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It is so much fun to think about words that we take for granted today, sounds were given names, and then a bunch of sounds made together were given names, which brings the question of who decided what each word is supposed to mean and why they assigned a specific definition to the word. Did the words come first or did the definition come first?
Unfortunately, even ChatGPT says, that there is very little information about the origins of words and definitions.
Knowing what we know now, upon a close examination of the word 'confidence' the word itself reveals the trick to confidence, it simply is a con that you play on yourself. To be confident means to be sure and secure of ourselves. Even research says that people who rate themselves above average and believe it to be true, come across stupidly drunk on confidence and most times, all it takes is being confident. Building a cognitive bias and telling ourselves over and over again that we are perfect just the way we are, although we want to improve and be better, we still are perfect just the way we are, at this point in time. The things we tell ourselves can do wonders to the way we conduct ourselves out in the world.
The brain is a highly critical thing, even though we do care about opinions and comments that other people make, the one voice and the one opinion that the brain values over all others, is our own opinion and our definition of ourselves. While most of us fact check what other people tell us, we do not really fact check when the voice in us speaks, we simply believe it to be true. Assurance and self reassurance can go miles in helping us be confident in our abilities and perform at maximum social and personal efficiency.
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
-Bertrand Russell
Intelligence and the overuse of the brain to analyze and read into things go hand in hand and can be a great tool to learn and improve, but also has a sharp edge, questioning ourselves and our abilities because of the fear of failure or maybe the fear of criticism, can hold us back, while people who are confident would just believe in their abilities and learn from their mistakes. Just like how beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, every comment or criticism received, is also in the brains of the beholder it is up to us to assign value to the comment or maybe even discard it. Most times when these opinions are negative it takes a dig at our confidence levels and what we know to be true and we find ourselves questioning everything that we have known.
Words and sentences can be strung together very easily. It does not take a lot to criticize and make comments about others, which is why it is essential to pick and choose who's comments we really listen to. It can get quite hard if we keep questioning what we know to be true every time someone drops an opinion or a thought that they derived out of their subjective experience of knowing you for a minute. It would go miles to confirm suspicions that might arise with a close counsel that has known us for a while.
Making yourself believe or constructing confidence can be achieved by even something as simple as waking up in the morning and just saying.
“ I believe I am capable.”
“ I am amazing.”
“I am going places.”
“I am worthy.”
“I believe in myself.”.
Just like that, by saying these nice things every day now and again, we can easily gain confidence and con ourselves into believing and being. Although it should be said that there is a fine line between being confident as well as being drunk on confidence. Confidence helps but it also is a game that could go either way. Even perfectionists make mistakes sometimes. Confidence can help us and set us up for success but the work still has to be put in and it should never be forgotten that there is always a possibility that we might be wrong, the willingness to accept and improve combined with confidence strikes a very good balance.
In today's world, the evolution and the survival game has been completely revamped. In today's world, only the confident people are the fittest. It affects everything in a professional as well as a personal setting. Knowing this and putting it into practice and being nice to ourselves is all that it takes to explore the infinite probabilities of who we can be, and what we can achieve. Like with everything good, this change does not happen overnight, it is a slow but sure process, and once we change the way we look at ourselves and talk to ourselves and be gentle with ourselves, over time we would not even recognize who we used to be.
“The signal's far from what you can be
'Cause air traffic controls the landing”
-Travis Scott
Remember, you are awesome! :)