What is confidence? What doesn’t it look like?

You can find millions of photos shared on all types of social media. But is this really what confidence looks like? Or is it a way of sugarcoating the hard truth that confidence is more than just a photo snap? Yes, people have described confidence in many ways, but to truly understand it might be more than what people already believe it to be.

Dr Nate Zinsser, a former high school MVP turned author, speaker and consultant- talks about the confident mind. Specifically, he joins the podcast to share more about how you think affects you and that you have the free will to decide how it should be.

Confident Mind

As described in the book, the confident mind follows your confidence in the sense of certainty you have about yourself or a particular ability. It allows you to express that ability and demonstrate that confidence more or less unconsciously without having to talk yourself through it or analyze what you're doing step by step. It proceeds more or less naturally; you think about how you are when you do something as simple and as common as tying your shoelaces.

Devaluing Oneself

There's a lot of times where people get to the point where they're good at something, and to become second nature, they don't realize the skill level that they have. And so they end up devaluing it. We have a habit of devaluing, emotionally discounting, and taking so many things that we do well for granted. It's remarkable how many athletes and other performers talk about their experiences. And when it comes to light that they've worked very hard, they've developed certain capabilities and demonstrated these capabilities on many levels, yet, they don't allow those memories to create a sense of energy and optimism and enthusiasm for their future. They've just emotionally swept them under the rug. 

The Bank Account

Your sense of certainty about yourself is, in fact, the expression of all the thoughts that you have about yourself, all the thoughts you have about that particular ability, and all the thoughts you have about the situations in which you exercise that ability. Like a bank account, depending on what you put into it and what thoughts suck it down. There's your balance for the day, for the moment. That's your level of confidence at any given time. And there are certain thought processes that we go through which attack that mental bank account and draw it down our habits of self-criticism, worry about the future, envisioning various catastrophes as opposed to the kinds of deposits that we can make when we look back at our both long term and short-term memories and kind of filter out moments that have created in our lives, a powerful sense of energy and optimism and enthusiasm for ourselves. And we identify the beliefs about ourselves in the present that are indeed energizing. And we create through the proper use of our imagination, scenes, movie clips, beautiful photos, beautiful stills of accomplishments and actions, and we need to take those thoughts to build up the bank account. 

The Misconception

Once an individual reaches a certain level of confidence, they're going to stay that way forever. That's not how it works. Confidence is rather fragile, depending on which thoughts you choose to maintain and which ones you care to discard. And if we, as we've been talking, emotionally, discount, disregard take for granted - our progress and success will not even bring our mental bank accounts to balance down. And again, opponents, competitors, just the imperfect nature of the world we all inhabit, things will go wrong. And so, you have to be very good at