“Confidence Comes From Within”
by Kelvin Chin
Author
Meditation Teacher
You cannot always judge a book by its cover. There is no situation where that old adage is truer than with people.
Some people are more outgoing. Others are more introverted. But whether the person is confident or not is not dependent on how outward or inward their behavior appears.
Too often we judge the book by its cover. And all too often we are wrong in our assessment. Especially when it comes to judging whether a person is confident or insecure.
And I think this tendency to assess people’s confidence on the outer — often falsely — is very much an American-centric cultural phenomenon. Too often the “loud” person is given the floor, or maybe better said, they “take over” the floor. Incorrectly, they are often immediately assessed as confident. Sure, certainly confident enough to take over the floor, but are they really inwardly self-confident? And too often the shyer, quieter and more reserved person is assessed as “weaker” and less confident.
Could it be that the quieter person is simply that? Quieter. And more internal with less of a need to be the louder, more vocal person in the room? Could we in fact be wrong about judging them as insecure, as less confident?
I think so.
In my experience, confidence is driven from the inside out. The more secure we are within ourselves, the more we “know who we are” as an individual being, then the more self-confidence we own. “Own” as in the more unshakable that self-confidence can become.
How or whether we exhibit that self-confidence externally to the world is a different story. That is unique to the personality of that particular individual. If the person is more outgoing, they may demonstrate that self-confidence in how they speak or act in a group setting. On the other hand, if the person is more introverted, they may be more silent in a group setting, yet still exude an outward energy of assuredness of self that the sensitive and aware outside observers might pick up on.
But the loudmouth who has to take over the room, who consistently speaks over or interrupts others is often demonstrating their own lack of confidence in themselves and their ideas in that overbearing behavior. Loudness does not equal confidence.
So be careful not to judge a book by its cover. Be aware that someone’s internal world will not always be reflected in that individual’s external behavior. More often than not the external behavior will be driven by that person’s personality and not how secure they are within. Sometimes the louder person will use that loudness to cover up their insecurities. And sometimes the quieter person will be quite secure in harboring their own thoughts keeping them within with no need to externally share them.
Self-confidence is a nuanced and very personal thing that only that individual can really assess — if they are at least self-aware and candid anyway. We on the outside can only, at best, guess what is going on in their inside world.
Kelvin H. Chin is a Meditation Teacher, Life After Life Expert, and Author of “Overcoming the Fear of Death,” “Marcus Aurelius Updated: 21st Century Meditations On Living Life” and “After the Afterlife: Memories of My Past Lives.” He learned to meditate at age 19, and has been teaching Turning Within Meditation and coaching others in their self-growth for 50 years. He helps people understand their life challenges through their individual belief systems, and helps them find their own solutions. His past life memories reach back many centuries, and he accesses those memories in his teaching and his coaching in the same way all coaches draw on their own available experiences for perspective and effective analogies. He can be reached at www.TurningWithin.org.