A spin on confidence

What is confidence? What makes you say one person is confident and another is not? We all view confidence in many ways that may not always fit everyone — we may have high confidence in some areas and low in others. Dancing is high up there for me while public speaking, not so much.

Can we say that a shy person or an introvert is not confident? Of course not. Simply because we cannot limit a person’s capability to be who they are or who they aspire to be based on a set of metrics that are not static. What’s key is not to put all people in one box, not everything will work for everyone.

There is stigma in society today around people who are naturally quiet, shy or loners. Think of a situation where someone calls out a shy person in public to say something that they are not ready to say or are not comfortable saying it in front of people. It catches them by surprise, everyone turns to them waiting for them to say something, they’re tongue-tied and can only manage to mumble some umm… till someone steps in and says something to move the conversation along.

We need to allow people to be themselves — each person is different and when we try to put these unrealistic expectations on people, we rob them of their individuality, to be fully themselves and we also rob ourselves a chance to get to know these people beyond what we can physically see. A colleague may be a technician, however, that’s not all they are because being a technician is what they do, it’s not who they are. They could be passionate about other things — music, farming, painting — which we would never know if we do not take the time to get to know them.

This is also a contributing factor to people defined by what they do (job) not being able to cope if they lose their jobs. This is because they have been praised, liked, and rewarded for what they deliver on the job and this becomes part of their identity. Without the job that gives them a sense of meaning and purpose, they feel lost and may not know who they are anymore. They do not get a chance to fully understand that just being themselves is enough, that even without that job, they are still valuable. Losing that job means that they have just hit a bump on the road and may need to pause, evaluate, and find another job that they can add value to.

Lasting confidence, I believe, is being yourself despite what anyone expects you to be. It’s striving to grow in whatever area of your life and striving to be a better human being every day. So, whether it’s at home, work, school etc. when we appreciate each other’s individuality, we foster a culture of diversity and inclusion which means each person can bring their best to the table, not out of obligation or force but just by the mere fact of us being ourselves. We owe it to ourselves to try.