Confidency: The state and art of being confident (1)

Confidency is an invented word I use to define the “state of being confident” and this article which will be divided in parts is going to explain the misconceptions of confidence, why many are bereft of confidence and how you can get to this place of absolute confidence.

ON my way to meet a client in November of 2014, I began to think about who this client was. I asked myself, why has he chosen to keep himself this hidden? He gave us a pseudo-name and very little details. As curious as I was, I tried calming my curiosity, so I said to myself, “he should be like the other clients.”

Considering my really humble background, I have always lived in the belief that a robust substance, net-worth and or network should inspire confidence and true authority.

At arriving his residence, reality struck – this was a compound filled with the best and latest cars money can buy; I mean assembled premium cars without plate numbers. That fired up my curiosity, ‘I can’t wait to meet this secret client’, I said. We were ushered in and as we waited, I began to look around and lo and behold I took sight of an array of photographs which got me dazed and abit petrified.

What did I see? What did I learn from my conversation with this client?

1. Substance, network or networth doesn’t confer confidence on you: Even with all he had, he narrated too many stories where he felt he could have been a better father, better mediator, better politician and a better leader. He said and I partially quote, “I have easy access to the President, I have so much but I don’t feel satisfied”. “People praise me even when I know I wasn’t good enough but they do so because of who I am”.

After an hour-long conversation, I thought to myself, isn’t this all I have always wanted? A significant networth and an influential network? My mindset changed that very day as I understood the limits of network, networth and influence in comparison to confidence.

• Majority of us would rather care about projecting confidence instead of making confidence a lifestyle: As the conversations continued, I began to understand what I will call, “the deceit of riches” in the context of wholesome confidence. The truth is, humans are flawed with insecurities, and instead of facing our flaws, we adopt perfect shortcuts as to how to project confidence. Some even use their competence as a hiding place for their confidence. Let me simply put it this way, “your competence is what you know and can do, while your confidence is who you are and whose you are”.

The difference between wholesome confidence and the very praised exterior perception of you is “yourself” – that is, your self-worth, self-love, self-regard, self-respect, self-honesty and how all these makes you feel about yourself.

• Men without confidence are slaves to everything: So, I finally came to the conclusion that men without confidence are slaves to everything – they are in a bondage of inconvenient projections as they lack the wholesomeness of living their lives purposefully to the fullest. These men become so used to their wealth, their significance and their network that they begin to look for what makes them men outside themselves.

Do you know there is always another richer man? Another more handsome man? Another more intelligent man? Another better networked man? So how do you sustain the sort of confidence that is anchored on the external when you bump into better men? When you brag about flying first class, he tells you about his private jet and when you brag about your jet, he tells you about his recently purchased 2020 bombardier and how he just dashed out his last jet.

So how do we get to the place of sustainable confidence?

Follow my column for my next article where I conclude this powerful conversation on “Confidency: The State and Art of Being Confident”.

* Haastrup is a Communication/Public Speaking Consultant in Lagos and Abuja, Nigeria