Confidence is a perception problem
Have you been told, ”you just need to be more confident”?
I hate that advice. I've been told it countless times, as it seems to be my number one flaw according to the world.
So naturally, I spend a lot of my time researching confidence, finding solutions to fix this problem. It's been an annoying, circuitous process.
Maybe you share the same challenge. Maybe not. Either way, I found this definition of confidence too good not to share:
Performance psychologist Michael Gervais says that confidence is your perception of the challenge mapped onto your perception of your skills.
To me, the keyword here is perception. I realized that sometimes we overblow our perception of the challenge. Or we underestimate our skill. Or both. When both happen together, the result is deadly low confidence. There is too wide of a chasm between those two perceptions. They don't map onto each other very well.
Perhaps I've found my real problem? I always saw my skills as lacking and committed to improve them until I believed I was good enough (which was never) Plus, I always took everything so seriously and over-exaggerated the difficulty of my challenges (because all things worth doing are supposed to be hard, right?).
My perception of my skills never caught up to my perception of the challenge. They never could map onto each other - hence, the continued low confidence. This is just not something advice like "faking it till you make it” or “just be more confident” could fix.
The real solution here is for me to right-size both perceptions:
Gain a more accurate perception of my skills - by fighting my own negative thinking, disassociating mistakes from my inherent value
Recalibrate the perception of the challenge - by asking if I'm making it seem much more difficult than it actually is, resisting my perfectionist tendencies
When I can see the challenge as less daunting and my skills as strong enough to match that challenge, this will result in more confidence. It's a balancing act.
What's amazing to me is that this is also applicable on a larger scale. A leader can help their people gain more confidence in two simple steps: 1) decrease the perception of the difficulty of the challenge, and 2) increase the perception of the strength of their skills.
Try it on yourself. Try it on your people. I'd be curious to see what happens.
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