Google “how to be confident” and you’ll get 411,000,000 results. A quick browsing through the top spots will turn up tips like “Push through self-limiting beliefs” and “Overcome self-doubt.”
Of course, if you knew how to do all these (redundant!) steps then you wouldn’t be searching for “how to be confident” in the first place. The advice is long in quippy tips and super short on knitty gritty. Exactly how does one begin to think bigger and stop second-guessing oneself? Meditation? Extreme exercise? Primal screaming?
Confidence is an interesting phenomenon. It seems so many people have it when they shouldn’t, and not enough people have some when they should. Society has strict dictates on who gets to be confident: Pro-sports players. Politicians. White men.
For women (especially women of color), our confidence is strongly policed by society (lest we rise up and unleash our rage upon those who oppress us). “Too big for her breeches,” “arrogant,” “difficult,” “uppity,” and the general term “bitchy” have been hurled at almost every woman on the planet at least once (in my case, SEVERAL times) in her life. This has me thinking that maybe confidence doesn’t always come from the traditional approach of learning, continued practice, and good feedback. Maybe confidence can come from anger.
hink about it – remember that time when you were so pissed off you marched right up to that person/place/thing and unloaded a rant so hot it melted faces off unsuspecting onlookers? Lack of confidence in that moment was a non-starter. Anger obliterated limiting beliefs and cleared out any last drops of self-doubt. You didn’t care. You were going to GO OFF and there was no stopping you.
Perhaps a dose of anger is something to apply to the situation in which you lack confidence. Here are two steps:
1. Imagine someone trying to block you from achieving your goal. Think of your worst bully in grade school, VP Pence, Satan. Imagine them telling you there’s no way you can do your thing.
2. Get livid and do the thing.
We tend to forgive mistakes in speech, performance, etc. when it is done in anger. We gloss over a ranter’s errors with “Let it go, she’s on a roll.” Get on a roll. Roll often. Practice does build confidence. Let’s lifehack anger to get us practicing that which we fear.
Image by rawpixel from Pixabay Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay