Confidence is the ability to see a possibility without, necessarily, having navigated the exact path of that possibility. For example – A Zoo manager in Chennai might be confident to run a Zoo in Mysore even without seeing or experiencing the Mysore zoo.
And that confidence comes from the integrity of being around that possibility.
Hence, confidence, by definition is in relation to a possibility. Usually you would rarely find a person who is confident about everything. If one is confident about giving a speech, he might not be confident about dancing in public. If one is confident about starting a startup, she might not be confident about selling. Confidence, always, is with respect to a possibility.
Let us talk about the possibility of publishing a book. On one end there is an assistant secretary of an accomplished writer & on the other – there is a teacher in a remote village with no internet connection. If you had a way to measure the confidence levels of the assistant secretary & the teacher about publishing a book, I’d bet that assistant secretary would end up on the higher side. Why?
Day in – day out, the assistant secretary is surrounded by that possibility while the teacher has no avenues. It is an uphill task for the teacher. She has to find the appropriate resources, connections to help her see that possibility. She then needs to do all the hard work of actually writing the book & then getting the book accepted by the publisher. Uphill, uphill, uphill all the way for the teacher!
The sense of possibility comes from the integrity of being around that possibility.
Now, if the confidence comes from the integrity of being around a possibility, what does being around that possibility really mean?
How to be around the possibility?
‘How to get a job at Google?’
‘How to run a non profit enterprise?’
‘How to start a Udupi restaurant in Bangalore?’
You never know the most optimized path to be around a possibility. But you can always guess or ask others of what could likely be a good path.
Being in an environment, an environment that sees the possibility, one starts to see the possibility. The degree of clarity about the possibility is directly proportional to the degree of confidence one exhibits. May I dare say, confidence is simply clarity?
Anyways, being confident is just half the effort. There is the actual work. The work of seeing that possibility through. It might work or it might not.
If it doesn’t, maybe you now are more comfortable with the possibility, hence more confident?
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