Then why is it that numerous psychological studies show that people think that their abilities are better than they are? That is not an argument for confidence being rationally derived from being actually competent at anything.
Those studies demonstrate that intelligence, competence and confidence are not exactly correlated. It doesn’t necessarily follow that all people who are confident are incompetent. And of course, like all averages, it deals in trends rather than saying what each individual will be like.
Yes of course some confident folks are backed up by ability. There are always exceptions. But they are exceptions.
So unless we’re playing “no true confident,” we’ve got to accept the fact that there’s a lot of intuitive bias or active fakery about.
The great part is doing things without being confident will help to breed confidence in yourself, as long as you learn the right lessons (this didn’t kill me, etc…) and don’t beat yourself up about it.
Those poor people who get a project in before time and under budget and beat themselves up for not planning better aren’t confident at all, and probably won’t be. The right lesson to take from early and under budget is that yes, you can get projects accomplished on time and under budget, and that you can do it again.
No, there just isn’t a correlation. It is not the case that all people are overconfident relative to their competance. MANY people are underconfident relative to their competance, as in the Imposter Phenomenon where people who are objectively competant believe they are frauds who have only gained sucess by luck or happenstance.
I’ve thought of two specific techniques to start to develop confidence from the outside in (much nicer than ‘faking it’, I think).
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Posture & balance - dance or free weights help are good - physical confidence helps social confidence
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Silence - overcoming a natural tendency to nervous chatter
No, but they are typically very competent. The competence - cofidence correlation does not hold, according to studies mentioned above or personal experience.
I think that easy natural confidence we all admire and envy so much has nothing to do with competence or intelligence or real nobility or strength of character. I think it comes from a special lack of imagination, actually lacking the imagination to consider one might be wrong or inappropriate. And I don’t mean that as snarky and mean as it sounds - I’m certain someone else can phrase much more nicely.
Obviously people who get things in before time and under budget are competent. What I’m saying is that it’s not a fuck up at all, even if it is sub-optimal.
If you have the attitude that you did something wrong when you did something well (before time and under budget), you’re not going to believe in yourself and think you can do it well. You’re motivated by pure terror that you’re going to mess up, which is NOT a confident way to go about things.
Confidence is essentially not being afraid of what may happen, because you’re sure of your ability to handle it, if you want to distill it down to its bare essence. How you get there isn’t necessarily important- it may be due to ignorance, it may be due to extreme competence. Either way, you are not afraid.
Considering a wild success a failure because it wasn’t completely and absolutely perfect is just about as non-confident of a perception as a person can have.
I tend to be considered a very confident person- it’s not ignorance, nor is it lack of competence. It’s due to a firmly held belief that I can handle what’s thrown at me, either because I know how to handle it, I can learn how to handle it, or I can find someone who can handle it for me. It’s not lack of imagination either- I have screwed up before, and survived. The main thing is that my “default frame of mind” is that I can handle it. That’s how I’m not afraid or worried.
For the most part, you are agreeing with me.
I do not think confidence is a result of incompetence, any more than of competence. I think they just don’t have a very high CC.
Corn liquor. Failing that, I absolutely agree that by developing the “faking it” skills – good posture, even voice, eye contact, dressing appropriately, all-around being a dependable, faithful, consistent person, is a great way to get there.
Real accomplishments, even outside of your usual job-related fields (being an ace tennis player, playing music in public, knowing how to be a good outdoorsman, whatever you like) can be wonderful for the inner sense of esteem from which I suppose confidence to arise. Having good, close friends could count as an extracirricular activity as well, and treating them well in addition to expecting much of them.
I’d say that’s probably because, even though they seem to have achieved a lot, they haven’t achieved the goals they’ve set for themselves. They’ve set the benchmark too high and inevitably fail.
I have what might seem to some to be a fairly low benchmark of daily goals (I don’t know if it is low; I’ve never compared it with others’ benchmarks), but it’s - apologies for the jargon - SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timed. This means that there’s the occasional day when I don’t reach my benchmark, but they’re rare compared to the days when I do. If I consistently exceed my goals, then I change them. Like increasing the number of calories burnt every day on Wii Fit, simple stuff like that.
Er, this isn’t written down and planned out on paper or anything. It’s just in my head. I think most people do this unconsciously anyway, which it makes it more nebulous and easier to fail because you’re less likely to remember all those times you succeeded.
The other reason I’m generally quite confident is that I’m OK with failure.
I’ve failed a lot and come back from it OK, and I have specific focuses in my life that everything else pales against; if nobody liked my blog, or invited me to a specific party, then, meh, whatever. They’re just side-issues anyway. This has actually lead to lots of blog views and party invites. And that leads to more confidence.
OTOH, an ex of mine was the most confident person I’ve ever met - as far as she was concerned, there was no person she couldn’t charm, no contest she couldn’t win, no way of living that could be better than hers. She was, indeed, quite a successful person, but not the polymath she projected.
Every failure was rationalised into a success to such a degree that it always took me a while to realise that she hadn’t actually won - and I’m including actual games, like Scrabble, where I’d have more points but apparently not be the winner.
I’ve never seen anything like it in anyone else in real life. A term for it could be Sheenism. 
It’s difficult to be silent if you are in a position where you need to demonstrate leadership or expertise in something.
The secret to everything is to get pumped. Everything.
GET PUMPED!
Stand up straight. Confident people don’t slouch and they pick up their feet.
I’ve been thinking and I think another aspect of it is also always looking forward and not backwards. For instance, yesterday I wasn’t as productive as I’d like to be, but instead of dwelling on that I should think about how to max the hell out of today. If I had to put it in principles, it would be something like,
- Your past doesn’t dictate your future
- Always look forward, and not back.
Positive self-talk. A lot of people’s internal thought loops are stuff like “sigh, of course that went wrong, everything goes wrong for me…” or “how could I mess that up?? That was so dumb of me… :(” or “Bob has his life together, I wish I was like Bob, sigh…” etc.
It took a couple years of forcing myself to ditch the negative internal stuff and replace it with positive. Now there’s a loop going on in my head 24/7 saying “I’m awesome! Why? Because look at my awesome hair! And this awesome shirt! I rule! Oops, I messed up haha oh well I’ll do better next time I’m sure…why? Because I’m awesome of course!”
At first you have to actively try to do it, but over time it becomes a natural part of you. You can base it on real things (sit down and make a list of your good qualities…have you got a job of ANY kind? That’s pretty awesome! Do you have friends and family? Well you must be awesome if you do, right? etc.), or it can be completely arbitrary like my hair/shirt examples up above.
I highly recommend the Positivity Challenge. 
In my mind a confident person isn’t someone who’s good at everything, it’s someone who, when things go wrong, feels instinctively that they’ll be able to handle the fuck out the situation…as a result they come across as capable and well-equipped to deal with the world around them no matter what springs up.
- TWTTWN
I don’t tend to think in terms of “everything goes wrong with me” or wishing I was someone else, but for some things, like interviews, I have a lot of difficulty. I look quite nervous and answer questions minimalistically which fails to sell my qualities.
I can do eye contact and handshakes. I’m usually the best dressed person in the room without being flashy. I know that having gotten a law degree and passed the bar at 28 puts me above the great majority of people, I know that experience in the military, philosophy, law and knowledge of economics is a mix that is extremely rare and can be quite valuable. There have even been a few times where I went to interviews with little preparation because I did think that I could handle the situation. But I still mess up in interviews.
Perhaps it isn’t helpful, but I’ve found confidence comes from building actual skills and experience, along with being a part of a confident peer group.
I used to be one of those people who got fluttery making routine phone calls. Job interviews were terrifying. I had almost no confidence- I couldn’t see anyone hiring me.
So I really surprised myself the other day when I wrote to a potential internship, told them in straight words how I could get their ship in shape, and listed the conditions they would have to fulfill for me to work with them. I’ve had a few surprises like that- for my last job I walked in and made some demands they weren’t happy with. They hired me anyway and i got what I wanted. I walk into job fairs and make easy chat with the exhibiters. And things are going swimmingly. I am getting what I want. People can smell any once of fear a mile away, and they won’t give you anything. Confidence makes all the difference.
How did I get that way?
For me it was mostly slowly getting used to being in positions of authority. Being in Peace Corps gave me a lot of that, since you can pretty easily take on roles you are not objectively qualified for and people tend to treat you with some respect simply because you are a foreigner. Spending a couple years as a “professor” made it easier for me to talk to my own professors. Meeting lots of mayors and delegates and the like made me more comfortable with authority figures out here. Being a boss and supervising people made it easier for me to be on an equal level with my own boss. Added to that is that I finally feel like I have actual skills that people are looking for. It’s a great feeling, but it does take a while to get to that point.
Another big factor is being around a confident group of people. When your own friends are doing “confident” things, it becomes normal and routine and you feel like you can do it, too. If your friends are speaking at conferences, making phone calls to famous people, or whatever, you get a better idea of what the possibilites are and it doesn’t seem so intimidating.
I think this is important. If you spend your time hanging around losers, you start to learn their loserish behaviors.
Screw, ‘fake it till you make it’, there’s no need to fake this!
I can think of two distinct things that always result in becoming more confident.
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Do something, (anything), you’re proud of.
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Do something, (anything), that challenges you. Something that scares you a little, something outside your comfort zone.
You’ll be very surprised to find that, if you do these two things, you’ll start to see the world as less intimidating and, voila, you’ll be a more confident person.