Website owner: James Miller
The following is an entry from my diary from March 1976: Mon, 15 Mar 76 7:05 PM The feeling of confidence is a great feeling! (It is a feeling that is relatively new to me.) With it comes the ability to just relax, to be at ease, to take things calmly and with ease. With it comes spirit and enthusiasm. With it comes friendliness and liking for people, an extrovertiveness. With it comes articulateness, words, the ability to talk. And all of this gives an insight into the stymying, stifling effects of lack of confidence on a person. With lack of confidence comes shyness, fear of people, fear that they will see and expose your weaknesses; fear that they will put you down, make fun of you, etc.. With lack of confidence comes antisocialness, reservedness, dislike of people, introversion, an inability to articulate your feelings and thoughts, to express yourself. Oh, how great a difference that little thing called "confidence" makes! How great a difference that one simple feeling bubbling up in a soul can make! But what causes it? What causes a person to feel that simple little feeling? How can one obtain it? That is a very elusive question! I have gone years and years and scaled mountain after mountain before I came to the point where I got it. It was a prize I just couldn't get. It always eluded me. But one thing is clear. People who have achieved very little in life may be just bubbling over with confidence and other people who have achieved a great deal, who are very well educated and very competent, can be struggling along shackled by deep lack of confidence. It is a mystery. It is a feeling and how you can attain it is hard to say. I was getting all A's in high school, was at the top of my classes, rationally knew I should have confidence in myself, yet was always held down and shackled by the deepest self-doubts and lack of confidence (it is a complex -- the inferiority complex -- and is hard to analyze rationally). I do think, however, that the question is closely connected, not with how good a person is or how intelligent or competent he is, but more with what his standards for himself are, what he expects of himself. His degree of confidence is proportional to how well he measures up to his standards, the extent to which he has achieved his expectations, how satisfied he is with himself. It takes very little for some people to be satisfied with themselves, it takes a very great deal for other people to be satisfied with themselves. The fewer goals and objectives and expectations a person has for himself, the easier it is to become satisfied with yourself and to acquire that feeling of self-confidence. But it is a happy feeling and it will give you a big boost in getting along with people and getting along in life. Jan 2006
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