Having talked about self-confidence previously, you would wonder that how can you become confident in very situation? How can you be a confident person and how come it is so hard to be confident in certain situations?
Because we get into that, we first need to understand that there is always a reason why you choose to let your natural confidence come out sometimes but not other times. This reason is what most of those self-help gurus refer to as the source of confidence.
So what is your source of confidence?
For most people, confidence come from the feeling of personal security. If you feel secured, knowing that you are all taken care of and nobody or nothing can touch you, you always get your way, then you are confident as long as that security continues to be in place. Therefore, you know why you are confident in front of your best friends because you know they are not going to reject you; you know why you are confident in front of your subordinates because they are going to listen to you; you are confident around those who are physically weaker than you because you know they can't physically harm you and the list goes on.
What about the situations when you don't feel the feeling of personal security? Here are some typical situations for the most.
1. You just had a few drinks and you got pulled over by a cop
2. You have had a crush on your classmate/teammate for a while but don't have the encourage to let that person know, with that context you are in an interaction with that person
3. You are in your boss's office and your boss doesn't look happy
4. You are a white belt in your local karate Dojo and your sparring partner is a blackbelt who looks pretty mean.
5. You are selling real estate/cars/business productions and you are really desperate to make a sale and here is your customer who doesn't seem to be overly excited about your product
6. When you are trying to cover something up
7. When you are present with legit physical threats
Looking at the above list what commonality do you see that is the cause of not having personal security?
It is not too hard to see that our feeling of personal security depends almost always on external environments: you don't feel secure when you are worrying that other person may not like you if you make a mistake, or you are trying to lie and are afraid that person finds out or when you are exposed to physical dangers.
In other words, our source of confidence are based on external outcomes: the reaction from others, or physical danger that you know you can't handle.
There is nothing you can do about physical dangers, you will feel frightened because it is an indication of your mind and body to tell you to remove yourself from that danger and save your life, it better be working.
The confidence based on the reaction of others is false on the other hand. You are not confident (an attribute to yourself) as long as your confidence is based on the ever-changing and uncontrollable external reaction.
So in all of those situations when you feel insecure, do you recognize the reason why you are such way?
