Confidence Rollercoaster

Confidence is something we’d all love to have and is often listed in desired qualities for a partner, employee, or friend. However, it can be more complicated than it may at first seem.

We can have confidence in different things including ourselves, the outcome of a situation, or in expectations of other people.

We all go through periods of doubt in our abilities, but that does not mean we aren’t confident people in normal circumstances. Perhaps leading up to an exam we may feel overwhelmed, or before a date we might worry if they’ll like us. These are unusual circumstances compared to the other everyday stuff we engage with, and questioning our confidence isn't necessarily a bad thing, it can be very healthy.

However there are also people who may come across as overconfident or arrogant in their abilities, so there is clearly a huge spectrum  of what ‘confident’ encompasses, and given that underconfidence and overconfidence are generally speaking not ideal, it may appear that a happy medium is the most desirable.

Of course, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who entirely encompassed either one of the two extremes. Most of us are loosely speaking just chilling out in the middle. At times when we sway too far one way or the other, we can usually count on those we are close to give us a kick up the bum. 

At times when I see my friends or family losing their self confidence my heart absolutely goes out to them because I know to some extent how they must be feeling and usually I'll know how to boost their confidence. I think its a natural thing to just want to help them. However, when those we feel close to may appear to be overconfident, there are times when this can be a front and they may be hiding their true feelings. At times like this it can be hard to do the right thing in helping them because by telling them they’re overconfident you might knock the confidence of someone whose level of confidence wasn’t actually that high in the first place. All you can do is be there for that person or those people and help each other keep on the straight and narrow. Usually one of you will stop crying long enough to get the other one through their challenges and vice versa. What a rollercoaster!