I was prompted1 to put some thoughts together by one of my closest friends2 on confidence in reaction to my making a passing3 mention of my imposter complex4. Her reaction was… immediate. “And you WILL write about confidence next on your SubStack, WON’T YOU?!?” might be a paraphrase of what she asked of me4.
So, confidence. I’ve found that, like many words, confidence contains myriad implications and inferences6. One can have the confidence of one’s convictions, for example. Or faith in a decision. It could imply trust in a thing or between two parties. It can present as swagger, or swagger’s worst extreme, egocentric smarminess. My working definition of confidence is an extension of a phrase I first encountered 23 years ago in a book titled Solution Selling by Stephen Bosworth7, “situational fluency”. With situational fluency, you are in a position to not only advocate for your products or solutions as a sales person or solutions engineer, you are also able to articulate relevant working knowledge of the world your audience lives in, in terms of business needs and common situations, challenges, concerns, and goals. Expanding this a bit, confidence can present as the ability to be ready and willing to engage in a manner aligned to the given situation, leveraging prior experiences, be they of a similar or utterly dissimilar nature. You know, or something like that. I’m not quite done working through how I want to best articulate that thought.
And then there’s Sam, my 17 year old son, who has become a strong competitive swimmer. Over the course of the last two years, I’ve watched as what was a fun summertime experience evolve into one of his primary focuses. And he experienced what many athletes have – initial success followed by a performance plateau. Going above the plateau requires a change in focus, a decision to strive, and a willingness to accept what got him here wouldn’t get him there8. When he hit a plateau in his 50-free, he turned his frustration into effort. Smartly, he didn’t try anything off the wall, didn’t resort to trying every supplement that the social feed ads deliver to him, didn’t suddenly go from 0 to 60. Instead, he listened to his coaches, watched how top performers approached their own plateaus9, made the necessary incremental changes to his practice and meet-day strategies, and as I just witnessed a few minutes ago, broke through his plateau, set a new personal best, and made it to the championship heat of the major meet of the season. For Sam, confidence materializes as focus, effort, and faith in the process and people around him.
So, perhaps “wrong” in my post’s title is a bit strong. Let’s say Yoda was speaking to a specific situation (Luke being a wimp on Dagobah), and not speaking to the broader scope of human activity. Because I firmly believe that while “Good” is my favorite word, “Try” may be one of my regular mantras.
- OK, ordered.
- Let’s call her “Mandy” for the sake of this conversation.
- We may have spent 30 minutes talking about this.
- In my case, a simplex.
- Or, you know, an exact quote.
- I’ve already registered this name with the Virginia Commonwealth Corporation Commission as the name of my future bar.
- Recommended to me by another very dear friend, also a Stephen!
- To paraphrase Mr. Goldsmith.
- What DID we do before YouTube?!?