What Makes Confident People "Confident"

Last week my UCLA Extension course on Interpersonal Communication ended. The final assignment was simple – I asked the students to tell me in five hundred words or less what they had learned.  One answer in particular stood out.  Pablo wrote: “While I was discussing with some fellow students what we learned in this class, I realized that all of us reached the same goal, though in different ways: we all now feel more confident in ourselves.”

I think confidence goes to the heart of successful living and that’s why I named my website “the business of confidence.”  Confidence, though, is one of those words that can mean different things to different people.  I think there are twelve things confident people consistently do that set them apart from the maddening crowd – and these are the traits I help people cultivate.

Confident people don’t whine, blame, sulk or make excuses. Therefore, when talking with people, their goal is to establish clarity and mutual understanding – they’re not about impressing others with their knowledge.  They know what they know and recognize what they don’t know – b.s. is kept to a minimum.

Confident people are not afraid of those who are different from them – rather, they engage them with inquisitiveness.  They understand that there is no such thing as “the” real world and have learned to comfortably navigate a series of “real” worlds.  This allows them not to be trapped in a fearfully limited knowledge of life.

Confident people understand that the unexpected is unexpected because it’s not expected and so meet challenges head on with the phrase, “I’ll handle it.”  They are not easily swayed by emotional blackmail and are able to extricate themselves from such situations.  They know their particular biases and are able to sidestep them.

If it’s true that life is a never-ending series of moments of small humiliations, then confident people’s  pursuit of perfection is not hindered by an obsessive need to be perfect.  They have a sense of humor that they sensitively manage and display.

The confident have a spirit of “sprezzatura” (the Italian way for describing a certain kind of nonchalance).  While they take life seriously, they don’t take themselves too seriously.  And so they are not snobbishly judging, smugly condemning, slavishly analytical or humorlessly practical. 

Confident people delight in cheering and astonishing others with risky thinking and deciding.  They are not insistent that people, or life, “should” be a certain way.  

The poet Mary Oliver believes “you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life”.  Confident people, because they are confident, adhere to her advice.  They always take responsibility.

How what about you?  How confident are you? 

How confident do you want to be?