What does it mean to be confident, and why does confidence matter, anyway?
This is an important question to answer, because the first and most crucial step for becoming a more confident person is to understand what confidence is, and how it helps you in life.
Every step you take to become more confident flows naturally from here.
What is confidence?
You can think of confidence as being:
- An enjoyable, positive emotion that feels good
- An emotion that helps you achieve things you want to achieve faster and easier
- An emotion that is created mentally via how you think about things
So, the overall idea, here, is that confidence feels good, it’s useful, and you can create it mentally.
An example of confidence
Considering examples of confidence is one of the best ways to understand what it means to be confident, and why it matters.
So, let’s consider the following example of two different baseball players.
Baseball player one is fearful, insecure, and lacks confidence whenever he’s up at bat:
- He thinks thoughts like ‘I won’t hit the ball’ and ‘I’m a bad baseball player’
- He doesn’t enjoy being up at bat, and he is uncomfortable with people watching him
- He will predictably have less success getting a hit (among other things, he is less motivated to even swing, due to thinking that he ‘won’t’ hit the ball)
In contrast, baseball player two is completely confident whenever it’s his turn to bat:
- He thinks thoughts like ‘I can definitely hit the ball’ and ‘I’m a great baseball player’
- He enjoys being up at bat, and he is comfortable with people watching him
- He will predictably have more success getting a hit (among other things, he is more motivated to swing, due to thinking he can definitely hit the ball)
An important thing to appreciate from this example is that even if it’s not ‘right’ to be confident, or ‘wrong’ to lack confidence, it is clearly more useful and beneficial to be confident, rather than to lack confidence.
Think about it: in this example, not only does player two enjoy his time up at bat more, but he is also more likely to get a hit, which is exactly what he wants to achieve.
So for this reason, all things being equal, it is always preferable and in your best interest for you to feel confident rather than not.
The top 2 benefits of confidence
The top two benefits of being more confident can also be considered the top two effects of confidence. They are:
- Greater happiness
- Greater success
This likely comes as no surprise, since from the baseball example, you can see there is a very strong relationship between confidence, happiness, and success.
After all, confidence feels good (so you’re naturally happier when you’re confident), and confidence helps you achieve things you want to achieve (so you’re naturally more successful when you’re confident).
The takeaway: it you want to be happier and more successful, it’s in your best interest to become more confident.
While there are more benefits to being confident than just this, these are by far the two most important benefits for you to understand and appreciate.
Do you want to be more confident?
The most important factor for becoming more confident is to simply want to be more confident, and to be decisive about achieving greater confidence, regardless of whether others want you to achieve it or not.
With this type of clarity of mind, you are already naturally well on your way to developing greater confidence in yourself and your abilities.
Also, the more you understand what confidence is (especially self confidence, which is the main type of confidence that most people want to develop) the easier it is for you to gain confidence.
For this reason, the next step for you is to learn more about what it means to be a self confident person, as well as learn where self confidence comes from.
Next: What Is Self Confidence? →
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Section 1 Lessons:
- What confidence is & two benefits of being confident
- What is self confidence?
- Why is self confidence important?
- I lost my confidence: how do I get it back?