Where does the real self-confidence come from? (Pills of wisdom #3).
It’s called SELF-confidence, not EGO-confidence.
Alternative title: where SHOULD the real self-confidence come from? (Because we’re all a work in progress, and that’s okay).
What if I told you the most egotistic people are usually the ones who keep shit-talking others and their alleged “egos”?
It’s common as muck. It’s called projection, and Jung explains. The more we ignore our shadow, the more it grows — and we end up projecting it on others. “Oh look, this person has a huge ego! What a moron!”, translation, “how dare this person have a huge ego? They’re forcing me to remind myself of the existence of huge egos. I don’t like thinking about it, because I have one myself”.
See? We project. And we project with the best intentions, believing wholeheartedly that we’re enlightening others, helping others — but no, we’re not.
This is tricky to perceive (and even trickier to heal) because we mistake it for genuine concern. Oh, but it’s not! Genuine concern happens when you see something concerning, react, but then go on with your day and even forget about it. Conversely, when your “concern” turns into an obsession and you can’t stop talking about it… Take a good look within. Maybe you’re projecting.
If it helps, let’s think of the rubbish metaphor: ever felt a strong smell of rubbish when you were walking down the road? Your instinct is to make a disgusted face, isn’t it? Okay, fair… But 5 minutes later, do you retain this disgusted expression? No, chances are you don’t. Maybe you smelled something delicious further down, like a food truck, or the perfume of flowers. External stimuli are perceived and responded to in the present: you smell rubbish, and react accordingly — but once it’s no longer present, once it’s in the past, you stop reacting. If for any reason your reaction persists… Chances are you’re no longer reacting to this external you saw; Chances are you’re now reacting to something ON YOU that resonated with it. Like, perhaps you smelled dog poop, and indeed there was some on the park… But you walked away from it, and the smell persisted? Well, my friend, inspect the soles of your shoes. Perhaps you stepped on it and took it with you! The exact same is true for reactions to people’s emotional “bad stuff” when we “accidentally step on them and take them with us” (aka, project).
Keep this in mind: when you set out to genuinely help people, you’re willing to have a flexible point of view.
If you’re not flexible, if you’re rigid or micromanaging, chances are you’re just pretending to help — and in fact you’re trying to inflate your helper ego — like “oh, look at me, look how helpful I am! I deserve approval because I’m helping others. I’m a good person because I’m helping others. I derive my value as a person from the way others perceive me (as a helper)”. That’s ego.
The ego is inflexible. It’s fueled by fear, of course it will be inflexible. Fear is, by definition, paralysing.
So, when you see someone who is apparently defending their worth, or trying to convince others that their complaints or disapproval or whatever is invalid because they actually did a good job and “haters are gonna hate”… Hmmmmmmmm… What could that be, huh?
I mean, it is indeed true that nobody likes “haters”, and it is true that some people are just trolling… But when you have real self-confidence, do you even deal with the trolls? No. You don’t feel the need to care about them. You don’t feel like you need to prove anything to them. They ain’t paying your bills, it’s simple as that.
When you’re truly self-confident, you’ll even read through troll comments and feel nothing, because they don’t concern you; And in doing so, you’ll find the genuine complaints and won’t be afraid to respond to them, because instead of fixating on the disapproval itself and going on a spiral like “oh no, oh no, oh no, this person doesn’t like me, what a tragedy”, you focus on the content of their message. You’re curious about new input, not afraid of criticism. See the difference?
Having a flexible point of view means being open to new input. Like, maybe this person who wasn’t adoring you and showering you in compliments simply has a new input about the topic you brought up. It doesn’t HAVE to mean that now you’re unmasked, now you got caught, now you no longer have a value as a writer (or whatever it is you do)… INSTEAD, it probably means now you have the opportunity of learning something new about this thing you already do and already love — and that’s an asset, not a liability.
So, real self-confidence comes from knowing that you deserve to be where you are and do what you do. It’s not necessarily related to “how good” or “how flawlessly” you do what you do. Right? It gives you the permission to make mistakes and learn new things, because you’re not relying on perfection for confidence; Instead, you’re relying on belonging for confidence. And it’s FAR, FAR EASIER to belong than to be perfect!
The ego wants perfection, because the ego is paralysed. It’s afraid. It doesn’t want change, it doesn’t want anything new or unknown. It creates impostor syndrome, people-pleasing, and a whole bunch of other nasty paralysers.
The self, on the other hand, only wants to belong. And belonging is as simple as love. Do you love what you do? Congratulations! You already belong in your profession.
