I recently had a revelation sort of light bulb moment this morning. 💡
While out Friday night something ‘clicked’ in me that has never before.
I realized that most people come to social places steadfast as who they are and what they believe in before arriving. They have ‘staying power.’ And interact with other equally weighted individuals, for which either agreement or disagreement happens.
When you lack self-esteem and self-confidence and self-conviction you don’t have his kind of staying power in the first place. You aren’t even ‘there’ because there’s no ‘you.’ There’s nothing for people to get to know and converse with.
It was quite a shocking thing to realize. For the first 23 years or so of my life my social skills pretty much sucked, and I never had any desire to work on them whatsoever. And so I never did. Not until I hit 23 and something inside me changed. Suddenly, I wanted to get involved, find a girl etc.
Between 23 and 25 arduous efforts to come to know myself, realize and work through childhood traumas and build and maintain actual genuine friendships by exercising parts of my brain necessary for good social skills was happening in ways that I have never experienced before then.
It was like a social social skills boot camp. One in which I am still very much a part of.
So what’s the significance of this?
Well, I realized that self-confidence is more than it appears on the surface. Like an iceberg only the very top is exposed to plain visibility — the vast majority of its contents are hidden deep beneath the surface.
As we we all know glaciers float. If all that were there were just the tiny chunk at the top that piece of ice would sway and rock with the current, be pushed down stream and ultimately melt.
Its the massive swell that resides under the surface, the extra substance we cannot readily see, that gives the top substance, stability and staying power. Conviction.
When you are at peace with yourself and understand that you have traits and complex quirks and all the things you may have, and how these things and yourself meld within and acknowledge others with exactly the same but different attributes — well there’s only one way to actually achieve these effects in the first place. The only way is as described.
You can’t even properly acknowledge and recognize a person for all their glory if you don’t first realize that there’s more to yourself deep down under the surface.
We might not be able to look at glaciers and discern which are really just floating glaciers and which are actually large icebergs. But we can look at these glaciers and icebergs and see that some of them are floating and rocking about with the tide and current, and some are not.
It is this inner stillness, acceptance and acknowledgement that other people pick up on when they see a self-confident and acknowledging person around out.
It is this aspect that that makes them good people, that brings others drawn into them moreso than the superficial definition of confidence that you see in a dictionary.
Trying to define confidence is a very tricky thing to do! Try looking it up in the dictionary:
What exactly does ‘belief that one can have faith in’ mean?!
What does ‘faith’ even mean? That’s a notoriously difficult word and term to define.
What a tragedy, then, that the ubiquitous ‘self-confidence’ change is thrown around like it’s the next best thing since, garlic bread(?) (couldn’t bring myself to say sliced-bread, 😂🤣).
I’ve been pondering this mysterious quality everyone is chasing after and waiting for for some time. I think I’ve finally got the right idea about what it entails.
And you know what, damn it’s really hard to achieve!
Not so so easy to reach that level of pure inner stillness and self-acceptance. Even less easy, though, is figuring out that this is what is meant by the vague and ubiquitous term ‘self-confidence.’ It couldn't possibly be defined in a less helpful way in a dictionary.
I hope this post helps those with more experience find and maintain their inner peace, and those who are just starting out to be led in the right direction — at least a little bit, by knowing if they are on the right track paring the course, or if they’re way off in the sand.
And that’s what this post is all about.
Its really important to keep in mind that the biggest attribute that confidence gives one is the ability to ‘see’ and acknowledge others. This is the ultimate feature that confident people have when involved with others.
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