When did you stop being confident in yourself?
For far too many of us, we may not even be able to remember.
I live in a neighborhood with many kids from newborn babies to early teens, and two things stand out:
1) The youngest kids are full of confidence, and
2) The older kids quickly begin to lose their confidence
The first statement begs the question, “How do you know a baby has confidence?” Because they are willing to try anything. That is confidence. When it doesn’t go right? They try again.
Older kids begin to lose this as they (and those around them) quickly move from accepting any attempt as a positive to judging and evaluating the quality and nature of the attempt as good or bad. And the scary thing is when I say “older” I’m talking less than 2 years old for many kids.
The young kids understand the true meaning of confidence. It is not about where you have been or where you are trying to get to, it is the willingness to accept yourself as you are.
Confidence literally means “with trust” or being true to oneself. Accepting yourself as you are gives you the willingness to try new things without the risk of your attempts being “good” or “bad.”
As with kids, your confidence does not (and should not) have to come from your past successes or failures.
Confidence does not have to mean you believe you will have success in the future.
It is simply accepting yourself where you are right now and being willing to accept that this means sometimes things will work out the way you want them to and sometimes they won’t.
And in either case you try again.