What is confidence anyway?
Is it the ability to speak up when you disagree with something? Is it when you love your own skin enough to love somebody else's? Is it a lack of self-consciousness? Or is it the very presence of self-consciousness?
We all seem to try to define confidence so that we have something a little more tangible to work towards. This is understandable because it is much easier to have a visible goal than to work towards a feeling that you only understand once you have it. The issue with this is that we can sometimes confuse confidence with arrogance. Someone can be loud and seem passionate and talk over everyone to make their ideas heard, and we may immediately label them as confident. But sometimes acting this way stems from insecurity. In reality, the definition of confidence is full-trust, which is the opposite of insecurity. Confidence is when you find the security within yourself and trust yourself enough to do anything you set your mind to.
I once heard a quote that resonated with me a lot. It was, "Confidence is not 'will they like me'. Confidence is 'I'll be fine if they don't'."
Say you are a millionaire with loads of self-confidence. Then one day, you lose all of your money, and along with your money your self-confidence flies out the window as well. I would argue that this means you never truly had self-confidence. Finding a true self-confidence is when you are not searching for the approval of anyone. It is when you maintain your self-confidence despite the loss of material things, or support from someone. This validation is often sought through external approval. We should all work towards finding ways to validate ourselves, instead of looking to others to do it for us.
Building confidence starts from actions. Once you start doing things that you are afraid to do, and find that you are capable of them, you are building trust within yourself and developing self-confidence. We have to own our mistakes and understand that learning to be comfortable in our foolishness is what will help us realize that it is okay to mess up sometimes.
Self-confidence is a confusing concept. But slowly working towards achieving it is something that we are all capable of.
