I was listening to a podcast the other day and one of the speakers said something that made me lean forward.
“There are two sources of confidence,” the speaker said.
I held my breath and listened harder. Would this guy’s theory about two sources of confidence be right? Was he about to reveal himself as a sage or a doofus? What do I think — are there two sources of confidence?
If you know me at all, you know that I read tirelessly about human nature, confidence, clarity, effectiveness, personality type, psychological blind spots, influence and power, and workplace satisfaction. I have spent a lot of my life building mental models about what makes people tick, and how we can understand our attributes and motivations to better flourish at work.
The speaker continued. “Confidence comes from two things. One is firm convictions — a well-developed belief system. And the other is having options.”
Hmmm. Is he right? He might be. I’m going to be carrying this hypothesis around until I can decide whether to adopt it as my own.
Some of my work with clients is to ground them in firm convictions — about themselves, about what they want and need from work, about what they offer, and the path to getting it. When you have those things clear, you speak and present yourself differently, without needing pep talks or a script.
And some of my work with clients is to help them generate options. People think a way to develop and explore options is to look at job postings — but I think that’s a terrible and dispiriting plan. There are better ways to identify and research viable options, and when clients get going on this they feel an energy and direction that gives them hope.
A third source of confidence that he didn’t mention is physical strength. I’ve come to recognize in myself that exercise, specifically strength-building movement, does something to me that I can’t seem to get from thinking or talking or creative expression or socializing or other kinds of work. So I’d add physical progress as a source of progress.
What do you think? Are there other sources of confidence? Are these legitimate? I’d love to know.
(Which podcast? This one: 2Bobs — useful to me as a new entrepreneur.)
