I’ve spent some time reflecting yesterday and I realized that. When people want you to be confident they don’t want you to be actually confident, they want you to pretend you are. It is idiotic and makes no sense, but it explains a lot of situations in which I behaved the wrong way.
confidence to me means the opposite of that. it means questioning your asssumptions, approaching things from a different angle, reflect, recalculate, asking for a second opinion. Because I’ll end up with greater confidence that my assertions are more truthful. But apparently doing all that makes people think I’m insecure. Shit!
Double-checking everything you do is the opposite of confidence. You may gain confidence from the checks, but you’re not confident in your initial choices.
but you’re not confident in your initial choices.
absolutely, and I understand why people expect others to be
It’s important to understand that nobody expects you to be fully confident 100% of the time - nobody who matters, anyway. So don’t feel too bad double-checking stuff, and if anyone gives you any guff about it just start crying and shit your pants and they’ll go away 👍
Not absolutely, but within a 95% confidence interval.
Trust whatever knowledge or decisions your former self has made. At least until significant new information arrives. They are a smart person.
Personally, I’ve found that my method for dealing with analysis paralysis - both in myself and with others - to be … basically confidence.
There is a cutoff time for self-doubt and second-guessing. After that, we know what we know and we do what we do, unless some significant change occurs.
(Afterwards, we may revisit and start doubting and second-guessing the topic, but not now.)
If speaking, whatever you knew before you opened your mouth is the factual truth as you know it, and it stays that way until you are done speaking. The worst that will happen if you proceed to say something wrong, is that you will be corrected. This is useful.
If navigating, you choose a route to the best of your ability and that is the best route available. Take it. The worst that will happen is you discover it is wrong and have to adjust.
To add to this, what feels like “faking” confidence can be reframed as not needlessly pointing out the risks and insecurities that are inherent in any action or knowledge. It’s not dishonest, because some level of uncertainty should be assumed.
If I guide my friends through a city and go “eeeeh… I think it is maybe this way” every few blocks, I only invite them to worry and put an accidental burden on them to try and double-check my navigation. To me, that is inconsiderate. If I am all “this way, friends!” they can just trust me and chat about dogs or plywood manufacturing. A risk of “whoopsie, we need to loop around this block” is perfectly fine by most people.
Exactly. It depends on the severity of the negative outcome.
It’s one thing to be confident in directions, it’s another to be confident in a pre flight check list for a 737. That’s why there’s appropriate guidelines that dictate how to conduct the latter.
Haha yes. If I ever overhear a pilot tell the other to “just be more confident” during pre-flight check, I’m getting the hell off that plane.
Some of the dumbest idiots are also the most confident.
They’re not pretending. They actually believe in themselves. If you tell them they’re wrong, prove it with data, show them clear evidence that they’ve made a mistake… they’ll continue believing they didn’t make a mistake.
Some of these idiots end up running large companies or even countries. Which is a problem, because very big mistakes get very expensive, especially when the people in charge refuse to accept a mistake was made.
Never be ashamed of being self-critical. It’s a sign of intelligence, and the world would be a better place if more people were like this.
This being said, sometimes it’s important to make a decision and roll with it, because if you had to double check everything it’d take too long and you’d miss opportunities or fail to avoid pitfalls. Like taking too long to dodge an obstacle while driving.
I don’t have autism, and it took me a long time to realize that too. Just because a person acts confident about something doesn’t mean they’re more likely to be correct than a person who acknowledges some amount of uncertainty. But unfortunately a huge amount of people believe a confident-acting person over people who speak with less certain wording.
Not so much pretend to be certain but rely on the probability and percentages of the given situation.
Dont give in to irrational fears.
Being confident doesn’t necessarily mean being correct. It means you think you are correct.
If you are double checking your answers, that ensures you are correct and you can then be confident because you’ve double checked. But if you had to double check your answers, that means you weren’t initially confident.
Acting confident in front of people reassures them of your expertise because it signals that you’ve done something enough that it’s become ingrained in your memory or habits.
An example is a bus driver. I would want them to be confident about the route they are driving. If they are constantly checking a map at every intersection, I would be afraid they were not familiar with the area and might miss a turn if they misread the map even once.
Another example would be walking. Do you check your balance with every step you take? I’m sure you don’t. And people around you don’t actively watch you to make sure you don’t fall. My infant, on the other hand, rebalances himself with every step and constantly holds onto steady things around him. Most people that watch him will be concerned about him falling because he’s communicating a lack of confidence, a lack of experience.
You should definitely question your assumptions and approach things from a different angle. You will definitely end up with greater confidence. But if you do this in front of people you’re displaying insecurity in your own assumptions and reasoning.
There’s a différence (even if it may be stupid) between a confident person and being confident about something
Confidence is making a decision and standing by it even if others disagree or try to convince you otherwise. You believe in yourself and you don’t feel the need to become defensive or angered if someone questions it. This can totally be a decision to gather more information in order to become more informed and take the right course on a matter.
Yeah part of the problem is that people use the word “confidence” to mean different things, some of which are a bit contradictory.
Confidence is making a decision and standing by it even if others disagree or try to convince you otherwise.
then it makes no sense to me to consider confidence a virtue. Noone should pretend to be confident when they are not, and even worse expect others to be confident and take them less seriously when they admit that they are not.
It’s not pretending. That’s called false confidence. Real confidence is knowing that you are making the right decision.
but real confidence is unattainable without doing things that are socially understood as “insecurity” (challenging own beliefs, double checking, asking for more opinions etc…) that’s the contradiction
You’re totally right. Here’s how I’ve learned to navigate these situations. [EDIT] I started to write out specific advice, but as I was writing i realized there are more elements of nuisance to it than I could list in a short amount of time. So here’s my top points:
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You can add qualifier words like “I believe X” rather than double checking.
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Act falsely confident in an amount scaled to how important the topic is. If someone making small talk asks what i had for breakfast yesterday, it’s ok for me to confidently say “cereal” even if I’m a bit unsure, because it’s not an important topic. But if someone asks me how much gas they need in their car to drive to the next town then I’ll be very clear and tell them my level of uncertainty, like “I think it’ll take around 5 gallons, but I’m not sure about that.”
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You can be confident that the right course of action is to seek further information. Double checking is a lack of confidence because you are not trusting your first check. If you seek other people’s opinions, it’s important that those people have experience and knowledge in the thing you are asking or it may seem like you will listen to anyone’s opinion but your own.
If double checking your beliefs will mean you are then confident in them, do that double check before you speak. Make it part of coming to your conclusion in the first place, and then trust yourself enough to stick to that. That’s true confidence. Worrying and asking for more opinions, or double checking after you have your conclusion just telegraphs uncertainty.
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Confidence doesn’t mean that you stand by a decision if others disagree. That’s being stubborn. If people have valid points you hadn’t considered when they try to convince you, you shouldn’t just stick to your decision. If the counterargument is just “really? are you sure?” you shouldn’t just give in. But if the counterargument is “really? did you account for X?” (and you hadn’t, and X is important), then you might suddenly want to rethink the situation.
Confidence is more like an approximation for: on a scale of 1-100, how sure are you? If your answer is 75 or higher… just say 100. If your answer is 50-75… just say 75, and highlight key things you are still very not confident about. If it’s lower than that, just say 0. “This will help you understand confidence” vs “This is generally how confidence works, the numbers might be a bit off, or the exact details aren’t right, but it gets you most of the way there.” vs “I have no idea what confidence is”.
The key is not about how confident you actually are, but how others perceive your confidence. And in that regard, different situations call for different levels of confidence. A doctor doing brain surgeon shouldn’t just go cutting through things at a 78 confidence level. But when deciding on what to have for lunch, “I dunno, tacos?” is fine even if you’re only 23 confidence that you actually want tacos.
There are jobs out there that basically exist in the 50-75 confidence range. But you have to be able to articulate your lack of confidence and propose remedies. “Are we ready for the product launch Monday?” “No, I’m still concerned that we haven’t addressed X”. Some companies are very risk averse, and if your lack of confidence in success is because of confidence in the existence of risks (which you have to be able to convey to be helpful).
You have to figure out what level of confidence youre supposed to have in a situation (accounting for negative consequences of being wrong), and then give your answer. But to further complicate things, sometimes “give your answer” means answering “are you sure?” and sometimes it means presenting yourself in a way that implies that you are sure. Social interactions are weird.
I’ve heard “trust your instinct/gut” almost as much as I’ve heard “trust, but verify.” And I’m pretty sure that latter one is an oxymoron.
Right. I’ve made the same observation. Very annoying.
I have great success being confident that I do not know something
I’m right with you… It’s confusing :P
I have this weird confidence that’s hard to explain. There’s a good chance I’m wrong about any given thing, but I’m pretty confident I’m the best informed in most situations.
I have seen a issues where not just nt’s but people in general have a hard time with cause and effect and those type of relationships. You should be confident in something because its worth trusting. Being confident wouldn’t make the thing worth trusting because it doesn’t work both ways. I know someone who programs in java and writes TERRIBLE code but he thinks he writes good code. His confidences in his code makes the issues worse because telling him the fix is hard when he thinks his code is perfect even when its completely broken. I know other people like that…
About confidence The national guard taught me a thing about confidence in cleaning weapon
When you clean your rifle, you need to clean it, and get the armorer (are at least a superior) to check if it is well cleaned. In basic you’re taught that you only ask for your weapon to be reviewed if you are confident it’s clean. Of course its basic and the main lesson you take out of it is that life is shit and your job is to deal with it. But it doesn’t last. Now after basic I begin actual service and for the past 4 years I’d had to clean fuck tons of guns. Mine, others, entire armories. And each time I’d have to ask for the review I needed to be certain. And many time, especially at the beginning I’d have to continue cleaning because it wasn’t fully cleaned despite being confident it was cleaned.
And the thing is… it wasn’t a problem if I was wrong, had forgotten a small parts, etc. What they wanted me to do was the work correctly and genuinely believe in my work. They wanted me to have genuine and honest reason to believe my work was done, and therefore, if there was work remaining to do, that mean I genuinely didn’t see it. And after years of service, thanks to the experience acquired, now I almost pass review first try.
Though there are fucking idiots who want to be lied to. Especially superior who actually don’t know, understand nor are intelligent enough to understand what your job actually is who just want you to say “yeah everything fine” so they can repeat it to their own boss.
