outdated. You know the one; extroverted, loud, taking up ALL of the space, often actually quite superficial.
Because let's be honest this (dare I say, brash) version of confidence is at times a mask. It might be a trait of the "fake it til you make it", it might be armour for insecurity.
So do I believe that confidence is overrated? ABSOLUTELY NOT.
I believe true confidence is as important as ever.
What is confidence?
When you reflect on this question, what does it bring up for you? Is it a feeling? A look? A sound? Is there a particular sentence that comes to mind.
I'd love for you to take some time to reflect on what confidence means to you now. There's no rush on this, I'll wait ☺
These are some of the words that came up in the webinar I delivered:
And this is one of my favourite "definitions" of confidence.
"Confidence comes from the Latin "confidere" which means to trust, to have faith. Therefore self-confidence is trusting in yourself."
It's not really a definition but an explanation of confidence whenever I give a talk on the subject. It really resonates with me.
To have confidence in myself it means trusting in me; trusting in my values, my abilities, my connections, even my body.
This is pretty cool. It takes some work. And it's often not a "one-and-done", rather something we need to work on. But trust me, it's possible.
I know because I have been the person with very low confidence. I was the person that didn't think she was good enough, that she couldn't speak her mind, that she couldn't stand in her own body and show up in everyday, let alone new, situations.
Now, I trust in myself (almost absolutely). I believe that every scenario is figureoutable, that I am resourced, that I have the kindness of heart and the strength (mind, body) to be better than fine. And I feel this play out all the time.
I don't necessarily look, stand, sound a different way. I may not come across as super confident all the time and that's because:
Confidence looks different on everyone.
Some questions to reflect on:
Where are you currently on a scale of 1-10 in terms of confidence?
What helps you be this and not a 0?
What could take you from where you are now to one step higher?
Thinking of a time when you were at your most confident self, how did this feel? What did you do? How did you act? What helped you?
What could a more confident version of you bring?
I'd love to hear how these musings resonated with you, and if you're happy to share, what thoughts the reflective questions have prompted. Send me an email to chloe@viacourses.co.uk
PS if you would like some quick tools to focus on and build your confidence hit comment and I'll share some ideas with you
