The Confidence Mystique
Posted on May 21, 2018 by Martha Pasternack, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
Absolute confidence is way overrated, in my opinion. Perhaps confidence has more to do with being genuine than anything else.
One spring I joined a group of women near my home because I wanted to learn how to use tools and maybe even help build my own house someday. It was called “A House Building Course for Women”.
We built a house from the ground up. We all took a risk to look stupid or be woefully inadequate. Maybe we would even hurt ourselves. We learned about hand tools, power tools, and all kinds of building materials.
We learned how to level foundations, square corners, sharpen blades, and lift impossibly heavy sheets of plywood. We learned about fulcrums, angles, and fasteners. We made joints, joists, and doorjambs. We got splinters and soon were faithful to our work gloves.
We learned when we could try a task ourselves and when we needed to ask for help. We had fun. We had lots of fun.
When the day’s work was done and it was time to clean up, anyone could have walked barefoot on this building site: no nails, no garbage, no broken or crumpled pieces of anything! I thought that was adorable. We were all “homemakers” and it was normal for us to create a clean and safe environment.
We were becoming confident in our ability to do things we had never done before. Most of us were incredulous. At least I was. How could I be doing these things? After all, “I throw like a girl.”
We were learning to trust ourselves and about true limits. We were taking risks, asking for help, learning the proper use of tools, and the wisdom of wearing gloves. We learned the true limits of our ability and ways to use our minds, creativity, and bodies as leverage to lift things we didn’t know we could lift.
Perhaps confidence has more to do with being genuine than anything else. The trick is to avoid self-imposed limitations, such as thinking we are too weak, too inexperienced, or lacking creativity, in this case.
I know from experience that I can do things I never thought possible. I also know that when I find an authentic limit I am empowered rather than diminished.
Absolute confidence is way overrated, in my opinion. I do, however, have confidence that I will know the difference between real and self- imposed limits at least most of the time.
Questions to Ponder:
What are your self- imposed limits?
How do they keep you stuck?
