Where Does Confidence Come From? Part 6

Confidence comes from courage accumulation, not knowledge acquisition.

Our nature is to think that the more knowledge we acquire, the more confident we will become. We can officially put that in the urban legend file. It’s simply not true. The truth is that the more courage we get from acting, leading and deciding, the more confident we’ll become.

Someone just read that and thought “well yeah Matt, but what if I am doing it wrong?” Ok, what if you are? Odds are, you won’t sink the ship. You might scrape the sides up a little, but that’s repairable. But each time you make a decision, your confidence to make the next one grows.

Sometimes we put off decisions with a claim it’s because we need to wait and learn more. The reality is, our knowledge isn’t lacking, it’s our confidence that is lacking. We will never wait ourselves into confidence, but we can decide ourselves into confidence. No, I’m not telling you to charge blindly into everything. There is a time to learn and a time to act, (sometimes those times will even overlap each other) but don’t use the former as an excuse to avoid the latter.

Mistakes can be great teachers for us. Sometimes they’re even necessary. Thomas Edison tried nearly 10,000 times to make a light bulb that worked right. When someone asked him how it felt to fail 10,000 times, Edison responded “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Sometimes our best ideas or our best assets are even seen until failing removes some distractions from us.

Do you know how you learn to hit major league pitching? You get in the box and swing at major league pitches. You have to stand in there and take your reps. There is no way around it. You will never learn to hit those pitches by sitting at the end of the bench, talking about batting theory. The more at bats you rack up, the more confident you become. Each pitch is a learning tool. You learn about yourself and your swing. You learn about the pitchers and their pitches. Even if you strike out, you learn from it. Hank Aaron went 0 for 5 in his major league debut. What do you suppose he did the next day, have a discussion about theory or clock some time in the batter box?

It’s all cumulative. The more decisions we make, the more confident we become with making decisions. The more seasons we play, the more confident we become. The more confident we become, the more equipped we are to deal with the times we swing and miss. Think about Hank Aaron. After that 0-5 first day, do you think he was scared that he was headed back to the minor league? You just know that guy lost some sleep that night. Do you think he felt more secure if he went 0-5 seven seasons later, when he was in the middle of a 21 year All-Star run?

Application suggestion:

How much stock are you putting in knowledge acquisition instead of courage accumulation? How do you change that?