TBT: I have con-fi-dence in con-fi-dence alooooone

(for throwback Thursday, here is a slightly edited post from October 2011, when I had been through a huge, paralyzing crisis of confidence after going back to grad school in my late forties)

I have con-fi-dence in con-fi-dence alooooone....

....trail off.  Gaze stupefied at enormous house enclosed behind fancy wrought-iron gate.  Choke out Oh, help.  Start singing again, slowly and softly, then build to a rousing finale, "I have confidence in confidence alone, because as you see, I have con-fi-dence IN ME!"

That was Julie Andrews, of course, in The Sound of Music.  The movie may be treacly (Christopher Plummer called it "The Sound of Mucous"), but Julie Andrews singing that particular song is thoroughly, radiantly perfect.  Never more so than when she gets stuck and almost falls out of the bus while singing, "With each step I am more certain, everything will turn out fine...."

Oh, Lord, guess what movie we will be watching this weekend.  I haven't seen it in ages, and I do love it, sticky sweetness and all.

Today's topic is self-confidence.  It's a tough one for me.  If you have narcissists in your life, or even people who are just preternaturally self-assured, self-confidence is not a simple subject.

It has never been something I've aspired to. Why would I want to be one of those annoying people who have no qualms about themselves? who are utterly assured that they are always doing the right thing? who just know that all their opinions are correct?  So I've avoided even the appearance of confidence in myself, because I didn't want to be one of those people.

But I'm starting to realize that my lack of self-confidence is not only debilitating, but silly. There are things I'm good at, in addition to the things I'm not.  And I've also figured out that when you lack confidence in yourself, other people-- exactly those people I was describing in the last paragraph-- can use that as a way to manipulate you.

And also I've been figuring out recently while reading other people's blogs that my skewed definition isn't what most people mean by self-confidence.  What they mean is what Julie Andrews does in that song-- she's flaky, goofy, naive, tripping all over herself, and yet she's putting up a brave front, she's ready to take on the world.

So.... maybe I've been wrong.  OK, I admit it.  I need to re-think this.  If I ditched my old definition and came up with one that worked, what would it look like?

In the past, I've had an utterly paralyzing fear of public speaking.  If I'm going to stand up in front of people and talk, I have to have a script-- I have to know precisely, word-for-word, what I'm going to say, because once I get up there, my brain refuses to function.  My hands shake.  My voice wobbles.  I'm terrified. All I can think about is getting done so I can sit down.

But I had to do a presentation this past week, and it went surprisingly well.  I was a bit nervous, my hands a little trembly, my voice not quite steady, but nothing like the near panic attacks I've experienced in the past.  I was so, so proud of myself that I was grinning like a maniac all the way to my next class.  It was a small group-- there are only four of us taking the class-- and it was on a topic that interests me and that I was comfortable with.  So it was great practice, a perfect low-pressure environment.

Maybe I could change my definition of  self-confidence to encompass not knowing what the hell you're doing, but being willing to try anyway.  Rather than something brittle that you hide behind, it could be a basic belief, maybe even trust, in myself.  I may fail, but I can handle that.  It's not going to keep me from trying.  Ha.  Maybe for an Eeyore like me, self-confidence means not that I will succeed, but being confident that I will survive failure. I might be able to do that.