Confidence is Overrated: Chapter 13 "Confidence Comes After"

Confidence is Overrated, an informal reading by the author— that's me— Travis Thomas. Chapter 13, Confidence Comes After. Quote, the one thing all famous authors, world-class athletes, business tycoons, singers, actors, and celebrated achievers in any field have in common is that they all began their journeys when they were none of of these things. Think of the first time you jumped off the high dive in a swimming pool. I remember grabbing the railing, climbing step by step to the top, getting up there and seeing everyone looking at me. It looked a lot taller from the top, and the board looked much narrower now that I was standing on it. And why is it so unstable? You expect me to run to the edge, stop, and bounce on this thing? Heck no. Walking out on the board, I remember not understanding why my legs felt wobbly. Where did my strength go? What's wrong with my stomach? Before going up, I had pictured myself at the end of the board, leaping high straight above and then coming down, using the full spring of the board upward into a glorious flip or dive. Now up there, I hesitantly walk halfway, stop, and then just want to be done as quickly as possible. Instead of leaping, I scurry to the edge and cautiously fall into the pool. What happened? It looks so much easier for everyone else. Confidence from the ground turned into terror at the top. Courage allowed me to jump, but now back at the bottom, where was my confidence? How was I supposed to keep getting up on that board without feeling confident? A good friend of mine is one of the top motivational speakers in the world. To watch him present, you would think he was born for the stage. He is calm, charismatic, and so clear on his message and delivery that it looks effortless. He seems to be pushing all the right emotional buttons at all the right moments. Yet his very first talk, 10 years earlier, for an audience of 7 Girl Scouts, resulted in him throwing up in the parking lot before even beginning. The nerves were just too much. Where was the confidence? Think about the first day of school when you were a senior. This was your big year. You own the school. You know how the game works. You know the teachers and staff. You know how to get to lunch before everyone else and the trick to opening a stuck locker. But now reflect back on the feeling on your first day of school as a freshman. How do you feel? Everyone's so much bigger and older. How will you do with tougher classes? Will you make the soccer team? Where in the world is my first class? Where was the confidence? I often tell athletes confidence comes with competence. The more competent I feel in my ability, the more confident I seem to be. Competence is an indicator that we have demonstrated the ability to complete the task. If I studied all week for the exam and covered all the topic areas and aced the practice test, I have demonstrated competence for this subject. Now it's just a matter of taking the exam to express my ability. Should I be confident? Yes. You've proven your ability. Does it guarantee I feel confident? No. On the flip side, there are people who walk with so much unearned confidence you don't understand Where they got it from. They take on hard challenges and volunteer for activities with a bravado that they're going to crush it. There is no competence to back up their confidence. So where does the confidence come from? Should they be confident in their ability to succeed? No, but that doesn't seem to stop them. Confidence without competence is ignorance. Maybe it'll work out. But why should it? If the confidence comes from a desire and excitement to learn, knowing it probably won't go well, that's fine. But why would we try something new and expect to do it well if we have no prior experience? Every time I step on a golf course, I need to rack my brain to remember the last time I played. It's usually years in between rounds. I don't think Topgolf counts. And all it takes is a few holes for me to lose my joy. Somehow I expected to be better at golf, one of the most difficult and frustrating sports on the planet. And then I pause, laugh at myself, and remind myself that it makes no sense to expect to play well in something I don't practice or work at. I don't sit down at a piano and surprise myself for being bad. I never play. So why do I do that with something I dabble in every few years? Instead, what if I approached every new activity with courage, not expecting to do well, but focused on the experience and joy of learning? The older, the older I get, the more I love being put into completely foreign experiences where I have zero competence. It's actually quite easy to find these things for me. Instead of focus on being good, I focus on making improvements. Years ago, I taught myself to juggle. As a kid, I tried a few times and quit. I guess I can't juggle. As an adult, I realized that if I dedicated just a few minutes a day to this new task, I could probably eventually pick it up. So for about a week, setting aside 10 minutes a day, I taught myself to juggle. Was I confident in my ability? No. But I was committed to trying, and I had faith I would eventually figure it out. And it was fun. This led me to realize courage without competence is a form of humility. Think about that. Mustering the courage to do something you know you're not proficient at is humbling because you know it's probably not going to go well. But you commit and go for it. And even if you stink, It's empowering. You are giving yourself permission to be humbled in the spirit of discovery. Allowing yourself to be humbled repeatedly builds adversity tolerance. You become more confident in your resilience, not your ability. Trusting myself to keep going, trying, and problem-solving when I am not good is so much more valuable than having confidence in my current ability. If I were to put it on a t-shirt, it would look like this: Courage, greater sign, Confidence. Again, further proof of how confidence is overrated. Often during my corporate keynote events, I'll announce to everyone that we're having a singing contest. The whole point of this is to freak people out and get them distracted by their beliefs and emotions. I tell them I will be picking a few people who must come up on stage and sing in front of everyone. And then we will vote on who is the best. Yes, this is a terrifying situation for everyone in the audience. I'm not actually going to make anyone sing, but they don't know that. And occasionally I'll ask, does anyone want to volunteer? And if you can believe it, there's always one or two people who do. At one of my talks in Dallas, I asked for volunteers, and in a sea of 900 people, saw one lonely hand extend into the sky. I invited the woman to the stage, and in front of the entire company, all of her peers, she belted out her best Whitney Houston rendition. It was awful. She was awful. Not a singer at all. But guess what? She committed to it and didn't hold back. In the audience, her team of coworkers stood and cheered her on, and 2 dozen people standing in support turned into a standing ovation of 900. Was she confident? It looked like it. Was she competent? Heck no. But boy, was she courageous. It brings us back to the quote I've mentioned numerous times before. Feelings don't predict performance. I have worked with so many talented and competent athletes and performers who should never doubt their ability for a moment, but they do. No matter how much they succeed, they never find the confidence that brings them peace. I used to think this was a bad thing because all I wanted was for them to see and feel the confidence that reflected their competence. But for some, the feeling never comes. And what I know now is this: that's okay. Henry Fonda, one of the greatest actors of all time, used to throw up before every performance, and then he would go out and be spectacular. Even my youngest son, from the time he began playing organized soccer, would get so nervous before games he would have an upset stomach. Now, many years later, he still does. Yet somehow he translates those nerves into courageous behavior. He always has. My other son, he would get so anxious before a play or race or having to go to summer camp that he would occasionally break out in hives. Somehow, without coaching, he learned to shift his internal fears for himself into externally caring about others, and he would thrive. And my daughter, well, the family joke with her is that she feels she is good at everything. You just can't predict confidence. I will say though, she is so courageous when it comes to getting outside her comfort zone and trying new things. Isn't that right, Trinity? My belief is that for most people, A feeling of confidence comes after the choice to be courageous. Whether you ever get truly confident or not, every time you muster the bravery to do the hard thing, you make a courageous deposit into your confidence ATM. The more courage you express and deposit, the more confidence is available to withdraw in times of doubt and fear. The confidence comes from reflecting on all the times you have done similar things before. The professional veteran player playing in a packed stadium for the 100th time probably has a different level of confidence than the rookie playing for the first time. Does it mean they will perform better? No. As a professional speaker with over 20 years of improvisational experience, there are few situations on stage I haven't experienced. Every possible audio, video, microphone, or tech issue you can imagine, it's happened. I've had a 60-minute presentation shortened to 15 minutes without notice. Horrible venues, disinterested audiences, or no audience at all. I've experienced all of it. Oh yeah, and I spilled a water bottle all over my crotch in front of a group of high school students and just had to keep going. As difficult as each of these experiences have been, going through them gave me more confidence. Why? I went through them and I was okay. I survived the embarrassment and knock to the ego, only to realize it's not that big of a deal. You learn, prepare better, and move on to the next one. And I am more confident. I'm more confident because I experienced the setbacks and they didn't break me. Without the courage, there is no confidence. No real confidence, earned confidence, confidence forged through fire and experience. When my son Holland finished his last high school cross-country race at the state meet, he crossed the finish line exhausted, smiling, and confident. He set his PR in his last race, yet on the same course 2 years earlier, he collapsed 10 yards from the finish line. Crawling, stumbling, and falling as dozens of runners passed him before he finally crossed. He was exhausted, inconsolable, and defeated. He felt he had let the whole team down. It was brutally painful and humbling to go through, but it was one of the greatest classrooms for his learning. It took courage to push himself to his physical limit, even if he came up short. He learned and grew as a person and a runner, and 2 years later, he got to sprint past that old memory of himself. Confidence comes after courage. Here are your reflection questions for chapter 13. There's 3 of them. Number 1, what is something you would try if you had more confidence? Number 2, when was the last time you took a risk and tried something despite not feeling confident? Question 3, what does courage look like for you today? There you have it. That's chapter 13. I'll see you soon for chapter 14.