The Risk of Confidence

How crossing a road with my daughter got me wondering about the risk of confidence

I've been crossing roads for years, so I don't give it much thought. I trust myself to judge when it's safe and I've got years of evidence to draw on. However, I was crossing a busy road with my daughter recently and it got me thinking about risks and confidence.

My daughter is still getting used to crossing roads when there isn't a pelican crossing and it's scary for her, especially when it's crossroads. Eventually, there has to be that moment when you've checked all ways, judged the distance and speed of the cars and have to decide: "Yep, I'll go now!"

On this day, she relied on my judgement and we ran across with me chirping "Go, go, go!" and with her flapping and squealing in panic.

After we had crossed, I started wondering about what she would need to feel better able to cross the road on her own. I know that eventually she will be able to judge the distance and check the speed so that she can make a sensible decision. But, there are lots of variables involved, aren't there? I mean, she cannot control the driver, she will never know with absolute certainty that they won't suddenly speed up become distracted or do something she wasn't expecting.

And, by the way, this isn't about encouraging catastrophic thinking or imaging everything that could go wrong. (If you're parent, you most likely don't need more of that!) It's simply acknowledging that almost every decision we make contains some element of uncertainty. We can assess the situation and make considered choices but we rarely have complete control over what happens next.

So, what has this got to do with confidence?

When we talk about confidence, we often focus on the individual. We're bombarded with platitudes like;

Just believe in yourself!

You need to trust yourself more!

Believe you can and you will!

These messages are useful, to a point, but they're only part of the picture.

You might trust yourself to speak up in a meeting but you can't control how other people will respond. You might know that you need to set a boundary but you can't guarantee the other person will like it. You might believe that you're capable of going for the job but you don't know whether you will get it. You might share an idea you really care about and have absolutely no control over how it will be received.

Confidence asks us to step into situations where we can influence what happens but rarely have control of all of it. And that means...RISK.

What does trusting ourselves actually mean?

I often ponder on the difference between self-trust and self-belief. For me, self-belief is connected to what I believe about myself and my capabilities, for example;

I believe I can do this

I believe I have something worth contributing

I believe I am capable

Self-trust feels slightly different because it's less about knowing that I can produce a particular outcome and more about trusting myself to respond to whatever the outcome might be, which might sound like;

I trust myself to make that decision

I trust myself to say what I need to say

I trust myself to cope if someone disagrees with me

I trust myself to work out what to do next

This distinction is important to me because your confidence can (annoyingly) never guarantee an outcome. Let's face it, you could do everything within your control and still get a no. You could communicate a boundary carefully and thoughtfully and someone can still react badly. You can prepare thoroughly and still make a mistake. You can cross the road carefully and still need to pay attention to the car coming towards you.

Having self-trust must allow room for uncertainty and I think this is the bit that throws people. Hang on, I have done the work! I've really worked on believing that I can do this hard thing and now you're telling me that I might not even achieve the hard thing?!

Yep. Brutal, eh?

And then there's beliefs...

This is where confidence gets even more juicy and exciting for me. (Yes, I am a proud nerd!)

We all have beliefs about ourselves, other people and the world around us. Those beliefs have been shaped over years through upbringing, relationships, education, culture and experiences and some of these are incredibly useful. The useful ones help us to navigate the world and make decisions without having to reassess everything from scratch every time, for example;

I believe if I touch a flame it will hurt

I believe that if I practice something regularly I will get better at it

The difficulty comes when a belief we've formed is treated as a certainty, particularly when it no longer reflects the situation we are in.

We may have learned that;

People don't like it if I disagree

Getting things wrong is embarrassing

I need to keep people happy

People like me don't do things like that

These beliefs influence the thoughts we have in a situation and those thoughts affect how we feel and the actions we take.

So, two people can face what appears to be exactly the same risk and experience it completely differently. Speaking up in a meeting might feel relatively straight forward to one person and enormous to another but the actual action is the same. What each person believes might happen when they take that action can be completely different and I think that's why telling someone to 'be more confident' is really unhelpful.

Confidence is already there!

A really important part of how I work with confidence is the belief that we all have intrinsic confidence.

I am not interested in installing something that is supposedly missing but rather uncovering what's already there.

Overtime, our experiences and beliefs that develop can make our confidence harder to access.

For example, perhaps you spoke freely as a child and yet were frequently told that you were 'too much'. or perhaps you made a mistake and the response from others stayed with you or maybe you learned that keeping other people happy helped you to feel accepted.

All of these experiences act as data that we use to navigate the world and sometimes, that data (a bit like AI) can start making decisions on our behalf without us really noticing.

Don't say it

Don't risk it

Wait until you're sure

It's going to go wrong

The confidence hasn't disappeared but there is clearly a lot of outdated information sitting between you and your ability to access it.

Hmmm, what about self-wisdom...?

As I write this, I am thinking about another part of the conversation that isn't talked about much...self-wisdom. I don't believe that confidence is about taking all the risks. I mean, going back to the crossing road example with my daughter; I don't want my daughter to believe she can cross the road whenever she likes because she's confident. I want her to notice what's happening around her, judge the situation and make a considered choice based on what she knows.

So, perhaps self-wisdom is our ability to know ourselves well enough to recognise which risks matter to us and which don't. To recognise the difference between I'm frightened because this matters to me and Something about this genuinely doesn't feel right. I

t's about knowing when we are allowing an old belief to make the decision and when we're drawing on a useful experience.

And, let's not underplay the important role that risk has. If there were no uncertainty, no possibility of things going differently and no choice to make, would we even experience ourselves as being confident? Isn't risk one of the places where we get to uncover our confidence?

We make a considered choice without knowing exactly how it will turn out and in doing so, we get new information about ourselves. We discover that we can speak up. That we can make the decision. That we can deal with a no. That we can respond when something doesn’t go as we hoped. The outcome doesn’t have to prove that we made the ‘right’ choice. The experience can simply give us more evidence about our ability to navigate what happens next.

In my opinion, self-belief, self-trust and self-wisdom all sit within confidence. They help us draw on what is already there and decide what to do with it.

I can believe I can do it.

I can trust myself to deal with what happens.

I can use my wisdom to decide whether the risk is worth taking.

AND I can still have no idea exactly how it will turn out.

Confidence cannot make the world predictable

My definition of Comfortable Confidence is "A state in which individuals feel sufficiently safe, connected and resourced to take risks that matter to them."

The word risk is deliberately there because confidence cannot make the world predictable.

It cannot guarantee that people will approve of us, agree with us, choose us or respond in the way we hope they will and I certainly don't think the aim is to reach a point where those possibilities stop mattering either.

I think it's about becoming more aware of what we believe about the risk in front of us.

What am I predicting will happen?

What do I believe about myself here?

What do I believe about the other people involved?

What is within my control?

What isn't?

Perhaps, like crossing a road, we gather the information we can. We draw on our experience. We pay attention to what's happening around us. We use our judgement and decide whether the risk is one we're willing to take.

And then, at some point, we have to decide whether to go.