Talking about confidence

[chrisvenus]

I read something that suggested that finding out more about confidence from the point of view of others was helpful to building your own self-confidence. So here we go. I am at times very un-confident in myself so I am going to ask a few questions to get people going on the subject. If you want to add in more comments or questions then feel free. I have a vague feeling I did something similar before but now I'm copying from a book so it will be much better. Anonymous posting welcome if you don't want to put your name to your answers. :)

1) What do you think confidence is?

2) Where does confidence come from?

3) Can you think of someone who is completely confident?

4) How can you tell if someone is confident or not?

5) How do you feel when you talk to someone who is not at all confident?

6) Does a confident person always feel confident?

and my own one for number 7:

7) What is the difference between being confident and acting confident?


I will try to put up my own answers later but I don't have time right now.

Comments

[kissifa.livejournal.com]

All my answers are taking confidence to mean "confidence in the self" rather than "confidence in others" or "confidence in a particular state of events".

1) Confidence is being sure of yourself, whether that's regarding personality, or abilities, or whatever.

2) Confidence comes from inside yourself. It's a current state of mind, regardless of what you have or haven't done in the past.

3) I've never talked to anyone about every aspect of themselves, so not really. However, I do know several people who are sure of their ability or non-ability in pretty much anything they'd turn their hand or mind to, so, if that counts then I'd say yes.

4) I listen to what they see and look at how they act. True confidence shows itself, and a false confidence rarely convinces people (unless that personis a good actor).

5) It depends how I feel about them. If I like them, then I feel sorry for them and try to encourage them to feel good about themselves. If I don't like them, then I generally try to avoid talking to them full stop. However, sometimes I wont care about their confidence, and equally sometimes their lack of confidence will fill me with contempt.

6) I wouldn't say a confident person "feels confident" per se, it's just something they are. So I guess the answer is yes (permitting brief distractions for sadness, anger, etc which a person will experience in daily life).

7) From my perspective, one is something I respect, and the other one fills me with contempt. People who act confident in a bullish fashion really bug me. Because they don't experience and hence don't understand what they're pretending to be, they more often than not miss the mark and act rude, or arrogant. Someone who is confident can also be arrogant, or a dick, but at least they're being true to who they are and not putting on an act. I don't understand why anyone acts confident if they're not: even in situations where you're told it would be a gain to you, like a job interview, you're not helping yourself in the long run cause the company are going to be disappointed that the person they hired is so different to the one they thought they were getting. It's also damaging to a person and knackering to keep up a pretense about your state of mind for prolonged periods, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. If you're not a confident person, then work on it - I don't believe that just pretending to be something will eventually drag you into being it. That's just delusional.