You can learn self-confidence through positive affirmations. You can intentionally tell yourself that you are smart, wise, attractive, and anything else that contradicts habitual fears, insecurities, and negative self-opinions. Thinking good things to counteract bad thoughts is a good strategy and a part of a healthy mindfulness practice. Although effective, sending a good thought after a bad thought is like sending a thief to catch a thief. The zen way builds confidence by noticing the thoughts and feelings and letting them go.
No offence to Flat Earthers, but believing that the world is flat, that it is not a sphere where all flat surfaces lead into each other, is simply wrong. There is no benefit in spending your mental energy worrying about falling off the edge of the Earth. Negative thoughts about insecurities and personal deficits are like that, a waste of mental energy. Those thoughts shouldn’t get airtime in your mind. Rather than argue with them, when you notice them, take back your mind by feeling yourself breathe. If you can bring your attention to your breath, you are alive and in control. In that brief moment of control, you build confidence.
No matter how bad you may think you are, no matter how objectively horrible, or vaguely insufficient you may feel, confidence comes from letting yourself be right where you, as you are, in each moment.
As soon as you judge how you are, as soon as you attach an opinion to a feeling, at that moment, you enter into the positive/negative, thinking/thinking debate. Whenever you debate, insecurities eat away at your foundation and you lose confidence.
If you can step back from the debate, from the feelings and opinions, you can see through your immediate insecurities and recognize the extreme scope of what you don’t know and can’t understand.
When you notice the vastness of human misunderstanding, you can recognize what a miracle it is that anybody has any confidence about anything. The only thing that we can have real confidence in is that horrifying truth that we don’t know what is going on.
The understanding of our own misunderstanding can be paralyzing, or it can be liberating. Young children are masters at not knowing and asking questions without shame or pretense. They know they don’t know and they view the world with wonder and confidence. When we start to think we know things about who and what we are, we enter a world of speculation and opinions where our confidence battles with our fears and insecurities.
In any moment, you can step outside of that battle. In any moment, you can bring your attention to your breath, open your eyes, and see the flat expanse of the world stretching to the horizon in every direction. If the next thought that pops into your mind is an opinion about something you think you know, feel the feeling, bring your attention back to your breath, and let the thought go. When the thought goes, the feeling goes with it and confidence fills the void.
Doing that, 10, or 1,000, times a day opens your horizons and builds confidence. Not doing it, flattens your perspective and lets fear, insecurities, and hurtful opinions rule unchecked.
Recent Comments