Confidence not Arrogance

Everyone knows the importance of confidence. And yet so many people struggle with it. Why? Why is it so darn difficult to build confidence? The simple answer is: because it is work. The slightly more elaborate answer is: because it requires constant hard work and honesty. I believe that when people hear that they should become more confident, they end up becoming more arrogant, which is counterproductive.

Both confidence and arrogance start with someone not feeling good about themselves. The problem with arrogance is, that it is what happens when we try to make ourselves feel better, without being willing to acknowledge our problems. We try to make other people believe, how great we are, because we cannot believe ourselves, when we say “I am awesome.”. We hope that when other people believe, that we are great, we can believe it ourselves and find a way to be at peace with ourselves. In other words we are trying to put up a show. The show that we are awesome. The show that we enjoy our lives and that we are in control.

Another very characteristic thing that is an indicator for arrogance is, when we feel the need to be acknowledged and approved by others, but most importantly: when we always want to be better than others. We constantly need to measure up against other people and be better than them, in order to be able to feel good about ourselves. This sometimes goes as far as we feel the need to put other people down. We feel the need to be seen. We feel the need to brag. We feel threatened when someone is better than us.

And while we keep all this up we end up being exhausted and still not at peace. The reason for this is simple: we lack honesty. Everything we do is nothing but a show. We know exactly that we are not as great, as we want to make other people believe. And we end up never being able to fool ourselves. Because we are not stupid.

Confidence is knowing that who we are is good enough. And that knowledge needs to be based on facts. If we are not confident, we need to consider the possibility, that there are some things we need to work on. Gaining confidence starts with honesty. It starts with figuring out, who we are. What are the things we like about ourselves and what are the things we do not like? For me some things that I did not like were and still are that I do not study enough and how much I tend to complain. Often these things are the very things standing in between us and our happiness.

We do not need to despair. Confidence is not only when we have eliminated all our flaws. Confidence is, when we know we are working towards it. We are improving. Because we started being confidence by being honest, we are still being honest with ourselves. And we get to tell ourselves that we are handled our flaw brilliantly today. Or even just that we improved compared to yesterday. Or that we kept going, even though we did not feel like it. But we can say this without lying to ourselves.

Confidence is not about what other people think about us. Confidence is what we think about us. Confidence allows us to be at ease and gives us peace because we do not have to fear our own thoughts. Of course there will be days where it is more difficult than on other days. And that is where discipline comes in. Confidence is more than just a nice feeling. I said confidence required hard work. And it does so, because it is not always easy to improve ourselves. And sometimes we just want to give in and stay in bed. We all know the feeling. But confidence is what we gain from getting up nevertheless.

We cannot be happy without being confident. And we cannot gain confidence without honesty and self-discipline. We need both. We can acknowledge our flaws and do little to nothing about them. That is just immature, maybe even cowardly behavior. It showcases a lack of self-discipline. And while it is true that some naturally have more than others and some build it easier than others, I do not believe that anyone should allow themselves to use that an excuse to not be confident. If we are self-disciplined, but not honest about our flaws, we are wasting our energy, or maybe we are not as disciplined, as we thought we were to begin with.

I get it. I am struggling with discipline myself. It’s tough. And being honest with ourselves is a bench. But the reality is that we all want to be happy. And being honest with ourselves only hurts us, if it means, we have to work on ourselves. Why would we try to deceive ourselves? Arrogance is, when we try to deceive others in the hopes that at some point we end up believing it ourselves. We need to understand that it is our own decision. No one is making us build confidence. No one is making us be honest with ourselves. But I will rather be honest with myself and put in some work in order to gain peace and happiness. In order to be able to live with myself.

The people who are constantly stating we need to be more confident conveniently forget to mention how much work it is, because they are aware, that if they admit that, some people will choose to not start this journey. But I think, that we need to understand the choice that we have. And it is no good to us, if we think we are confident and still feel so insecure. That insecurity is most likely coming from some flaw within us, that we have not addressed yet.

While it is true, that confidence is not about how other people see is, rather than about us being please about us, we also have to understand that we are humans, which means, we have emotion and rationality. What I have described tackles the topic of self-confidence from a rational perspective. But sometimes there is no rational reason for us to feel insecure. Sometimes we are truly confident rather than arrogant, and still feel insecure. This is a mere emotion, and we really know, we are good enough. In such situations it can help to approach the problem from an emotional side, because the problem is purely emotional to begin with.

Let me illustrate this with an example: I have been very insecure about my appearance and my body since I was a little girl, even though there was no reason for that. When I got into uni and felt insecure, I imagined what I would think about me, if I saw myself. Since what I thought was never really negative, I have been able to tremendously improve my body image. Because what I felt was perfectly irrational. This would not have worked, if I had not been taken care of. Which is, why I advise to take a rational approach to confidence. We naturally try to deal with our insecurities emotionally. But we can do that so much better, if there are actually facts to back up our positive self-talk.

It is also important to understand the difference between being arrogant vs. being confident and competitive. Both types of people may feel threatened when they come across someone who is better than them. But the arrogant person may try to talk them down or talk themselves up, maybe even do some improvement to keep up the facade. The confident but competitive person will take this encounter as a motivation to improve further. That is a good thing as long as we don’t try to improve, just to be better than that person. A confident person does not care if someone else is better at something, they don’t care for. They acknowledge and praise the achievement. But they will not go out of their way to be better than the other person.

Say we meet someone who runs faster than us. Us trying to beat that person is not a bad thing. It may benefit our health and mental state. But it becomes problematic, as soon as we endanger ourselves, or when it makes us feel threatened even though running that fast was never our goal to begin with.

This illustrates beautifully not only what it means to be confident, but also why it is so “in” to not care about what other people think, because if we are confident, it does not matter, what people think, because we know our flaws and we also know we are working on them. In summary confidence is about knowing ourselves. Knowing who we are today. And knowing who we want to be. It is about working towards that in order to not lie to ourselves when we say “I love who I am.”.

Anxious because Lazy

Sometimes all we do is focus on ourselves. We focus on our body image. And we focus on our goals. And we focus on our mindset. We focus on setting up the perfect life. And when everything seems in perfect order we check back in with ourselves and wonder:

“My Life is perfect, why am I not feeling good?”

Of course this can have a multitude of reasons. But one possibility is, that we are lazy. We know what we would have to do, but we are not doing it. And we may even use our mental instability as an excuse for it. We put off the work we should be doing in favor of creating our mindset, or exercising more, or whatever that may be. With me this would go so far, that I would engage in self-harm, just to have a bigger problem to focus on. Of course not everyone who self-harms does it for that reason, I would even go as far as to say most people do not. But I did. I am also not stating, that anyone with a mental issue, is simply lazy. That would be outspokenly ignorant. But what I am saying is: If our lives are perfect and we still feel anxious, it may be because we are lazy and I think it is absolutely worth checking up on that.

How does our laziness affect our emotional state? We may long for someone telling us, that we are doing well enough. We may long for external approval, because deep inside us we know, that we could be doing better. We end up being anxious, because we do not approve of what we do. We do not approve of ourselves. This can lead to a wrong self-diagnosis. We think, we are attention-seeking, have mental issues and don’t love ourselves the way we should. While this may true as well, the real reason is laziness.

I do not believe, that lying to ourselves, and telling ourselves that everything is fine when it isn’t but can be made alright is a smart move. Sure, there are things we cannot change, like our past. But it does not mean, that we should accept that we are lazy and just decide to roll with it, when it really is something that bothers us. We have control over this. And why would we find ways to cope with laziness, if we can just eliminate that very laziness and make our lives better this way?

How do we know, if we are lazy. We all are aware that emotional state fluctuates and maybe we are not equally lazy all the time. There is a simple way to assess this. We need to have a look at our commitments. All of them. School, work, family life, hobbies, you name it. Once we know what our commitments are, we need to determine, how committed we really are to them. When was the last time, we worked on that project we claim to be close to our heart? Do we only do the minimum of what is expected of us? And if so, why? Could we do more? How much TV and alcohol do we consume? As sad as it is, that last one is a good indicator, because when watching TV we feel, like we are doing something productive, but we can end up doing it for hours, without really doing anything.

How can we fight our own laziness? This is difficult. And I have just started struggling with this, myself. However there are three main steps, we have to take: We have to first acknowledge that we are lazy and in what regards we are.
Then we have to choose not to be lazy. We have to remember, why we made that commitment. Without a good reason to do something we should not be doing it. Everyone whines about how they do not have enough time, but they could not tell you, why they made half of their commitments. So let’s get our why.
And finally we need to strategize. We need to find out, what actions we can take, to not be lazy anymore. We can either increase the effort we put into something, or the time we put into something. We can run faster, or we can run for longer. We can finish a task well or we can work on it for longer. To spend more time on our commitments, I recommend Calendar Blocking. Using a calendar and assign tasks to time slots. Because this way we have full control over our time.
We should not try to force ourselves to doing more than a little more. This is a journey. We need to improve step by step rather than setting up a schedule that we cannot keep to for longer than a day.
Once we have our time slots, and we are working on that task, there is one thought, that I find helpful:

“I am spending time on this. I might as well do it well.

This is great, because it allows you to gradually not only increase the time spent on our commitments but also improve the work we do during that time.

One final tip: Try to quantify. Not everything can be quantified. But some things can. How much time we spent, how fast we wrote something. How long it took us to accomplish the same task as last week. Because even though this sounds very competitive it is true: Success is measurable. And if we only think we are good, with no recent measure to back that up, we are probably not that great and we have most certainly stopped improving, because improvement is change and change is visible, at least to ourselves. We deserve success stories, we are working on improving ourselves after all.

So finding ways to measure the improvement is crucial for our motivation, but also to battle that anxiety, that comes with laziness. Because when we see, how we improved, we know we are not lazy. We are not just telling ourselves, we aren’t to make us feel a little better. We are not lying to ourselves, we are telling the truth and with that, the anxiety will disappear. (Unless there was another source for it, in which case, we are now not to lazy anymore to deal with that as well.) In any case making sure we are not lazy. Making sure, we are improving is equal to being the best version of ourselves. And I kid you not: the best version of ourselves tomorrow is a little better than the best version of myself today. Working on fighting laziness will improve everything. Us as a person, our lives our relationships with ourselves, the world around us and the people around us, but especially the relationship with the people we love.

The Formula to Changing Mindsets

I promised to do a post on how to improve one’s mindset, with the goal to have a mindset, that allows us to improve ourselves, out of a habit. And for that to happen, we first need to do the most difficult shift: We need leave our passive mindset behind and start forming an active one.

Let me first clarify one thing: A mindset can actively be changed, but it is like changing a habit. Changing the way you think, requires time and patience and a lot of work. But the nice thing is, that the moment we take action, we do something, that is not typical to our current mindset, so we already took the first step to an active mindset.

Goals

To avoid, changing our mindset into something that is not better than what we are entertaining now, it is advisable to first define a goal. Often that is something that emerged from our dreams and is some sort of a soft version of them. It is something that makes us truly happy. Our goal is (usually) basically happiness. If we don’t know what that is, it helps, to make a list. Not only a list of things that we do enjoy, but maybe also of the things, that we do like. For me one of the most striking ways to know that I truly enjoy doing something, is when I do not feel the need to check my phone. These things will definitely end up on the list of things that I do enjoy.

The Plan

We cannot achieve our goals from one day to another. That is, why up until now, our goals were merely dreams rather than something we could take action on. In order to achieve our goals we need to divide it into smaller goals. And maybe we need to have different smaller goals in different aspects of our lives.

We need to add dates to these smaller goals and then, we need to figure out, what steps we can take today, to achieve those goals. We need at least weekly when not daily goals, little steps we take towards our big goal, in order to be able to move forward. A goal that is only set for a month is too big for us to oversee. We don’t know where to start, which is, why we need to break it down.

We need to implement some sort of accountability system. That can be a to do list, a project list with dates, a habit tracker, you name it. But the important thing is, that it makes sure, that we do take action and start achieving our goals. We are way more likely to fail, if we do not write it down and are not accountable.

But with accountability comes the instance that we do achieve our weekly goals. It is important, that we acknowledge those small victories, because without them we would never reach the final goal. Yes, our success is, the sum of a million little, daily actions that got us one step closer to were we wanted to be, but that is exactly, why we need to celebrate those little things. They are the stepping stones. They are the foundation to who we want to become.

The Mindset itself

The mindset is the set of attitudes. Therefore, in this step we have a look at our intentions. It is about who we want to be on less obvious level. It is about taking control of our mind. Do we want to hate the world and everything and everyone in it? Or do we choose to give people the benefit of the doubt. Do we choose to complain about, or do we choose to fix the things that bother us? What kind of aura do we want to have? Do we want to be the person that doesn’t really care about politics, or do we have a refined opinion on it? How do we choose to treat others? How do we choose to treat ourselves?

There are big trendy attitudes like minimalism and the “cool ones”, who just do not care about anyone and anything. But we don’t need to adapt to one of those. We can create our own mindset according to the person we strive to be. Finding who we want to be is a very personal things, but usually our goals give us a good starting point, to think about who we want to be, but sometimes we also need to adjust our goals to our intentions. It is a back and forth, a journey to find balance between our intentions and our actions.

Implementing a new mindset is however tricky. It starts with awareness. We need to keep questioning, whether what we are doing matches our intentions. The next thing is to adjust the space around us. It is to take care of the exterior. That includes the space we live in, but also our desk at work, our cars, our appearance. All those things reflect back onto us and help us to become the person we want to be. A certain space reinforces certain thought patterns and the thought patterns are exactly what we want to take care of.

Then we also need to implement habits, that reinforce our mindset. We want to respect ourselves? How about we start respecting our time and stop doing things, that don’t bring us closer to our goal or that we don’t really enjoy. We could also take care of our health and start going for a run once a week. Or focus more on nutrition. Maybe we want to respect our hobbies. Maybe we want to give more importance to other people than to ourselves, so we could spend more quality time with friends and family. Maybe we want to lead a productive life, so we focus on working productively without distractions for an hour straight, every day.

The last step is to find out, why we want to become that person. Why we have chosen this particular mindset. And to envision the person we want to become. And set up reminders of that throughout our space. Find inspiration. On YouTube, Pinterest, or wherever you find your inspiration. But do not scroll mindlessly. Go on a quest for inspiration and don’t just consume, but try to bring that inspiration into your life, by putting up notes or pictures on your mirror, at your desk, your screen safer, you phone background. Because you can have chosen to become a certain person all you want, we are humans and we do have emotions. That inspiration and the why are what makes our emotions cooperate. It is what helps us not just make the decision, but enables us, to follow through. It will be what makes sure, tough times are not the usual state.

Remember that this is a journey. Our mindset does not change within a week. And maybe it turns out, that we found a mindset and tried to implement it, but it didn’t suit us. Then we have to reassess and adapt. And try again. And that is okay. We do not need to have it all figured out instantly. It will happen. But it will take some time. It has to grow first.

The Mindset

A Mindset. What is it? Can I eat it? No. A mindset is not eatable, but it can include eatable things. Allow me to explain. Google defines Mindset to be a person’s set of attitude. Even though very accurate this does not help anyone unless one already knows what a mindset is.

A mindset does not include emotional state, attitude may. Even though emotions and mindset do affect each other. But is one important difference: The mindset can and should be a conscious choice, whereas emotions are out of our control. As a result, the mindset is more steady than emotions.

How we handle our emotions may very well be a matter of our mindset. And how we choose to form our mindset may be influenced by our emotions. But they are not the same. Mindset can include eatable things, as it determines, what exactly we think about food.

The dictionary defines Mindset as a person’s way of thinking and her opinions. I like this definition. Because we can choose the way we think. We get to have control over that. Our mindset includes every attitude and also our general approach to life, the universe and everything. It includes our attitude towards working, relationships, spirituality, money, health, politics and climate change. As well as our opinion on art and literally everything around us. It also includes our goals and our wishes. Our desires and dreams. And our attitude towards those.

The most known and hyped mindsets are probably the minimalist mindset and the mindful mindset. But I do not believe that we have to choose one of the two, to form our own mindset. Keep in mind, that the mindset is probably one of the most personal things. I believe that a mindset can be changed. I believe everyone should tailor their mindset to their own needs to find happiness. But that is a whole new blogpost, that is what I am planning to write next.

A mindset does not only define our way of thinking and our attitude, a mindset can and in my opinion should define our whole life. The reason for that is simple. We have control over our mindset, if we define it such that it will take control of our life, we control our life by transitivity.

A passive mindset, will not affect a person’s life very much, in contrast to the active one. To understand that imagine Anna being criticized by her friend. She understands and even agrees with the criticism and moves on with her life. If Anna entertains an active mindset, she will improve, it may take her days, weeks or months depending on what the criticism was about, but in due time, she will not repeat that mistake. Anna takes responsibility for her life. And she deals with things. If she had a passive mindset, Anna would nod and smile and forget about it. She agrees, but her mindset is not to take action.

Improvement comes easier if one has an active mindset. Because with an active mindset, we have realized that this world does not do anything for us. As long as we have a passive mindset, our lives will not change the slightest bit. At least not in the direction we want. Because we may have dreams… but those are not coming true by chance. And concerning the little things in life, we don’t even really know what we want. We don’t really care. A passive mindset is just the result of ones upbringing. Just the sum of one’s surroundings.

An active mindset does not only contain the dream, it contains the steps to reach it. It contains a detailed roadmap. Someone with an active mindset will check back in with that roadmap and see if his or her actions bring him or her closer to that dream. Which at that point is not a dream anymore, but a goal.

The problem with switching from a passive mindset to an active one is, that it is so much work. We don’t only have to figure out what we want and how to get there. We have to motivate ourselves. And that turns out to be way more difficult, that it sounds. Taking the action of switching mindset, is already something that would be inherent to the active mindset, that is the very thing we are trying to acquire. And so we end up in a vicious cycle.

Most people with passive mindsets do not even realize, that their mindset is passive. Because it is how they have always lived. And when they don’t feel their best about their lives, they don’t realize, that it is not just a little thing bothering them. It is not just their job, friend or partner that is problematic. It is their entire mindset. Their way of thinking. Their attitude. That makes them unhappy. And they do not realize that unless they find a way to fix that, they will never find true peace and true self-confidence.

In addition I believe that many young people don’t quite understand the concept of a mindset. They all want to grow up and be their own boss, but they cannot take control of how they think, because they are still entertaining the same mindset they entertained as teenagers and children. I think, that we cannot be truly gown-up unless we understand how to take control of our own mind. This is true freedom. True independence.

What we want to vs. what we have to do

There is no such thing as “I have to do this.” But the alternative is to deal with the consequences.

Last week was exhausting. I had a midterm on Friday and the whole week I kept thinking: “I am so exhausted. I don’t want anything but sleep, but I have to keep going. I need to study.” But when the midterm was over and I had some time to make new to do lists and think about my whole situation I noticed a few things.

My real problem was my mindset
I wanted to study. I did not want to be sleeping or binging TV
But I couldn’t, because I was so tired
I’m not tired because of the workload, I am tired because of my mindset and the season

The more we force ourselves to do stuff, we don’t feel like wanting to do, the more tired we get mentally and the less energy we have. Often we just need to remember, why we want to do something. And remember, that we really don’t have to do it, if we don’t want to. This is a very empowering shift in mindset. It allows us to get back in control.

The other problem is the season. There are really nice aspects to it: it is cuddly weather and we get to wear the comfy clothes and drink tea and hot coco all Sunday long. It is perfectly acceptable to just stay in bed and do nothing for a little. We get chestnuts and gingerbread, chocolates and cookies. We light the scented candles and start listening to all the beautiful winter songs again. On the other hand there is the darkness and the cold. We get a Vitamin D deficiency. We dial back our physical activity. And this is what makes us so tired. For me there really just is one thing: more working out and a better sleep schedule. It gives a sense of control and it battles the exhaustion.

And again: we do not have to work out. But I want to. Because I want to study. And I want to be confident. And I want to have energy. And I know that regular work-outs will provide all those things.

The vision of who we shall be

I got lucky enough to know that my fear had a deadline. To know that at some point I would have an answer. And I got lucky enough to get the answer I had been hoping for and not the answer I had been so afraid of.

But now what? When we are lucky enough to get the chance to leave our fear behind. What do we do next? When our entire life had been evolving around that fear. (It does not have to be fear. It can really be anything you have been evolving around and now stopped.) How can we move on?

I think there are two crucial parts: One is looking back and figuring out what went wrong. And what went well. This is important, but I think it is quite self-explanatory. It allows us to deal with the emotions and not bury them inside us. But we do not want to live in the past. We shall not be devoured by regret. (In fact this could be the topic for a whole separate blog post.)

The other part is looking into the future. And sometimes, when we have been so caught up in something we need to actively create a vision of ourselves. But why would that be helpful? A vision allows us to measure our actions by. If something makes us more like the person we are in that vision, it is a productive action. But why do we need that?

Because we need a direction. Until this point we have been evolving around whatever it is we are leaving behind. Now it is time to evolve around something positive. Around the person we want to be. In my vision I never say: “I am not a self-harmer.” I say things like: “I am a strong, independent woman.” Such a positive vision, a vision of what we want to be rather than what we do not want to be, is very powerful, because it motivates us to go on. And it gives us somewhere to go. Somewhere we want to go. And every time we are able to take a step towards our vision, we will be able to love ourselves a bit more. Because we did something that made us better.

In the self-harm and self-hate context this is so important. Because we tend to be trapped in all that negativity. And I know I could not even have written this post last week. I think us hating ourselves… as sad as it is: It is part of who we are. And yes, we do have to fight it. But we cannot fight negativity with more negativity. We cannot fight the fact that we hate ourselves, by hating that we hate. That’s… recursive. So instead we need to find something about us, that we can love. And that is why we need a vision: because we want to be like the vision. And every time we get a little closer to who we want to be, we are allowed to be proud of ourselves. Love ourselves a bit more. Trust ourselves a bit more. Experience that we are actually not as much of a failure as we always like to make ourselves believe. And that I call taking control of our lives. Actively fueling our self-confidence instead of letting negativity destroy us.

But how can we create a vision? What inspires such a vision? There are many sources for that: People we admire. Ideologies. Quotes. And more mundane: Books, movies, series, music, pictures. I usually work with 4 categories:

Me and university
Me and my hobbies
Me and myself
Me and others

In each of these categories I determine what is important to me. I write it down and that is how my vision is born. Then I take one or two points in each category and figure out a way to actively improve that point. I make a plan. And most importantly: I try to ask myself on a regular basis: “Is this how the person in my vision would act?” or “Is this bringing me closer to the person I want to be?”. This is not entirely about accounting for the progress we make in becoming the vision, it is mostly about remembering that positive vision. Getting into the mindset of that vision. Because we can so easily forget, what we want to fight for. So reminding ourselves of it is always a good idea.