Introduction

Confidence - don't we all envy the people around us who just live their lives confidently, trusting their own judgement and relentlessly pursuing whatever they seek to achieve?

Whether or not you agree, confidence is without a doubt one of those character traits that is highly valued by society - especially by performance-oriented societies.

Both socially and economically, from earning more money to attracting more people and opportunities, extroverted confident people just seem to have everything going their way.

In this post, we look at my perspective on the three main sources of confidence and how they relate to each other to form a network of sustainable confidence.

This post covers...

1. 🗺️ Distinctions of Confidence
2. ⛰️ Part I: Evidence
3. 🎯 Part II: Strategy
4. 👀 Part III: Perspective
5. 📡 The Confidence Network
6. 🌍 Conclusion

The Different Types of Confidence

Whilst there surely exists a much more detailed or even study-based distinction of the different types of confidence, for this post, there are just two types of confidence worth distinguishing.

The first type of confidence is true confidence, also known as inner confidence.

This is the type of confidence where you actually feel confident on the inside and don't just artificially portray yourself as confident on the outside.

Whether or not this confidence is justified, the host truly feels confident from his or her own perspective. There is no dissonance between how confident the person portrays themself and how confident they actually feel.

The second type of confidence is the opposite: fake confidence. Like the name suggests, this type of confidence is purely artificial.

The host doesn't actually feel confident about themself, but out of desperation or the need to leverage the advantages of confidence in social settings, the host portrays themself as confident to the best of their abilities.

For this post, we are purely focussing on sources of confidence that allow us to build real, sustainable, inner confidence.

Part I: Evidence

Arguably the greatest source of confidence is evidence.

This refers to any kind of proof of your own ability to perform, do well or at least survive in some specific area, environment, field or competition.

This proof of ability can come in different forms.

From any kind of accomplishments, specific results, certifications or awards to more abstract proofs of ability like a high salary or the simple fact that you managed to get through something - By having some level of proof of sufficient or even outstanding performance, there is no need for wishy washy confidence self-talk.

Confidence backed by evidence is so powerful because there is no need for artificially tricking your mind into believing you have a reason to be confident.

Instead, there is cold, hard proof that you are doing well.

This makes it incredibly easy for you mind to adopt real and sustainable confidence.

Part II: Strategy

The second fundamental source of confidence is strategy.

Though less strong than evidence based confidence, by having strategies on how you plan on going about different things in the future and how you plan on overcoming foreseeable obstacles, your mind has a reason to believe that your safety is secured for the time being, again making it easy to adopt additional confidence.

These strategies can come in various forms.

From having a plan for your professional care and maybe even having backup plans for unexpected changes in circumstances to having clear routines and methods to get you back on track when things go wrong - Developing strategies means you have a level of awareness of the upcoming future and have carefully thought about how you plan on surviving and doing well in it.

Part III: Perspective

The final fundamental source of confidence is perspective.

This source of confidence has the primary function to compensate for a lack of evidence-based confidence.

Especially when you are young and you haven't had the time to build up as much proof of ability to use as your primary source of confidence, there is still a way to have a high level of confidence right now: perspective!

Perspective means being able to look at your life from a bird's eye perspective and to acknowledge certain realities. These realities may very well differ from person to person, but you may still be able to find some kind of assurances and stabilizers within your given set of realities. Examples of this could be something like the following:

1. 😧 If you live in a decently stable country and don't have any major disadvantages in comparison to the people around you, with most things you do or attempt, there probably isn't much of a real threat if you don't succeed.
2. 🏠 If you have a family that supports you (doesn't necessarily have to be financially), you have them to return to if you need to recover from any major setbacks.
3. 🕕 Life is finite. Whatever consequences you may face after failing to achieve something (mostly these consequences won't even be all that major), you won't have to endure them for eternity. There is a guaranteed end to the game of life.

The Confidence Network

Having covered all three sources of confidence, you may have noticed that the three of them are actually connected.

Displayed visually below, they each have different functions and focus on different segments - forming a network when put together.

Each source of confidences leverages confidence from a different standpoint.

1. Evidence-Based Confidence leverages confidence from the past.
2. Strategy Confidence leverages confidence from the future.
3. Perspective Confidence leverages confidence from a bird's eye perspective that is disconnected from the actual plot of your life and therefore acts as an independent source of confidence.

Understanding this network of confidence, it should seem much more straightforward where confidence comes from and what we need to do to ensure somewhat sustainable confidence throughout all phases of our life.

Of course, this network dos not guarantee confidence and it may not be able to withstand all storms of life. But to me, it seems like the best we can do as fragile humans.

Conclusion

Confidence is an abstract topic and it can sometimes be confusing where confident people get all of their confidence from.

The Confidence Network gives an overview over how confidence works and where it comes from.

By understanding the three sources of confidence:

1. Evidence-Based Confidence
2. Strategy-Based Confidence
3. Perspective-Based Confidence

... we can gain a decent level of true, sustainable and inner confidence even at an early or during a difficult stage of life.