Confidence

Insecurity is such an elusive frustrating topic.  I’d like to give a little attention to something that hates attention. 

Sometimes I write things down when I’ve been drinking and I found this note last week that I had forgotten about.  “When you are nicer to your guests your children develop low self-esteem.”  It’s an interesting thought, that maybe our culture of facades and smiles and performance and ‘love your neighbor’ above all creates an invisible dark place where our children remain curled up unmovable.   The concept is that when someone is over you give them your best:  Your best chair, your attention, etc.  You are more forgiving, more accepting, etc.  You treat them nicer.  This acidic environment quite readily can form a world where they believe that others deserve more.

This dawned on me when I was ‘giving’ more to the visiting child over my own.  We had a playdate with a friend from school and I was being more forgiving of her behavior than I should have.    The visiting child was being unfair and I was ignoring it.  I recognized that I was letting her get by with something she shouldn’t have and I called her out on it.  My child’s shoulders relaxed and she gloated.  It wasn’t the gloating that was rewarding.  Not at all.  But what dawned on me was the relief I felt from her.  She felt something I hadn’t been giving her: protection and a right to her own.

When you don’t have any depth to yourself except an outside veneer for guests it creates dead air and a lifeless environment for someone craving your respect.  They, in turn, believe that there isn’t anything about them that is valuable except the placating of guests.  It is a lack of belief in yourself amidst others.  “When people around I cease to exist.”  This is the crux of Insecurity.

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I was walking into the kitchen last weekend and npr was playing an interview with ____________.  By the time I got my water out of the fridge and walked out of the kitchen the gentleman being interviewed said, “Confidence doesn’t occur just by believing.  It occurs, simply, by being really good at something.” 

Wow. Really? Is it really that simple? 

This statement hit me pretty strongly.  I, like most Americans, believe that confidence comes from faking it.  We call it an heir of confidence because we think that it’s not really true.  They just have that heir about them.  But it’s not true.  Confidence comes from being really good at something.  What a beautiful thing.  And think about it.  When you get really good at something you can suck at everything else, and that’s ok.  I think obtaining a skill changes the landscape of a personality including something that understands the rite of criticism and judgment and how these ‘negative’ things have a purpose and a place.  And when ‘others don’t deserve more’ these ‘negatives’ don’t have any more weight than your own judgment.  Photography has shown me this.  I don’t like this picture much any more, but my wife/partner loves loves it.  Who is right?  Well, we both are.