I’ve spent some time reflecting yesterday and I realized that. When people want you to be confident they don’t want you to be actually confident, they want you to pretend you are. It is idiotic and makes no sense, but it explains a lot of situations in which I behaved the wrong way.
confidence to me means the opposite of that. it means questioning your asssumptions, approaching things from a different angle, reflect, recalculate, asking for a second opinion. Because I’ll end up with greater confidence that my assertions are more truthful. But apparently doing all that makes people think I’m insecure. Shit!
Trust whatever knowledge or decisions your former self has made. At least until significant new information arrives. They are a smart person.
Personally, I’ve found that my method for dealing with analysis paralysis - both in myself and with others - to be … basically confidence.
There is a cutoff time for self-doubt and second-guessing. After that, we know what we know and we do what we do, unless some significant change occurs.
(Afterwards, we may revisit and start doubting and second-guessing the topic, but not now.)
If speaking, whatever you knew before you opened your mouth is the factual truth as you know it, and it stays that way until you are done speaking. The worst that will happen if you proceed to say something wrong, is that you will be corrected. This is useful.
If navigating, you choose a route to the best of your ability and that is the best route available. Take it. The worst that will happen is you discover it is wrong and have to adjust.
To add to this, what feels like “faking” confidence can be reframed as not needlessly pointing out the risks and insecurities that are inherent in any action or knowledge. It’s not dishonest, because some level of uncertainty should be assumed.
If I guide my friends through a city and go “eeeeh… I think it is maybe this way” every few blocks, I only invite them to worry and put an accidental burden on them to try and double-check my navigation. To me, that is inconsiderate. If I am all “this way, friends!” they can just trust me and chat about dogs or plywood manufacturing. A risk of “whoopsie, we need to loop around this block” is perfectly fine by most people.
Exactly. It depends on the severity of the negative outcome.
It’s one thing to be confident in directions, it’s another to be confident in a pre flight check list for a 737. That’s why there’s appropriate guidelines that dictate how to conduct the latter.
Haha yes. If I ever overhear a pilot tell the other to “just be more confident” during pre-flight check, I’m getting the hell off that plane.