The Confidence Misconception

Welcome to this week’s blog. I hope you are working to build your performance.

Today, I want to discuss a very popular topic: Confidence.

There are many beliefs around this concept and many of them are misconceptions. In fact, it is assumed that “the more, the better,” and in reality, as we will see in this article, that is not how confidence works.

When we talk about confidence, we automatically think of “a lot” or “a little,” associating “a lot” with something good and “a little” with something bad. In fact, we can often see the face of a person who is about to take some action and we can “perceive” if they are confident or not. Whether it is their gaze, if their body is tense or relaxed, their voice or the content of what they say, we can “perceive” if that person trusts themselves, and, based on that, we tend to predict a result.

I remember a school trip to Mendoza, a beautiful city in Argentina when I was in high school. On one of the days of the trip, we went on a bicycle excursion through the mountains. After two or three hours into the bike trip, we found a small lagoon where the water reached my waist. One of the guides told us that some students try to ride through the lagoon with their bikes. The section that needed to be crossed was about 7 meters long. There was sand at the bottom of the lagoon. As I always liked challenges, I raised my hand and said I wanted to try it. As I prepared to cross the lagoon, I heard the guides in the background saying to each other, “He’s going to make it, he’s confident”; “He has the right attitude, he can do it.”

Well, far from being able to achieve it, no matter how hard I tried, I stayed halfway through the route.

My confidence was not synonymous with success. And this is something I want to highlight first: that someone who trusts themselves a lot does not guarantee that they will succeed. In fact, someone who appears confident in themselves does not guarantee that what they are saying is correct. It was my first time trying something like this, I had no idea how much force I needed to exert or really what I needed to cross that lagoon.

While I don’t remember my inner dialogue that day, I do remember that I had confidence that I could achieve it, even without knowing what I was facing. I had built castles in the air. That is, confidence without experience is nothing more than an illusion.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that confidence is useless, but we have to understand it. Confidence is extremely important when we build it based on our work, our effort. Our confidence says a lot about us and how we take on challenges.

And now is where I want to explain this concept a little more. Let’s think of confidence levels as a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is no confidence and 10 is extreme confidence:

Low Confidence:

What would a person with low confidence sound and act like? Their posture would likely be hunched and they would seem hesitant, with a slightly lost gaze. Their voice might be hesitant, and it’s possible that what they say is not well understood.

What would this person say to themselves? They would probably have an internal dialogue like: “I don’t feel comfortable”; “I don’t know how to do it well”; “I don’t think I can achieve it”; “I don’t have enough practice”; “No matter how hard I try, I’ll still do it wrong”; “People will laugh at me when I fail.”

It’s evident that their internal dialogue would be negative and probably accompanied by negative sensations within their body.

This person overestimates their opponents and probably also overestimates the task at hand.

Obviously, this state is not ideal for performing well, and it’s likely the state of a person who isn’t adequately prepared to perform the activity.

It’s a clear sign that this person needs to work on their preparation and/or their skill level for the task at hand.

High Confidence:

Now, let’s analyze a person with very high levels of confidence.

How would such a person look and act? Their posture would likely be firmer, their gaze more determined, and their voice would sound self-assured. In some cases, their external speech may border on arrogance.

Internally, this person would feel unbeatable and say things like, “I’m very good,” “The rival is very bad,” “The rival can’t beat me,” or “The challenge is very easy.”

This person would begin to underestimate their rivals and possibly underestimate the task at hand. And here’s where I want to emphasize the following: excessive confidence can also negatively affect performance.

If we underestimate our rivals and the situation, our mind will relax and our performance will decrease because we don’t have a challenge in front of us. Remember that to perform at our best, we need a challenge, whether internal or external. We need to feel challenged to be able to give our best.

The internal dialogue of an overly confident person can generate low levels of motivation to perform, since why perform at our best if we don’t have a real challenge in front of us?

So, if excessively high levels of confidence are bad, what do we need? We need to work on our levels of confidence to make them optimal.

Optimal Confidence:

Optimal confidence is that level of confidence that allows us to make an assertive evaluation of the situation.

A person with optimal confidence levels knows well that if they underestimate or overestimate the situation, their performance will not be optimal. They also know their capabilities very well and know their strengths and weaknesses.

They respect their rivals and understand that, no matter how “worse” the rival may be, they should not underestimate them, as a mistake could cost them dearly. Similarly, if they face “better” rivals, they understand that they have resources to face them and that they must trust in those resources to have a chance against them.

The internal dialogue of a person with optimal confidence would sound like this: “I know the rival is very good, but I have prepared enough to be able to face them”; “I know the rival is weaker, but if I am careless, they could beat me”; “I trust my work and know that I can perform at a high level if I focus on what depends on me”.

Not only does it sound different, but their internal dialogue reinforces a performance mindset.

I hope that, based on this article, you can start to reflect on confidence and, based on that, ask yourself what needs to be done. Working on confidence levels takes time. Remember that, both for low confidence levels and for high confidence levels, it is necessary to be humble and work on yourself, ask questions, work to know yourself better, and accept “trial and error” to understand what works best for you.

Keep working to build your performance.

Greetings!