Why You Don’t Have Enough Confidence

I have had quite a few beautiful people ask me how I find the confidence to do the things I do (mostly regarding painting, singing, writing, and parenting). I used to tell them confidence was the key. But now that I have spent time thinking deeply on the question, I am not so sure it's the answer. In fact, I am quite sure it is not.

The basic principle of cause and effect have changed my way of thinking. I asked myself, “what comes first?” When I initially began to paint--before it was a sustainable career--what got me going? In truth, I was not confident. I had no skill, no training, no accolades. I had a hunch and a box of old fifty cent paints in the garage. My world was in shambles. My confidence had been slapped out of my hand and stepped on. I was the least confident I had ever been in my whole life up until that point. Yet, I began a new endeavor. I can conclude it was not confidence that gave me what I needed to start.

So why do many of us feel like we don’t have enough confidence to chase our dreams? Where does it come from? Where does it go? Where does it come from, Cotton-eyed...jk.

I think our problem with confidence--and why it keeps avoiding us--is that we treat it like a cause. We say, “if only I had more confidence, I could do this thing, make this change, rule my little world, chase my big dream.” But confidence is not a cause. Confidence is an effect.

Time spent waiting for confidence to motivate us is time wasted. If we are doing it right, we will never have enough confidence to start a new venture.

I'll attempt to illustrate my point. This is the way, unfortunately, we think it should happen:

Confidence ----> Endeavor ----> Confidence

This, as you can see, makes no sense. Confidence cannot be both the cause and effect. We can't expect confidence to both fuel our engines and fill our egos. Here, I’ll illustrate the same delusion with a different example. Say someone is hungry. Hunger, then, is the cause. It motivates the person to eat, but it cannot also be the result of eating, or no one would bother to try eating at all. The fallacy would look like this:

Hunger ---> Eating ---> Hunger

Or even this:

Satisfaction ---> Eating ---> Satisfaction

If this were the case, the person would never attempt to eat, because they would already be satisfied and would have no need to move towards their goal at all.The motivator and the reward for anything worth doing cannot be the same. Because we falsely think they are, we wait and wait for enough confidence to try something new and difficult. But it never comes.

I recommend replacing the errant cause with a more effective one: courage.

Courage precedes a new event or endeavor. It comes first. And it is needed if we are attempting to do something with an unknown outcome, especially if that something is difficult, challenging, and rewarding. Courage is the cause, and once the endeavor is complete, confidence is the effect; confidence is the reward.

If we think of it this way, so many of us have been waiting on the reward before we feel ready to attempt the project. We want to know how many subscribers we’ll get before we launch our channels. We want to know what the reviews will be like before we write the book. We want to hear the applause before we take the stage. “If I had more confidence, I would.”

But we will never have enough confidence unless we do the thing. What we need, friends, is courage. Courage attempts without the reward. It jumps without the landing. It dances without standing ovations.

To make it plain, follow with me below:

Courage -----> Endeavor -----> Confidence

Once we master courage, we will grow in confidence. We will be those humans we used to look to and mutter, “wow, they are so brave. If only I were that confident.” And it will be right in time, because we’ll need that confidence to jump into our next adventure. It will be more challenging, and will require more confidence than we have earned. The braver we are, the braver we must become. But we will become. We will. And first...take courage.

It is waiting for you.

Follow me at teshellecombs.com for my books, paintings, and songs.