What’s Wrong With Being Confident?

It’s shortly after 6am on a Tuesday. I’ve got to be to work in a lil bit, but here I sit in my kitchen with hair dye on. I got drastic haircut last night and I can’t un-see that my dyed dark parts are in need of touch up. So there I go. Dying my hair before work. The unworthy pop song pops in my head “What’s wrong with being confident?” This. This and many other things are what’s wrong with being confident.

Normal people wouldn’t seize the moment between Crossfit and work to dye their hair. But, unnaturally self assured people will. Sure there’s benefits to self assuredness, but I’m a living example of some of the pitfalls to it as well.

“Yea. I bet I can do that.” This is the thought that pops in my head often before a number of questionable activities. This thought is regularly followed by reality checks that should curb my behavior. One time I thought I could scale a 6 foot fence with ease. There was no ease about it. It was ug-ly. Reasonable folk would be like, “Hmmm. I guess that’s not in my wheelhouse. Guess that’s okay because I have no need to scale fences.” Folks like me are more like, “I want to climb a fence again.” Why? There’s zero rationale for that thought.

I also get some reminders of my sharky presentation in a number of ways. Important person was at a meeting. I’d asked her if we’d met. She said that we had at a meeting that I’d ran about such and such. We’ve all got way too many meetings to track each one, but I tend to remember the ones that I’m in charge of. My take away from this conversation…Fuck. I probably was acting like I was in charge of the meeting even though I wasn’t. Again.

Confidence builds on itself. When little Billy is tasked with something and he successfully accomplishes that task, he will be more willing to do it again. He will get better; and when he gets better, he’ll get more chances to keep practicing. He gets reinforced with the “I might be good at this” messaging.

Meanwhile little not Billy who doesn’t do the thing also gets his ideas that he’s no good at the thing reinforced. It makes me think of that old expression, “It takes money to make money” in that if you have some confidence you’ll get some more confidence just by feeling more comfortable putting yourself out there.

Challenge yourself to try new things. It should suck when it’s new. There’s no growth without suck. Challenge others to stretch their wings too. This is not a dress rehearsal, so we gotta get all we can out of this run. Live with no ragrets, not even one letter. If there’s messaging in your head telling you that it’s not okay to admit that you can be good at something, squish that voice. It’s being a bitch. If you’re worried that you’ll have an unhealthy amount of unchecked confidence, take that off the table too. The universe has a great way of keeping your shit in check.

I was right. I could dye my hair in the time I had. It turned out well. Then the next day I thought, “Chemical peel, I bet I can do that” and my face melted off. As if the universe plainly stated, “Bitch. Be humble.” Got it. Thanks universe. Message received.