Confidence: what happens when self-belief isn't enough?

Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, reportedly said:

“There are still days I wake up feeling like a fraud, not sure I should be where I am".

I find this very illuminating. Sheryl has reached dizzying heights of career success – is obviously good at her job - and yet at times, her own self-belief clearly isn’t enough to stop her feeling like a fraud.

So how do we improve our confidence? The place to start is by working out what “confidence” actually is. According to Kay and Shipman

“Confidence is the factor that turns thoughts into judgements about what we are capable of, and than then transforms those judgements into action”.

So imagine you’re at a business meeting, and you notice that most of the others present are pushing for a certain decision (thought). It’s not the decision you think is best – although now you’re not so sure (judgement). So you don’t sell your position as hard as you otherwise would (action).

This thought and judgement process we could just label as “self-assessment”. (And the action bit, surprise, surprise, we can call “action”). Why I’ve labelled it this way will become clear shortly.

I did an online confidence quiz the other day – a reputable one (by the same people whose definition of confidence I am using). What I found really quite fascinating were the suggestions they gave to help me improve my confidence. The two bits of advice were: “Build up your confidence by practising your power positions… Abs in. Chin up. Try nodding your head. You will feel more confidence when you talk while nodding, and you’re sending a subconscious signal that makes others agree with you”. Their other bit of advice was around not being afraid of failure. It’s better for me to fail sooner rather than later because that way I’ve got less to lose, and more to learn.

This advice focused on the action part of confidence. However when we think about it, it’s important to get the self-assessment part right. For example, I have an average singing voice. I could take the online quiz advice and practice my power positions and not be afraid of failure, and that might enable me to audition for The Voice. But I am never going to win The Voice with an average singing voice. If I over estimate my singing voice, then that could lead to an embarrassing situation on national TV. If I under-estimate my singing voice, then I could miss out on the joys of singing in a local community choir. Having a realistic self-assessment is really important. Over or under estimating my capabilities are both anxiety-producing positions.

Sheryl Sandberg has become a voice for confidence issues, especially with the release of her book Lean In in 2013. Sheryl wants women to dismantle their own internal confidence barriers to success and “lean in” on the metaphorical corporate table. Here are two solutions Sheryl proposes (I don’t want to misrepresent Sheryl, so it would be good to read her book for yourself).

Firstly, believe in yourself, based on your past achievements. Sheryl herself is happy to admit that she could never possess effortless confidence, but what she could do is challenge the idea that she was constantly headed for failure. Says Sheryl: “When I felt like I was not capable of doing something, I’d remind myself that I did not fail all of my exams in college. Or even one. I learned to un-distort the distortion.” (p.33, Lean In)

Secondly, project confidence even if you don’t feel it “when I don’t feel confident, one tactic I’ve learned is that it sometimes helps to fake it” (p.33, Lean In). Sheryl says that feeling confident, or pretending that you feel confident, is necessary to reach for opportunities. “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, you should jump on board, don’t ask which seat” and “what would you do if you weren’t afraid?” the implication being that you should dismiss your fears and plow on in.

I have some reservations with these proposed solutions. I think they have their strengths, but ultimately they have their limitations. Let me explain why.

The “believe in yourself” solution - just because we’ve passed all our college exams, doesn’t mean we’ll be great in the workplace! Of course it can be useful to remind ourselves of what we’ve achieved and know that if we’ve overcome challenges in the past, we can do so again. But when we try to “believe in ourselves” we don’t do this in a vacuum. We’re aware of how our achievements stack up compared to others. And self-belief is hard when someone else appears to be in a better position than us! Plus things that assist our self-belief – like a boss who thinks highly of us – can so quickly change when that boss is replaced.

The “fake it until you make it” or “just do it” solution I think has some merit because there are some roles and circumstances where it is very important to project confidence, even if we don’t feel it. For example, if we’re having a blood sample taken, we’d want the pathology nurse to be confident with the needle. But I don’t think it works as a lasting solution, because even if we are good enough actors to fake confidence for long periods, that level of mental stress and anxiety would take its toll upon us.

The “just do it” solution is addressing the action part of confidence. The “just believe in yourself” is addressing the self-assessment part – but it’s not really engaging with doing a realistic self-assessment. And to be fair on Sheryl, that’s probably not where she was intending to go.

So how do we engage in a realistic self-assessment of our capabilities? A realistic self-assessment requires objectivity. To do this we can try and be as objective about ourselves as we can, and we can ask other people what they think of our capabilities.

However I think what we think about ourselves – and what others think of us - are both unreliable to an extent. It can be hard to be objective about ourselves when our emotions are involved. There can be people in our lives that we want to please, whose approval we value, which makes us less than objective about ourselves. And in terms of what other people think of our capabilities – how do we know we can trust them? For example, the boss who likes us might not give us the honest but potentially crushing feedback we need. Also, people might not always be in the best position to judge a situation - they might not know all the circumstances.

There are a couple of things that we can work on, if we want to be more objective about our capabilities.

Firstly, we can work on becoming more self-aware of when we are losing objectivity because we care too much for the approval of others. We can then work on trying to think more independently. (At one level we’ll always care what others think about us – it only becomes a problem when we lose objectivity).

Secondly, instead of focusing on ourselves (or what other people think of us), we can focus on the task at hand. For example, we can think what is the problem here, and will my proposed solution address the problem.

Anyone can work on these things.

However, being a follower of Jesus can make a real difference here. Let me explain how it makes a difference to me, as a Christian person.

The Bible tells me that what God wants from me is to love him and to love others. “Love” is not so much warm fuzzy feelings but putting God’s interests – and the interests of others – above my own. I fail this standard whenever I live my life on my own terms and act out of my own self-interest. I don’t have to look too far to see examples of my own selfishness.

The Bible also tells me that, despite my failures, God loves me. He sent his Son Jesus into our world to die for us so that we can be forgiven. To accept that love, I just need to trust that Jesus died for me.

The amazing thing about God’s love is that it is unconditional. Jesus didn’t die for me because I somehow deserved it. And once I accept God’s love and trust Jesus, his approval doesn’t rest on how well I perform with loving him and others. I have his unconditional love – his unconditional approval – simply when I trust Jesus.

Unconditional approval means I am secure. If I’m secure I can be a bit more objective in how I think about myself. I can be real about my strengths, as well as my weaknesses. It’s ok to say I am good at something because God has given me that ability in the first place (and I can’t boast in a gift!). It’s ok to say that I’m not good at something because it doesn’t change God’s approval. I don’t have to think I am a complete failure as a person. It also means I can take on board the opinions of other people in the right way. I can weigh what they say more objectively because I’m not so worried about them discovering my weaknesses and losing their good opinion of me.

Having God’s unconditional approval really helps me when it comes to more independent thought. Yes what other people think of me is important. But knowing I have the approval of the CEO of the universe really helps me to keep things in perspective. Plus it also helps free me up to focus on the task at hand.

Now I am not saying become a follower of Jesus and that will fix your confidence issues. I am the first to put my hand up and say I’m a work in progress! Besides, there are plenty of confident people out there who aren’t followers of Jesus. Anyone can work on developing a more realistic self-assessment. They can learn to be more objective by working on when they are caring too much what other people think, as well as focusing on the task at hand.

Having said that, being a follower of Jesus can improve your confidence because knowing you have God’s unconditional approval really helps with being more objective about yourself. But that’s not why I am a follower of Jesus. I am a follower of Jesus because I believe that there is a greater spiritual reality out there, and that Jesus the God-man really did die for me. That being a follower of Jesus can improve my confidence is just a great by-product of this.

So how can we improve our confidence? To draw everything I have been saying together, I’ll go back to that opening scenario I used. The one where I said imagine you’re at a business meeting, and you notice that most of the others present are pushing for a certain decision (thought). It’s not the decision you think is best – although now you’re not so sure (judgement). So you don’t sell your position as hard as you otherwise would (action).

Now you could just “believe in yourself” and “just do it” and that might be enough for you to hold your position and sell it well – at least in this instance. However a better way is to work on having a realistic self-assessment – is your position a good one to hold? So you try to think about it more objectively. You acknowledge to yourself that, while you care about what other people in the room think, you can’t let them do your thinking for you. You think through your position again and decide that yes, it is a good position to hold. Not an easy thing to do when everyone else is pushing for something else!

For the follower of Jesus, it helps to know you have God’s unconditional approval. Being secure in this helps with objectivity. It enables you to hold your position and sell it well knowing that the CEO of the universe has it all in hand. Whatever the outcome – even if that means ending up on the wrong side of everyone else in the room - God still loves you and is committed to your good.

What happens when self-belief isn’t enough? When it comes to confidence, try a different approach. Try working on a realistic self-assessment. Remember that no one with an average singing voice wins The Voice. But in a local community choir – that’s where an average voice can truly shine.

^{Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels}