Wouldn't it be great to feel bullet-proof against the ups and downs of life?
To enjoy the good stuff, and shrug of the rest?
To gracefully move on from failure without any lack of confidence or enthusiasm?
This is what so many of us dream about.
So we work on ourselves and our confidence.
Yet deep down, we remain afraid of failure and rejection.
Why is this?
A great starting point is to understand that our circumstances have nothing to do with our confidence.
Or, said another way, our circumstances have exactly as much to do with our confidence as we think they do.
Circumstances don’t have the ability to make us feel anything.
The only thing we will ever feel is our own thinking in the moment, because the world we observe comes to us via the mechanism of thought.
If we think that something is bad, that we’re insufficient, or that we need to confident in order to perform well, those thoughts become our reality.
The way the human mind works is that we will always see evidence for what we believe.
As a result, if you see yourself as inadequate or insecure, you will find evidence to support that belief.
If you believe that you cannot perform well unless you feel a certain way or certain conditions have been met, you will find evidence that this is indeed the truth.
The crucial part we miss is that we are living in the feeling of our thinking 100% of the time, and the world we see (with its people, events and circumstances), is simply a reflection of our state of mind.
The more we think, the more insecure we become. Thinking about the outcome, yourself, or your chances of success all add more clutter to your mind and make it harder for you to naturally respond to what is happening.
What confidence is at its core is trusting yourself to the point you forget yourself and the outcome.
Confidence is surrendering to life, saying you are willing to do what it takes, whatever it is, and letting the chips fall where they may.
It’s about forgetting about the circumstances, and responding to life naturally, without an extra layer of thought between you and the action which throws you out of sync.
Confidence is simply allowing your body and your innate intelligence to do what needs to be done without you consciously micro-managing and meddling in between.
By being here in this very moment the way it is that we gain access to our deepest resources and we allow ourselves to get fully into the game.
But as long we think and try to control ourselves, our thoughts and our actions, the more out of sync we get.
We remain trapped in our heads, unable to get in the game.
And true confidence can never find us there.