While he answered her questions, Kostya began to see his trip in a new light. He had suddenly made a discovery—he found out something about himself he had never known: he could accomplish tasks. The future, which up to now had appeared fearful, suddenly became a grandiose adventure within reach.
"I'll guide big ships," Kostya said, getting up from excitement. "Diesel motor ships."
"Where to?"
"To the Arctic Ocean. Beyond the Arctic Circle and back. Through the taiga, tundra, all kinds of animals," Kostya recalled what he knew about Siberia. He was waiting for her to ask if he really knew how to guide diesel motor ships, but she didn't. Perhaps she had some doubts if he really could do everything. He, too, had some doubts.
"I'll learn," he said, thinking of Uncle Vasya. "What one man can do another man can, too."
-from The Bridge by Nikolai Chukovski
There's no replacement for hard work. There's no replacement for knowledge gained. And we haven't created the technology yet for brain-downloads. So knowledge is still gained through reading, writing, asking questions...experience. Experience and confidence are not mutually exclusive, either; in fact, the three are inextricably linked. There is no "fake it 'til you make it." Confidence is gained through experience. Confidence's root is confide. One would not wisely confide in something until he knew that thing to be reliable; until it's been tested and approved. One would not wisely say, after buying a used car at first glance, or even after a test drive and extensive inspection, "I'll go on a road trip with this car. I'll trust in its ability to get me there before breaking down. I haven't experienced it being reliable over long distances, but I'll just 'fake it 'til I make it'". Say the car breaks down a couple hours in. The man has no one to blame but himself for foolishly risking his trip on an inanimate object built by others, cared for (or not cared for) by others, and finally sold to him, who was in the dark completely about the qualifications for the vehicle for making the trek. The car would not simply bend to the will of the man. The man's confidence didn't matter for the journey; what mattered was the car's actual performance.
Likewiseachild, untainted yet by notions of confidence being the sole requirement for success, or the first requirement for achieving it-- it's not-- takes his first steps and falls. Even if the child had the cognitive ability to hear his parents saying something like, "You can do this. Just have confidence you can walk. Then walk," and also the ability to believe such a statement, the child would still have fallen. Not until this process is tried over and over again-- the child stands, takes a step, falls, gets up and two steps before falling, then three-- will the child be able to confide in his legs him from point A to point B. The child may come out of the womb with all the confidence in the world; his parents should not expect the newborn to be able to walk across the living room. The first steps picture will have to wait, as will the memory of the first words spoken. That, too, takes the time of the child hearing his parents over and over again using words to communicate with the child himself can have the confidence necessary to imitate the words, expressing his own needs and desires.
These illustrations of the used car and the walking child show how confidence is gained through experience rather than through a feeling of pride or foolhardy mistrust. Why does this matter? It matters because rules are often universal, near-universal, or at least applicable to various cases across the spectrum of life. What applies to these situations applies also to our own minds.
Artifical confidence or a feeling of trust, pride, etcetera can last some time, even a day or more, but will fade at the first negative experience that contradicts it. Likewise, relying on people to "instill confidence" is foolish. You seek to be around those people so you can maintain confidence, but what happens when you go out into the world, where there are those distilling that confidence? You lose it as quickly as you gained it when someone points out a flaw, weakness, or mistake. Often times it won't ever take that negative comment from someone else; one who relies on compliments from others to maintain a perceived confidence need only to be alone for some time before running out of that fuel of "instilled confidence." What's left is a lack of experience, a lack of legitimate reason to be confident. And this unhappy person starts to doubt those compliments given, and for good reason.
If the confidence is unfounded, let it die. It is only natural that it do so. Holding onto faked confidence, a "feeling of confidence" rather than a true confidence rooted in applicable experiences, is madness. A person trying to hold onto compliments or positive words as a sole source of confidence will quickly become disillusioned to the whole idea of being able to confide in one's self. The result? A belief in a fundamental flaw in one's self: "I'm just depressed, incapable of being confident, I'm just negative," etcetera. What's actually lacking is experience proving to the person that he/she is capable of competence in whatever area in question.
"What one man can do another can do." Yet abilities are not gained in a moment, in a day, often not even in a year. It has been said that expertise takes 10,000 hours of practice. Eventually, however, after displaying the grit and perseverance necessary for great accomplishments - ultra experiences - the man once so dependent on others' praise for a feeling of worth can do what others have done-- accomplished great things and sustained them over long periods of time, relying on their own belief and mental fortitude. And this belief is not unfounded.
Real confidence is the act of recalling competence. Faked confidence is pretending competence exists with no proof past successes. One can't be taken, the other is always fleeting.
