What is confidence? It is being brave enough to do what you need or want to do, isn’t it?

I think that’s just trying too hard, because when ‘being brave’ is the goal, it denotes that you are still letting yourself be affected by what concerns you. Instead, change the configuration of your psychological and thinking structure so you can make an entirely different approach right from the start. What I’m saying is the initial perception is important.

For instance, if you receive a task and your first impression is it’s difficult, then it’s going to cause “mental friction” which will hinder your progress more than compared to when, say, your first impression of it is neutral, meaning you don’t think or feel anything about it, and so things will play out more smoothly because there are no worries that hold you back to begin with.

To explain this more clearly, the logical reasoning, which is viewed from the philosophical perspective, is if you “try”, it means you’re being weak or powerless, and all that “try hard” is nothing but resisting something over which you have no control. Conversely, if you simply attempt something without overthinking or stressing over it, or a sense of tension, then your progression will be [more] effortless because you don’t think/care about how hard it is. Even if it’s a hard task, you’ll be just working on it towards a solution; the point is, why thinking too much about it? Why complaining about it?

It’s quite literally “Doing without thinking” but not in the sense that you’re being mindless and work without planning or any in-task consideration, nor in the sense that you’re blindly conforming to the point of being an inadvertent slave/bot/drone. The realistic application is, whenever you perform a task that’s necessary to be done, then place your focus on its completion, not how hard it is. In this way, you’re (re)programming yourself to function without fear or anxiety; you take action regardless of difficulty, and if you make a mistake, you learn and fix it. That’s all, why overthinking?

For example, when you first learned to ride a bike, didn’t it feel much more comfortable the moment you started to loosen up your body, and so it was easier to ride as compared to when you were initially all tensed up (e.g. gripping the handlebars tightly)? That’s exactly what we’re tackling so we can learn to harness confidence.

It’s like a little hack. An on-off switch to choose the mode of function. This is the goal of this post – to tap into that hack and get that switch, which we’ll get into more detail in the final section of the article, but before that, we are going to look at how the problem of confidence has always been dealt with prior to the advent of science.

From the common perspective, to those who are shy and sensitive, being confident can be such a huge challenge. People consult various sources of information for tips and tricks. Even charged courses on confidence are made to exploit the need – something I wouldn’t recommend as I believe confidence can be obtained personally via an appropriate course of practice, without overcomplication.

The typical, old-school advice on the best way to become confident, which is ‘just do it’, or getting exposure. In other words, the more you go out for new experiences and take on new things, the faster you learn and get used to new elements.

The point is to become thick-skinned enough so you don’t have to worry too much about what you have to do, or what others have to say about you. The real question is: How do you become thick skinned? And the quick answer is: perspective shift – change the angle of viewing matters, even if it’s just a little bit.

Generally, ‘just do it’ is not wrong. Many have done and witnessed great results for themselves. But… the reason a lot of people are still struggling is because as individuals we are not the same. We perceive and feel confidence differently. How come? Just like one task is easy to a person but is more challenging to another, e.g. organizing items in a room, tying shoes, or cooking, etc.

For every task, some will find it easy, but some will struggle. This phenomenon reflects the difference in personal ability, perception and natural tendencies formed by both innate character and external factors. These are all factors of which we’d need a more profound and more scientific understanding to bring about a methodical solution that can help people make a change in perspective and default their mind at being stress-free for fresh starts.

1. The cognitive basis of confidence

Motivational speakers talking about confidence say it all the time – how to be confident – they share their personal stories and experiences, but without regard to circumstantial variables and individual differences.

The typical ‘just do this/just do that’ advice that circulates as if it’s supposed to be indisputable truth. The problem is not the advice, but the assumption of the speakers that what they know from personal experience is absolute, and so they unintentionally impose that view on others with the attitude “I’ve been through this, so I know, and if you do as I say, you’ll be good like me.”

The problem is, “No, I’m not like you, because if I could match 100% everything that makes you who you are – the exact personality, the exact mindset and thoughts, the exact choices and actions, the exact emotions with the same intensity, and the exact circumstances and events, or ones with the same nature, same conditions and same level of all other unnamable elements – we’d be clones of each other, which we’re not, and I’d be standing there with you preaching confidence to others, which I am not.”

That’s what’s wrong with a lot of people, especially generations in the past when there was not yet a scientific understanding of human psychology: the elderly with rich experience that is ultimately, of course, personal and subjective, always assume they know well what they’ve experienced, that “it’s exactly like that” without being aware of the fact that ‘what they know’ is merely their subjective perception and interpretation of the things presented to them. They have no idea how the brain works, and so they don’t expect that others may see things differently. Such is the case of two persons each with a distinct opinion on a subject matter, e.g. some people prefer dogs as pets while it’s cats for others if asked which animal makes the best companion.

The matter of perception concludes that not everyone sees things in the exact same manner. It means some people may still fully match each other, but other than that, individual perceptions only overlap to a certain percentage and proportion. For example, two people, two perceptions that overlap 98% or 99%, or even as much as, say, 99.56%.

It’s what I’m demonstrating: each person’s perception is his/her own reality, and different perceptions may not fully overlap, leaving room for marginal variance. Even a 0.1% difference in reality makes a distinct possibility or possible outcomes for real-life events.

In case you wonder how a tiny statistic like 0.1% can make massive differences, take doctors performing surgical operations on patients for instance. During a heart surgery, everything has to be as precise and accurate as possible because a tiny mistake could lead to the patient’s increased risk of fatality.

When playing video games, you may be allowed multiple lives, and you can always retry after failures, but in real life, high-risk situations usually don’t give you a second chance; if you don’t want your career to be destroyed by a single reckless decision, or worse yet, you don’t want to log out of existence, you’d better be extremely careful.

The more significant the problems you have to deal with, the less room you have to mess up.

The whole reasoning points out that we generally have different levels of confidence, as there are too many variables in reality that altogether shape our ability to stay unflinching in the face of tough tasks – upbringing, circumstances, personality, disease, and many other unidentified third-party factors.

A simple explanation for the difference in confidence between us is: by nature, we’re structured differently in terms of physiology, biochemistry. This is a metaphysical examination of confidence to understand its formation. This brings us to the next part – the science of confidence.

2. Nature and nurture: the ‘physical construction’ of confidence and environmental influence

I’m not a scientist studying confidence, but I’ve speculated the matter beyond its practical/pragmatic metrics like ‘if I can do it, you can, too’. I’ve long noticed the aspect of the body naturally reacting to external stimuli without our consent, so I suspect there must be something more than the ‘just do it’ mentality.

This speculation is not only based on said observation, but also on the fact that we haven’t fully understood the human phenomenon – our psyche and all the internal components that make us who we are.

For example, when two people are asked to come on stage to deliver a speech on a topic in front of hundreds of people. They may produce different physical responses that they cannot control at will, such as quivers from fear/anxiety. It’s all automatic, but it’s built on a certain premise of both nature and nurture.

Genetics play a role in the human output of the ability to be confident. Take a look at the following genes:

1. SLC6A4 (serotonin regulator) which is responsible for serotonin reuptake into the presynaptic neuron. It regulates the availability of serotonin in the brain.
2. OXTR (oxytocin receptor) which is responsible for the signal transduction after binding its ligand, oxytocin. Its variant rs139832701 in combination with ELS was found to increase the likelihood of mood and anxiety disorders (a study examining genotypes of 653 participants from the BRAINnet Foundation Database).
3. COMT (a dopamine controller) which catabolizes catecholamines such as dopamine. Its role is mood regulation.
4. DRD4 (also a dopamine controller), which is responsible for the regulation of the dopaminergic system and in turn reward processing, and so it may contribute to the behaviors connected with dopamine levels, e.g. risk-taking.

As we’ve known, serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine are all hormones that play a major role in shaping our mood and happiness. They are the chemicals directly involved in the biological process-cum-system that ultimately makes us who we are as living individuals that are functional and healthy. Because of their essential significance to complex organisms such as us humans, they are indeed the very biochemical construction of our confidence. It is truly a remarkable natural creation, a foundational component contributing to forming our own existence and life as we know.

But then, apart from nature, nurture is the remaining part of the equation: the events that happen to us throughout the course of life also shape our confidence. If you grew up in environment where physical and mental abuse was common, then you’re less likely to be as confident as those who grew up around supportive people and where difficulties are introduced in progressive overload for optimal development – if a task is too easy, it’s boring, but if it’s too hard, it demoralizes, so it has to be moderate in a personalized manner to make the task doer feel they can make it. As you can see, external factors always exert a strong impact on us.

In addition, there are three substantial personal factors that determine our confidence output:

Ignorance

When you don’t know something, you are less able to expect what might go wrong, so you just do it, until you make a mistake and learn from it. The takeaway is not to be mindless and stupid with what you do, but it’s to say that you can only learn when you don’t know, which is ‘stay hungry stay foolish’ mentality by Steve Jobs.

Experience

Success in everything needs build-up. For instance, in a video game, if you start out level 1, you cannot beat an enemy boss level 100; the gap is too massive for any compensation to be possible. It’s like a habit/reflex; you do something repeatedly until you can do it well without even thinking.

Achievement

Achievements are the milestones in your life to reflect on. They represent reality and they are the proof of your capability, so even one day if you fall and everything crumbles, you can still stand up and restart from scratch with confidence that you’ve done pride-worthy things, there’s no way you’ll let a failure deter you easily.

3. The effortless confidence

Having discussed the subject thus far with a deeper understanding of confidence, let’s consolidate our knowledge by learning a few things about animal behavior.

In zoology, the branch of ethology is the study of animal behavior, and what researchers have found is that—when animals are in their alone time, they behave more freely as they are not restrained by any social interactions with other individuals.

As humans, privacy is always important to us because it’s the space where we can be fully ourselves without fear of judgment. There are always personal things and secrets that we try to keep to ourselves; we only express them in private.

When you are alone, you show your true colors; it’s who you are, your nature.

In social interactions, people always make behavioral adjustments for contextual appropriacy, and so that reduces their personal authenticity. For demonstration, think about all the people who are nice to you in your face but talk bad about you behind your back; they can even be backstabbers.

Remember, when dealing with society, we’re all playing a social game where virtually everyone wears masks, and those who possess the most masks and switch them around the most flexibly are the winners.

That doesn’t mean you can’t be true to yourself in social situations. You can, but you need to learn how to display yourself in an artful fashion. It’s about integrating the best of you to the social game to minimize your chances of being cheated and exploited.

Now, back to the matter of privacy. When you are alone in your room, you do whatever you like with zero fucks given about anything, right? You are totally free and natural being yourself – no worries, no anxiety or nervousness.

That’s what we’ve been talking about from the very start of this post.

Ultimately, the principle is: Be natural. More specifically, be the one that you are when you’re in your private space being at your own liberty doing what you enjoy.

It’s just another way to say ‘to be carefree’. When you stop giving a shit about things, everything feels neutral. At this point, you don’t mind judgment or whatever. It’s all about be who you are, and do as you like – which is exactly how some people are so thick-skinned that, I’d say humorously, they are not afraid of embarrassment but rather the opposite.

They feel neither shy nor afraid simply because in their mind there’s nothing. They literally ‘just do it.’ What we’re seeking is that state of mind but, of course, with some necessary adjustments so we won’t end up doing stupid things.

As such, when you’re carefree and indifferent enough like when you’re in your private space, you won’t think or feel anything that’s superfluous to what needs to be done. Completing the task at hand is the only thing real that matters; there’s no room for overthinking.

Rewire your brain so you can remain in that natural state of yours regardless of what situation you are in. This is exactly the trickiest part, because you don’t focus on making external changes, but you need to look inward and do some self-work. In other words, you can practice meditation and learn to still your mind from the turmoil of the outer world.

For baby steps, you can start by finding places where you can be in touch with nature, then immerse yourself in the scenic beauty and peaceful atmosphere of the place. Rinse your mind of all the mundane world’s vanities and pettiness that plague our minds and make us mentally drained.

Besides, if you do things with purpose and knowledge, you’ll be ready to go all-in naturally, and you have clarity on the subject to convey what you know to others. ‘Purpose’ is your compass, your North Star, and ‘knowledge’ is your means, how to travel the distance efficiently and effectively.

That’s it – the one principle you’ll ever need once you have understood how confidence works. Be you and don’t try to be someone else. Everyone’s ‘natural’ is not the same. Embrace your innate characteristics and you’ll do just fine.