Indeed, I have thought about this concept of confidence for the greater part of my life — due to one reason or another, but what is confidence? What factors give confidence to a person? And in what situations or which moment does a person become over-confident? These are all questions that have been in my mind for a long time now & I have pondered over the logical and sometimes illogical reasons and justifications to better understand the concept, as well as everything that is tied to it.
We will start with defining confidence first, before I give my personal thoughts on what I believe it is. The word confidence comes from the Latin word ‘fidere’, which means “to trust”. The word confidence can be applied on to other people and situations, as well as on to your own self, in which case it becomes self-confidence; therefore implying that a person needs to or has trust on their own self and abilities. The concept of self-confidence is similar to confidence, except that, a human being uses it as a self-assurance tool to reassure themselves that they have the necessary trust and faith to put into their own decision making, ability, personal judgement, and power etc.
That is the theoretical and academic definition of what confidence is.
Philosophically, and what I think the meaning of the word and what the concept holds is that, confidence is when we have we overcome this feeling within us that we are unable to do something. This nagging feeling that we feel in our gut is something we experience like a reflex, before we even get a chance to think on something and have our emotions, thoughts, and feelings come together to give some sort of verdict on our capability and calibre. Confidence is when you do not care or have the fear in you anymore that you will lose or fail. The fear of not doing something supersedes the fear of failure or loss or regret. That to me is confidence.
Psychologically, confidence is when you can control and condition your mind to always believe in yourself — your conviction in your self-belief is so high that you are always ready to meet life’s challenges and take them head on, with the thought in mind that the outcome might not always be favourable; but you are ready for the consequences. You have so much belief and trust in yourself that you subconsciously reassure yourself at times to boost your morale and ego; in case you need to handle or deal with any kind of situation or circumstance in life, whether personal or professional.
What are the factors that make someone be confident?
First of all, we need to understand that true confidence is never systematic or stagnant. It is not attainable forever, neither can you be always confident in life — life will present you with certain challenges & scenarios at times where your confidence level will be put to the test and not everyone comes out with flying colours. It is a phenomenon that is wavering and fluctuating. Having confidence in another person or within your own self, has different levels and comes with varying degrees of belief and trust. Confidence levels are not attained fully, neither can you lose it all in one go. You build confidence, just like you build trust and belief.
If it is confidence in someone else, for example in a personal relationship scenario, you build that, by building up your comfort, trust, respect and honesty levels with another person. If you feel secure being with someone and they give you positive vibes and reassurances — whether directly via their words or subtly by their actions or gestures, it leads you to be happy in their company and boosts the feelings of confidence in that person; this person cares about me, is honest, respects my thoughts and I am comfortable with them, I am confident they have my best intentions at heart. You will follow them to the moon and back.
When it comes to self-confidence and the factors that lead you to increase it, again, confidence is not something you purchase in one go from the supermarket. You build confidence levels by:
- Thinking positively about yourself and generally being happy
- Practicing self-love and self-care
- Constantly pushing your mind and practicing to deal with all kinds of scenarios in life/being more self-aware
- Conditioning your mind to get rid of any kind of negative thoughts that forbid you from doing something, even when you have the ability(s) to do it
- Talking to successful and positive people, especially those who have overcome their own self-confidence issues to realise that there is light at the end of the tunnel and a person can achieve whatever they set their hearts and minds on
- By being consistent and putting in effort to appreciate your own work and self
- By not listening to other people’s ill intended malicious and sometimes deliberately harmful words, that sometimes are used to shatter your inner self that can lead to the destruction of your personality
- By reading up on the acts of manipulation and gaslighting, so you are aware when someone else is trying to break your confidence and your own belief and trust in your self
There will be some people who will say that superficial things like money or looks give you confidence, but it is temporary. Just like contentment, true confidence does not come from superficiality or materialism. Being confident requires a realistic and practical sense of one’s own capabilities and feeling secure in that knowledge. Money, just like looks is something that no one can guarantee will last. People who focus too much on these kinds of things to give them confidence, are actually confusing having an inflated ego with self-confidence. The people who are too money or looks oriented to increase their confidence levels in life, are first of all, only temporarily confident — it only lasts until the money and looks last, and secondly, it is very easy to cross the threshold into having low self-esteem & once you do that, your confidence levels deplete quite quickly.
This happens when someone becomes over-confident. Over-confidence is not necessarily a bad thing on its own, sometimes a person needs to be a bit over-confident to achieve certain goals or ambitions in life; however, there is a high risk that an over-confident person can actually fail miserably at life — in terms of the many aspects that it pertains to.
Over-confidence is a cognitive bias that the person births within them; an over-estimation of one’s ability or power or judgement. This can lead to a plethora of psychological problems that can seriously hinder a person’s relationships with other people and chances & opportunities in life. When you have excessive belief in your self, and become over-confident, it is easy to slip into a superiority complex. It is easy to go into a God complex too, especially if you have a narcissistic personality disorder.
A God complex is the unshakeable belief that is characterised by constant inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility.
Now, to answer the question why someone becomes over-confident? First of all, psychologically speaking, if you have a personality disorder — like if you are a narc, you are more susceptible to slip into the feelings of being better than the rest of the people in your life or constantly living with these superiority thoughts that you know better. When your personality is such, then it is very easy for a person to have excessive trust and belief in themselves backed by an inflated ego that helps fuel the constant fire of over-confidence within them. This leads to a severe impact on their behaviour with their own self, as well as other people. Relationships are impacted and most often than not, over-confident people with personality disorders do not have long lasting people in their life, whether it is in the personal or the professional capacity. No one can stand a conceited and self-absorbed person for long.
One of the other reasons why a person becomes over-confident is, when they have an insecurity that they are trying to mask or hide or not make evident. They will put up a wall of pretense, a façade of over-confidence, when actually these kinds of people are the ones that suffer the most from low self-esteem and various kinds of insecurities. However, to the world, they want to seem like that they have everything in order and they are better than the rest, so they lie and manipulate people without stopping to think how much their over-confident fake self is harming them or destroying their own lives, more than the lives of other people.
There are different ways that over-confidence and indeed confidence levels can be kept in check. Always be humble and modest, in my opinion. Accept that you are a flawed human being and that no one is perfect. Being humble will keep you grounded and will stop you from tipping to negative things like conceitedness and having an inflated ego. If you are humble and accept that human beings are all the same at the end of the day, despite socioeconomic and class differences, amongst other things, that will also help you to control your confidence levels and help you from becoming over-confident.
Another thing that a majority of the people need to learn is to get and appreciate feedback. Criticism is good at times, the positive kind can help a person to self-reflect and assess their own self. Confident is good, but not when it is harming your self, life, or others. If someone is telling you certain things about yourself, learn to acknowledge and analyse and then use that to improve things about your personality and self. In the long run, it will only be beneficial to you. People also need to learn to take other people’s opinions and not have this condescending attitude that only their opinion is the best or the one that is right. Believing in your knowledge level is good, but too much belief isn’t. Other people can be educated and well learnt too, wise and truly confident people accept and acknowledge that and take the positives from whoever they come across.
