‘N’ comes before ‘u’ except for confidence (and courage)...

In a ‘highly scientific’ experiment I did last year on social media, I asked the following million-dollar question:

what holds us back from pursuing what we want?

The most popular answer was lack of confidence (more on the others another time!). If I think back over all the coaching sessions I have had with clients over the last 3 years, I imagine confidence would probably be the most commonly referenced desire by my clients.

We all seem to want more of it, and to enable us to do / have or be other things as a result. ‘If I felt more confident, then I would apply for that exciting new role that’s a stretch for me’, or ‘I need more confidence to put myself out there’ or ‘when I’m more confident, I won’t care what people think’. I imagine one of those, or a different variation, might ring true for many of us (mine is the middle one!).

But is it possible we are looking at this the wrong way round?

If we are always looking to a future state of being (the time when we will have somehow acquired this confidence) to enable us to do the things we actually want to do now, we are caught in an awkward catch-22 situation! We want confidence to materialise to facilitate our current actions.

We Need courage in order to have confidence

The word confidence comes from the latin word ‘fidere’ – to trust oneself, but there will be variations of what confidence means to all of us individually. Regardless, if it boils down to some kind of belief or trust in ourselves to do the right thing or that things will turn out ok because of the choices we make, is it helpful to hope this will just manifest itself? I think there is a better way, and I’m slowing learning to practice what I preach!

The first time you drove a car, I imagine you probably didn’t feel super-confident. I certainly didn’t. No idea what I was doing, no feeling for how the car would respond, fearful of stalling etc etc! If I was hoping my confidence would breeze me through learning to drive, that certainly wasn’t my experience!

Nevertheless, we’ve all had to turn up for our first driving lesson, willing to learn and make mistakes as we go (including hitting the curb and stalling at a busy junction, we’ll gloss over that bit!). To achieve the future desired state of being a bit more independent and able to drive, we’ve had to have the courage to take action and experience the process of learning to drive first. Fast forward many months (I was reluctant to take my test!), I had in fact learned how to drive. I felt confident that I knew how the car would respond to me, my clutch control was actually pretty good and reversing round a corner didn’t seem like an impossibility anymore. My confidence in my driving ability had developed through experiencing the learning, mistakes and successes as I went.

Whilst using the example of learning to drive is one that I think most people can relate to easily, you could substitute this for so many other examples – mastering a language, cooking a new recipe, starting a job, taking an exam... the key thing is that is it entirely possible that our confidence comes as a result of having the courage to take action in the first place?

I’ve been meaning to start a blog for a while now. It’s been sat on my to-do list, glaring at me whilst I faff around on other things (procrastination will be another topic soon, I’m sure!). If I’m waiting to feel confident to write one, I might be waiting for a very long time. So I’ve just decided to do it.

I know it’s not perfect, lots of people won’t even see it, those who do won’t necessarily agree with this viewpoint, it’s probably too long or too short and many other things, but that’s OK. Now I’ve started, I think I might find it not so intimidating the next time as my confidence grows slowly alongside my small action steps. And if it has made sense to a few people, that courage is required first to build that elusive confidence, then I’m glad!

I wonder if you might experience the same... what courageous action could you take towards your goal(s) where your confidence may also grow as a result (win, win!)? Try it and let me know what happens, I'd love to hear from you kathryn@kbmindfulcoaching.com.