What creates confidence? Is confidence a skill, a feeling? Neither… it is Stepping out of your mind…
I don’t know if you have ever considered, but having something intelligent to say about anything takes studying and takes intelligent, independent thinking and a lot of experimenting.
Life and the Universe is holographic, which means that in a drop of water the whole ocean is present: studying deeply the drop of water gives you nearly everything you need to know about the ocean.
This is especially true about humans, the human behavior, human feelings, human thoughts.
When I decided to make confidence my next area of study, I didn’t know much about the topic: in fact I knew nothing useful, nothing. I didn’t know that it will lead me back to something I have experience with, that I know I do, that I have been teaching from time to time… that is actually the key ingredient in confidence. Wow… talk about holographic.
But let me return to confidence and what I have learned, so far…
The first thing I learned about confidence is that I was clueless about what creates confidence
It got revealed to me with the first question an expert on the topic asked: What would you do differently, what would you do that you are now not doing, if you had confidence?
Before continuing reading this article, I recommend that you take a 15 second break to ponder.
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Did you notice that the question wasn’t: how would you feel… or it wasn’t: what would you do if you felt confident?
I don’t feel confident about 90% of the time when I attempt to do something uncomfortable, unfamiliar, anything new.
I don’t act confident about 50% of the time when I attempt to do something uncomfortable, unfamiliar, anything new.
I don’t act, period, about 5% of the time when I have the idea, or thought that I could, or should do something unfamiliar, anything new.
People I have observed, people I have coached, people I have interviewed have this order reversed: they act in 5% of the time when they don’t feel confident, and don’t do the new thing unless they feel confident.
One problem is this: feeling confident is, mostly, based on a delusion, self-delusion, or delusion by others… not on reality. We could say that people who feel confident are on some level psychopaths.
The feeling of fear, anxiety, trepidation that accompanies doing anything new is actually useful and hardwired into the healthy human’s brain, you should start worrying if you don’t feel it.
So what do people that act (seemingly confidently) on challenges have that you don’t? And could you have that too? Is it “normal” to have that, or are you running the danger of becoming a psychopath?
Now, I am only half way through the expert’s book on confidence, so this may not be the whole answer, but it seems that
Confident action requires you to allow the mind think what the mind thinks, but act from a different place.
We could say, confident action requires you to be able to step out of the mind, when you want to.
When you step out of the mind, you can be present to what you are doing, instead of being embroiled in an argument with the mind, or being driven by the mind.
Expecting the mind to stop doing what the mind does is everyone’s desire: but it’s like wishing the sun stayed up 24/7: it is not going to happen.
But when you can create a distance between You, the Self, the Witness, the Observer, the Act-or, then the chatter of the mind is reduced to noise.
There are many methods to separate yourself, the You from the mind’s chatter, and probably all work some of the time. I have been teaching the method I call “Step back” because I am mainly kinesthetic, meaning that I work with feelings, physical distances, movements best.
But reading this book on confidence will give me access to visual and auditory exercises.
Getting out of your mind is a skill. This means that you are incompetent now. A training, lots of correct, supervised practice, will take you to competence.
When I measure my students, I often measure how much of their time they spend in the mind. The number is mostly between 90% and 100%.
People who work with me for an extended period of time, get that number down to around 40%.
If I decide to create a program to train you to get out of your mind, I can guarantee that all participants that do the practicing (NOT time consuming, you can do them while you do other things. In fact that’s the best way to learn!) will reach that level.
And at 40% people actually produce miraculous results, deal well with adversity, make good decisions, and in general live a worry free, anxiety free life.
Isn’t that what you have been dreaming about? Please comment below… no obligations, but I’d like to gauge the interest… Maybe you aren’t willing to get out of the mind, because you love being miserable, and a shrinking human… Please comment.
wonderful Ronda. I will.
I have often wanted an off switch so I could silence all the chatter, especially since the voice of the mind seems to be the loudest.
I would very much like to sign up for a class that trains me to get out of my mind. Please count me in.
I hope too.
This, for me, is another one of those skills that you can’t get around on the way to becoming a human being. I am interested, and hope I can work with whatever schedule you set for the training.
thank you for your feedback.
This would be very valuable for me.
true. My hunch is that people are taught to control their minds… which is the opposite of what works.
There is no way to shut down, or shut up the mind. Or try positive thinking… forcing the mind to think politically correct things… all futile attempts, the cause of utter misery.
Because you are not your mind, you can just let the mind do what the mind does, while you do what you do.
Google is searched for peace of mind, quiet mind, mind control but no one is searching for stepping out of the mind…
well, there’s only one way to find out:
try it on yourself…
Thank you Matsa. I am not sure people can appreciate it… yet.
I’m interested; consider me signed up