Here’s The Truth: Nobody Actually Knows If You’re Confident Or Not

I consider myself to be a confident person. I’m not the smartest person in the world, but I like that I work towards being smarter every day. I try to keep my knowledge that I’ve learned in the past. I trust the teachers that I have had as being outstanding. I think I’ve been exposed to some superlative written resources. I also think that I’m not the most beautiful or the most charming or the most likable person in the world, but I believe that I was given a mission in life with what I have and that it is enough to do the job, which I work towards every day.

So I surprised myself recently when I realized that nobody knows if anybody is a confident person. A lot of people associate confidence perhaps with a face or with a posture. It might be typical to associate confidence with a certain occupation or degree or resume. Sometimes confidence is associated with a particular tone of voice. An act of courage can be associated with confidence, like singing in the school play or making an impromptu speech. But none of these things may actually be an indication of confidence.

We may not be able to fully empathize with the feeling of confidence in another person. It might not be an energy. It might not be an aura. Confidence might not be a makeup look. Confidence might not be an outfit. When people give fashion advice, they do indeed say that something will make you look confident. They do not say that it will give you confidence. Confidence might not be a hairstyle. Confidence might not correlate with the fact that you just had a haircut recently. Confidence might not even stem from having one of the best stylists in the world give you a haircut as a celebrity.

Confidence feels good and maybe it’s not such an elusive and intangible feeling as some people want you to believe. The world wants to sell you products with the promise of confidence. But many people would agree that confidence is attainable and even easy to feel without buying anything as well. As kids, people instill confidence in us in very basic ways. We are congratulated when we do something correctly. Over time, we are more reliant on congratulating ourselves. When you get better at skills you are likely to feel more confident and it is hard not to get better at most things in life. But how do we know that other people are confident? And how do we convey confidence in a believable way to others?