The importance of having real, unshakable confidence.
How crucial it is today, and why most people get it wrong.
I just got back from a one-week cruise. It wasn’t too extravagant, but we visited some of the Greek islands, including lovely Santorini.
The whole cruise was jam-packed with food, entertainment and people wearing beautiful gala clothes around evening time. There were, of course, subtle yet creative ways the crew members tried to make us spend more of our hard-earned money. But who cares? We’re on a cruise, worry about that later!
For people that haven’t been on a cruise before, the earlier-mentioned are what it’s about. Being on a cruise is indulgence at its finest. It’s an environment that stimulates the notion of continually glaring at each other in a comparative, “I’m better than you” manner.
“Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men’s judgments of one another.” — Desiderius Erasmus
Don’t get me wrong; I’m by no means taking my privileges for granted. But all of it got me thinking about confidence — something that complements the topic of success that I have been focussing on lately. I’ve wanted to cover this for some time now. However, ironically, the thought of writing about a topic that I’ve struggled with for the more substantial part of my life, made me feel unconfident. So like any other person, I kept brushing it off.
If you’ve been called shy, sensitive, ‘too good for your own good’, then you probably know what I’m talking about. I’m sure you might’ve even experienced some of my encounters or similar ones.
In an article I wrote some time ago, I mentioned how at a job I had at the time, my supervisor — yep, supervisor — called me scared, and told me that my male colleagues “don’t bite”.
Me not taking it well is putting it lightly. I was pissed. Too many times have I let people look down on me and act like I’m this “weak” person. Long story short, the entirety of my experience at this company lasted two weeks.
See, a lot of people confuse being confident with having a big ego. I realised that most of everyone’s notion of confidence is based on endless pillars of superficiality and nothingness.
When we let our ego be our North star in life, we go about our days pretending, comparing, wanting more, and discarding our more than sufficient possessions. This feeling is ongoing and makes us restless.
Pretentiousness on its own requires a shit ton of energy to keep up with appearances. You know, status, and other mundane things that deep down don’t matter and won’t fulfil you in the longterm.
As I’m writing this, I can’t help but reminisce and reflect. See, for the predominant part of my life, I’ve been unconfident, self-loathing and always wondered what the whole confidence fad everyone was talking of, was about.
Since then, I’ve had a host of experiences and circumstances that I had to face. I’ve struggled a lot, but I believe that they’ve all helped me grow significantly. So much so that I came to a point where I started accepting all of it and defining things for myself (one of them being confidence).
What does it mean to be confident?
Let’s get this out of the way; as much as I hate classifying people as extraverted or introverted, I do think it’s worth mentioning that confidence has nothing to do with how one chooses to live their life. Being an introvert or an extrovert — for lack of better words — means that you have different needs and values — nothing more, nothing less. It doesn’t mean that either is any less capable of turning possibility into reality. All one needs to do this is courage and commitment to embark on the journey between the two.
And that is what unshakable confidence really is — it’s the ability to focus.
I’m of the opinion that confident people have a healthy sense of self-esteem. They know that there are areas in which they can’t perform at their best, and they are okay with that. For them, not everything is a competition, and they don’t need to be the best at every particular thing.
Most importantly, however, is that genuinely confident people don’t need a sense of belonging or (outward) validation from others. What most of us fail to comprehend is that it takes courage and commitment — in a nutshell, confidence — to be ourselves.
Sometimes this probably leads to being disliked — because a lot of people, even those we consider dear, might not like who we are deep down. And some, even if they like us, don’t believe that we’re capable of doing something until we just go ahead and do it.
And all of this is not to make you or anyone feel betrayed, sad or angry. All should be fine because external unconditional love does not exist (or is hard to encounter). It’s foolish to expect such a thing from family, friends, lovers all the while we’re not willing to love ourselves unconditionally in the first place.
Furthermore, whether people like us, accept us or reject us, it’s outside of our scope of control. There isn’t much any of us can do — we can’t make people like us.
Having a sound level of self-esteem doesn’t mean likes, followers or fame on social media. It means accepting ourselves and developing a closer bond with ourselves despite what Fate brings our way. It means acknowledging that we are flawed inside and outside and seeing failures as unmissable lessons from the Universe.
In fact, the act of having a healthy self-esteem and being confident is being comfortable and laughing at said “failures”. These should be normal for everybody. It shouldn’t be that when people start diving deeper within themselves, that they’re suddenly considered “woke”.
So, about this ego thing.
If there’s anything I learned about ego, after studying it for so long, is that most schools of thought advice against it.
But what is it really, and how is it different?
In this equation, there’s no talking about ego without confidence and self-esteem, and while we’re at it, why not add more terms? Self-worth, efficacy, self-image, self-love, self-respect…this list can go on forever. And that sucks because as people living in the Western world, we tend to overcomplicate straightforward things.
Do all of them matter? Maybe, but using too many terms for something only induces confusion, which is the opposite of what we need when becoming more aware.
In some of my past articles, I’ve started being quite adamant about this. By now, all of us should know to research and define terms ourselves.
Too much ego is axiomatically something we should avoid, that much is clear. It’s the image we have of ourselves — built out of a collection of our “good” and “bad” memories. It makes us think that we know ourselves much better than we actually do. Usually, it’s here where we see ourselves from others’ perspectives — this is our self-worth.
Ego is dangerous and impedes one’s growth, evolving and transcendence. At its worst, it can lead to depression.
Self-worth starts forming when we’re tiny. It’s almost like our parents/caretakers have trained us. The more something occurred, the more it’s prone to becoming a part of our identity that’s forming. As we grow, we start holding on to these identities, and they become a part of our belief system, our self-esteem.
As you can see, self-worth and self-esteem are very closely related. They work together to make us confident or — if out of proper balance — give us an inflated or deflated ego.
As a person that has been depressed for more than two decades, I have diluted myself into believing that I didn’t have an ego in the first place. I’m 26 now, but as a kid, I didn’t know better, nor did I possess the vocabulary to comprehend what was going on either.
“Becoming depressed or anxious is a process of becoming a prisoner of your ego, where no air from the outside can get in.” — Johann Hari
What feeds the ego?
As mentioned earlier, the ego almost always starts off small, but still from an external place (self-worth). Once internal, it’s what we do with that external information that makes the difference — an identity is then formed (self-esteem).
Let me give you an example.
There’s this boy named Kai van der Hoeven; he’s the only son of so and so. He belongs to a lineage of wealthy and devoted Dutch Christians.
Both his parents used to work, but his dad convinced his mom to stay at home and manage the maids since he’s the CEO of two lucrative businesses. The dad goes on a lot of business trips, so he spends a lot of time away from his family. But that’s okay. Because if the roles were opposite, and the mom spent that much time away, they would’ve been worried all the time. His dad is a man; therefore, he’s much stronger than his mom. If anything happened, he could protect himself.
Kai goes to private school, and he’s always told by teachers and other family members how intelligent he is. Some time passes, he graduates from high school. To get rid of the stress, he takes a gap year to experience Thailand with some of his friends who are also highly intelligent. During his trip, he determined that he wants to study Earth Sciences. Excited, he phones his parents to tell the good news.
Unfortunately, this was not well received by neither. He’s to study Business and take over his dad’s and uncle’s businesses. Oh, yea, I forgot to mention; his dad has a brother, Henk. Henk’s a bit older than Kai’s dad, and he too has a few businesses under his belt. He has a few children but divorced his wife a few years back. As Kai is brighter than all of those children combined, it’s already been determined that he’ll take over Henk’s companies as well.
“A van der Hoeven studying Earth Sciences? What does one even become with that? Whatever it is, it’s not something you should study. It’ll be a disgrace.”
A disgrace so big indeed, that not even Henk’s children dared to bring upon the family. Kai thought for a moment, all of uncle Henk’s children studied Economics, History, Law or Philosophy. His parents must be right, especially his mom. She always says that she’s right, and the fact that she wins most arguments with his dad proves it.
So he goes through with it and decides to apply at one of the leading universities in the country. Admission to the programme is quite tricky, but luckily the dean recognised Kai’s dad, and he got admitted without much effort.
Kai is, for the first time, exposed to students from different backgrounds that worked hard to get there. They’re not particularly gifted as he considers himself, but they still manage to perform better. Kai is puzzled, and showing signs of low-level depression. Just how is it possible that all of these students are performing exceptionally? Filled with rage, Kai calls home, and his parents disappointed in the university, decide to pull him out of the programme.
Once home, he’s reassured that it’s okay and that most billionaires drop out of formal education anyway.
Interesting story, right? Throughout his life, Kai was exposed to recurring instances where external circumstances and beliefs have shaped the way he thinks about himself and others around him.
Were you able to point out Kai’s source of misery?
The identities Kai formed gave him an inflated sense of self, which made him think that he was a winner without ever even competing in a real competition. Not that life is a competition, but you get what I mean.
Luckily, Kai is only fictional. I don’t know a Kai, and if your name happens to be Kai van der Hoeven, and this is the gist of your story, I’m sorry. Contact me, and I’ll change the name immediately.
But like Kai, we, ourselves are exposed to a series of identities that we let become a part of our belief system. These constrain us or have the ability to send us on a wild journey where nothing will/can suffice our thirst.
Regardless, our ego always tries to look for someone or something that in our eyes has less means than we do. It can stem from identities as small and temporary as someone’s age and beauty to more permanent identities such as gender and race.
Once our ego realises that we’re not the best at a specific identity, it leaves us alone to lick our wounds. Then, when the coast is clear, it returns to convince us that our position is still better than the worst. And that we’re still a bit better, a bit more special than those people over there.
The painful truth is that we’re not one bit special, let alone as special as we believe we are.
If these notions raise conflicting thoughts, it means that your ego is uncomfortable.
Good.
This is the point I wanted to reach.
On obliterating the ego.
I remember seeing some time ago, a man that didn’t have any fractured bones, but still went through the trouble to leave his house most days with a cast on, so that he could get attention from others. It was part of the show My Strange Addiction aired on TLC. At first glance, one might indeed believe that he’s addicted to casts or that he has a fetish…up until the point he starts mentioning others.
Ego makes us feel entitled to attention. It’s the underlying factor when someone — even when doing a good deed — needs to make it known to the public.
When the feeling of attention feels better than the supposed good deed, something is off.
If the ego is so bad, surely we can get rid of it quickly, right?
Not really, even when we’re aware that ego should be avoided, it’s still hard to let go of. The problem with it is that it’s addicting. It’s good to feel like the world revolves around us and that we’re more important than we actually are. How can one not like being entitled? How can one not live for the attention they get from others?
So far, the only ways I’ve dealt with this myself was trough ameliorating the relationship I had with myself. I got rid of the belief systems that were instilled into me during my childhood. They were never mine; therefore, I have no space for them.
It was a very long process, where cognitive dissonance was unavoidable. It still is, but all the confusion was necessary for me to grow.
This sense of blunt awareness was essential for me to forgive, show grace to and be patient with myself. I started respecting and accepting myself and my circumstances instead of fighting all the time.
However, most importantly, though, it helped me be at peace with my stupidity. Something I realised everyone was all along — we just love to pretend otherwise.
Yet the ego is essential, and we do need it.
This is probably my ego talking, but with all the superficial things we have created for ourselves, a little bit of ego won’t hurt. In fact, it helps us survive this hectic and overly loud world we’ve created for ourselves.
We couldn’t be further from our ancestors. Most of us think that’s a good thing, but I see the life we’re living as a detachment from what’s vital to us as human beings.
We are more selfish than ever, more individualistic than ever, yet we want more and more external approval than ever.
You must’ve been living under a rock if you don’t worship a form of some sort of Capitalism nowadays. You remain faithful all the while giant corporations get to exploit you, me and everyone else in return. If our egos were the least bit healthy, there wouldn’t have been the creation of a problem, nor the solving of it with ads, marketing or commercials. We’d be confident and happy with what we have.
I find it greatly ironic that we don’t feel the need to improve either. If we were, we wouldn’t continue giving ignorant, greedy, power-hungry people control over us and let them “lead” us to damnation.
The truth is that we’re all in a collective rut. And it’s no wonder that E.O. Wilson said this;
“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have palaeolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”
Hmm..so what can be done, then?
Being less opinionated is the way to go. Cognitive dissonance is something you’ll undoubtedly run into. But as terrifying as it is to have a war going on in your head, growing is much more rewarding.
Try to have less of an opinion and judgement about others, and compare yourself less to them. We enjoy comparing ourselves to others (same-age group, same-sex parents, etc.). It doesn’t have any purpose, but we do it anyways and start feeling bad about ourselves after.
The next time you open Facebook, Instagram or any other social media platform, try to think of the main reason why you’re doing it in the first place. And if you need time to get back to balance, don’t be afraid to put your phone down once in a while and enjoy a little bit of nature.
This might sound like the worst advice you’ll ever receive but bear with me. Try to be less goal-oriented. I find that we focus too much on success and results. We treat them like these ultimate things that we need to achieve in our lives. And then, only then — once we’ve won the race — we’ll be happy with ourselves.
“See if you treat life as a race, if you have to win it, you have to get to the finish line soon, isn’t it? You want to?
If you get to the finish line ahead of all these people, you won the race. You know what the finish line is?
We’ll be negotiating where to bury you.” — Sadhguru
Of course, this is impossible. So rather than focusing on the results and considering everything else that happens a failure, try to be grateful for the fact that you’re one step closer to where you need to be.
See, sometimes Fate has an interesting way of still getting its way. We can be fooled into thinking that we have more control than we actually do. But Fate always finds a way to remind us of what’s truly the case. Usually, we fail to realise that what Fate brings our way, is much better than what we initially wanted.
Is your ego too stubborn to take some advice from a 26-year-old? Hey, no problem, don’t take my word for it.
I notice significant changes in the world. We are a population that can be proud that we live longer, better and without many apparent illnesses. We are rich, ostensibly successful, and supposedly the most technologically advanced yet.
But we fail to notice what has been recurring over and over through history. Whenever humankind develops this obsession with specific areas/fields, and others are left neglected, an imbalance is created. This imbalance eventually becomes chaos.
How this current society is working is making us sick.
We’re basically modern slaves drowning in our own toxicity, and it’s causing some, their lives. We are just way too disconnected, and it’s only going to get worse.
Do your research, define things for yourself, keep a journal, meditate, say affirmations, chat, pray, sing, dance, whatever you believe is necessary to help you come to centre. One cannot be in the right mindset to learn, grow, focus, let alone be confident — which is our shield in all of this — if not centred.
From then on, it’s up to you to decide whether you want to continue on the same trajectory or act from a place of love, compassion and humility.
I’ll leave you to ponder with the following quote;
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
Thanks for reading, have a nice day! 🖖
