How to Cultivate Unconditional Confidence

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

Editorial note: This post was inspired by Pema Chödrön’s Unconditional Confidence. 

Who comes to mind when you think about the meaning of confidence?

You may identify a particular person in your life who represents your ideal of confidence. Maybe you associate confidence with a feeling you get whenever you’re around that person, a feeling you wished you had for yourself. Maybe you wish for others to be inspired by you, or admire you, or envy you.

If I were to guess, the person who represents confidence to you is likely good looking, tall, extroverted, articulate, and mildly aggressive. They likely greet you with a firm handshake and look you in the eye. And they probably command the attention of a room with their very presence.

We’re drawn to external indicators of confidence, and with good reason. They’re often reliable, but not always.

Why? Because every once in a while we meet people who exude a different kind of confidence. They don’t have all the traditional externals of confidence. They just seem to have a level of trust in themselves that’s beyond appearances or how others perceive them.

You can tell they are comfortable, not only with the parts of themselves that they and others admire, but also fully accept the parts of themselves that might be perceived as less attractive.

They exhibit a high level of self-awareness that allows them to be who they are regardless of how others perceive them. These are the people we often describe as being comfortable in their own skins.

We sense in these people a confidence so unshakeable, so unconditional that it will persist even if they lost everything.

Putting the “self” back in self-confidence

So it’s ironic that we approach confidence as a way of escaping the things about ourselves we dislike most. The pursuit often involves improving one’s appearance, developing a skillset, or using a set of hacks designed to cover up natural tendencies.

While these can all be effective in improving confidence, the gains made are often short lived when the underlying factors at play are not addressed.

We run away from the less confident self as a way to develop self-confidence. If all you’re trying to do is run away from yourself, then who’s the “self” in the self-confident person you’re striving to be?

What if a lack in self-confidence was actually an invitation to become more intimately familiar with yourself and your perceived shortcomings as a path to ultimately overcoming them? What if you’re being called to rise to a new level of self-awareness as a way of experiencing greater ease with all of who you are?

On self-awareness and loving what you see

The best way I know to go about increasing self-awareness is through self-inquiry.

During this self-inquiry, there are two principles underlying the process:

1. Fully acknowledging the feelings of lack or deficit.
2. Fully trusting that you have all the resources you need to survive and thrive come what may.

It takes work to hold these two principles together because often we conflate our feelings with reality. Though you may feel like you lack the right resources in a certain situation, the reality is that you are infinitely resourceful. It’s easy to forget who we truly are during times of stress.

So, say being in the presence of a certain person consistently cause your confidence to drop, acknowledge your feelings of deficit by ask yourself “Why am I not confident when I’m around this person?” or “Why do I feel the need to hide my true self when I’m with this person?” or “What are the underlying attitudes and beliefs about myself that are being brought to the surface in this situation?”

Answers such as these may begin to arise within you:

I’m not as good looking.
I’m not as witty.
I’m not as intelligent.
I’m not as admired or esteemed.
I’m not as wealthy.
I’m not as calm.
I’m not as decisive.

Fully acknowledge whatever arises without judging, denying, or second-guessing.

Then fully affirm the reality of who you are with a simple question…

“Now what?”

As in “Ok, I experience this person as better looking than me. Now what?”

This simple question will take you out of reactivity mode and put you in response mode. What response will you choose? Will you choose to affirm or reaffirm who you are regardless of where you fall on the looks spectrum?

Stand in front of a mirror. Do you like what you see? Do you love what you see? If not, could you still fully embrace and offer compassion to the body that you inhabit?

Could you still hold your head high and live as a person who fully embraces their body, come what may?

Cultivating Unconditional Confidence

This is how you begin to cultivate unconditional confidence.

Rather than running away from yourself, gently turn toward yourself with what Pema Chödrön calls “tender-hearted bravery.”

Standing your ground, turning toward the pain, and trusting in your inner resources to deal with the pain will open you up to whole new level of confidence. One that is not conditional or dependent on externals. But one that you can summon from deep within, come what may.