A Crisis in Confidence

Introduction

Why is it that a challenge can so quickly eat away at our confidence? Sometimes it feels like when we fall down, we’re down for the count, and that we might not even have the strength to try to get back up on our feet. We slip back into old ways of thinking and disempowering narratives. Does it really need to feel this bad every time we “fail” or struggle with something?

In short, the answer is no. Yes, it is a certainty that life will be full of challenges and that we will experience difficult emotions as they come along, but we do have a choice in how we walk through those experiences and emotions. In this blog, I’ll go over some of the keys to keeping your confidence present and accounted for in the midst of a crisis.

I always tell my clients that confidence is bred through humility. At first glance, this may seem a bit odd. You might ask, “Why would humility breed confidence?” or “Isn’t humility like humiliation?” Well, not exactly.

Humility vs. Humiliation

You see, humility is having a modest view of yourself and your abilities. Not arrogant, not self-deprecating, just looking at yourself with a clear lens. Humility is a good thing. It’s viewing yourself as the human being that you are—no better or worse than others and no better or worse than past versions of yourself.

(Wow, isn’t that a relief?! You’re just a human like everyone else. No need for self-judgment or self-shaming, no need for ego or arrogance.)

To understand this further, I’d like to point out that you can be “humbled” either up or down. When you feel really down on yourself, humility will actually bring you up to the level of everyone else in your mind. When we are humbled up, we feel relief and safety in the fact that we are no different than our fellow man. 

On the other hand, when you’re feeling “too cool for school”, humility will bring you right back down to earth. When we are “humbled down”, we experience a spiritual balancing, as opposed to an embarrassment. In either direction of humility, we come to see ourselves as one with all mankind.

In a way, humiliation is similar to the downward direction of humility, but it is out of ego. We are humiliated when our ego has gone for a joy ride and circumstances force us to face reality. We go from an artificial place of feeling high and mighty to a very “real” and upsetting place, very quickly. This is where shame and self-loathing often enter the scene. Thoughts come up like, “How could I have been so foolish?” or “I can’t believe I got so caught up in myself”. How embarrassing, right? This is where we tend to go when we are humiliated.

Loss vs. Defeat

This feeling of humiliation often coincides with admitting “defeat” in situations. So how do we get out of feeling so badly and so defeated? We reframe defeat as loss. Feeling defeated is not the same as accepting a loss. Defeat feels like we’ve been beaten, and being beaten hurts. We don’t want to be defeated, and our confidence often goes down with us when we do.

Loss, on the other hand, is something that happens to us repeatedly in life. We lose material things, we lose opportunities, and we lose loved ones. We grieve those losses, and then we move forward in our lives. As we grieve, we come to a place of acceptance, and we understand that there is more in life waiting for us in spite of the loss that we encountered. We haven’t been defeated—we’ve simply experienced a loss.

Once we reframe defeat as loss, we can grieve it and then move forward without the baggage of self-judgment. We can live fully with our confidence still intact, instead of shrinking down to a place of self-doubt. After all, we will continue to gain and lose things in life—that is simply how life goes.

Confidence vs. Cockiness

Just to be clear, when I speak about confidence, I am not talking about cockiness. Confidence, like humility, is a spiritual vibration. Cockiness, like humiliation, comes straight from the ego. Confidence is our quiet, yet firm self-belief. Cockiness is our loud expression of “how great we are” to others, and it generally comes out of insecurity. 

(Quick note: these two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as seen with Muhammad Ali and his undeniable confidence paired with his swaggering, cocky attitude. In this instance, one might say that Ali had core confidence and used cockiness as a PR tactic and as a way to get into the other fighters’ heads.)

Confidence and Our True Selves

So, back to the original phrase: confidence is bred through humility. When we are humble, that is when we are neither too arrogant nor too self-deprecating, we build true confidence as we walk through life. We fall, we get back up, and we become confident that we will continue to get back up because that is simply what we do. Confidence is tied to our true identity, not some kind of propped-up persona or some negative self-pitying view of ourselves. 

When we are humble—that is, when we see ourselves as we truly are—we are able to act in a consistent way. We are not putting on airs to keep up with an “act”, and we are not paralyzing ourselves in self-pity. When we are humble, we bolster belief in our core identity, and we become confident in our ability to act and react in situations. We become confident in ourselves to survive, and then to thrive in life.

The next time you have a crisis in confidence, remember that you are not in defeat. Reframe the defeat as loss, grieve that loss, and get back up again as you always do. Remember that you are no better and no worse than anyone else—you just are. Through your humility, you will become more confident, and with your confidence, you will go on to do great things.

Much Love,

Noel Neu