A Curation of Life-changing Ideas "On Confidence"

10 Seismic Takeaways from a Little Book by The School of Life

Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash

One annual review season at work, the HR team instructed everyone to not give anyone feedback to work on their confidence. We were told that confidence is contextual. I may feel confident talking one-on-one with my manager. Still, when presenting to a room full of senior leaders, I may fumble all over my words and come across as shy, nervous, and anxious. 

I understand why our HR team wanted to prevent us from describing ourselves or our teammates as confident or not confident in a broad, binary way. After all, yes, this feedback would be just one tiny layer more specific than “do better.” Their guidance was to dig deeper and surface the micro-moment and specific behaviors that needed to be practiced to grow confident in them. Therefore, “work on your confidence” is not fair or helpful feedback. “Next time you’re presenting to the senior leadership team, prepare your key takeaways ahead of time and practice delivering them in a logical order,” is better.

Yet, this idea of contextual confidence threw me for a loop. I knew of people who are confident regardless of the context in which they are. Heck, I’ve known myself to be a context-agnostic confident person until this HR training warped my mental model of how confidence worked. I restored my faith only when I picked up this little book called On Confidence. Alain de Botton and his team at The School of Life have helped me see the underlying beliefs that made me feel more confident. With this book, he breathed life into ideas I intuitively grasped but forgot. He gave me hope. 

Below are my distilled takeaways from each chapter in this book. 

I hope this summary serves as a starting point for you to explore and apply these ideas more deeply by reading this humble, 57-page book to experience the subtlety, texture, and beauty of Alain de Botton and The School of Life’s writing. 

Let’s get to it:

1. Context-independent confidence is a skill. I can learn the ideas that form the foundation of this skill and put them into practice to feel more confident about my ever-changing existence in the world and my contributions to it. 

2. We’re all idiots. I’m no more or no less dignified than anybody else. I’m not beyond mockery, so I might as well see and accept my acts of idiocy as signs that I’m human. Beyond accepting these foolish, peculiar acts, I can share them with others and connect more deeply with them.

3. No one has it all figured out. While I may feel like an imposter or anxious and uncertain, I know that so does everyone else. I must not wait until I have it all figured out to step boldly into the future. One step at a time.

4. Authority figures are just as complex and imperfect as we are. Just because they have a certain status or title doesn’t make them any less human. Therefore, their opinions are not to be taken as absolutely true. They must be reconciled in a pool of inputs from various sources, including our intuition.

5. History is unfolding now. I can have a part in the unfolding of events, however small or subtle this part may be in the grand scheme. 

6. Growth takes time, patience, and lots of trial and error. Discomfort and setbacks are unavoidable parts of the journey. Facing difficulties is not a sign that I’m not cut out for the growth ahead of me. It’s a sign that I’m pushing against my limits like a butterfly leaving its cocoon. I must, therefore, adjust my expectations to be realistic.

7. We will all die. Let me put the daily embarrassments in perspective and act with more courage trying to make the most of my short time here on Earth.

8. Haters are going to hate. No matter what I do, some people will be offended, hate, or criticize me. Often, the fact that some judge me or my work harshly says more about them than me. 

9. I’m prone to self-sabotage because I’m afraid of success. I can be afraid of the person I might become when I’m successful. I can be afraid of causing my loved ones to respond to my success with self-doubt, fear, and envy. 

10. I can be confident and kind at the same time. There is a difference between being confident and being offensive, rude, demanding, impatient, and brash. 

In short, to put theory into practice in any area of my life, to learn, to grow, I must build confidence. Not the kind of confidence that results out of sheer repetition, but the kind that is more peaceful in spirit. The kind that makes you look at uncharted territory and say, “I got this!”