Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

For my whole life, they told me that I needed to have self-confidence to succeed. All those teachers and leaders urged me to love myself in order to see progress. I never once loved myself. I never once had self-confidence. I have seen enough success in my life to realize that maybe self-confidence isn’t nearly as important as they say.

Then I read this article:

• Caroming the Combination: The Paradox of Self-Confidence

It’s about playing billiards and pool and truly has nothing to do with me, but the title attracted me, so I read it. The author suggests that most of us can calculate with a pretty high degree of probability how well we are going to do. We KNOW whether we suck or not, but when we are doing it, we delude ourselves for that briefest of moments.

This isn’t superstition or some vague positive psychology. I’m saying that it is a simple matter of not allowing distracting thoughts during the execution. “I might miss this shot,” is one of the worst thoughts that you could possibly have during a shot. If that enters the mind, you probably will miss the shot.

Using the delusion of self-confidence while we are trying to do great things is a method of clearing our minds of distractions. THAT is something that I do all the time. When I’m bowling, I know how poorly I’m doing, but when I throw that ball, I am pretending that I’m a pro-bowler on ESPN THE OCHO. When I’m logging my daily food intake, I know how likely I will be able to stay under my 20g of carbs, but when I’m choosing food, I pretend that I am a carnivore.

Self-Confidence is a delusion. The only people who truly have it are utterly insufferable. Those of us who use it as a method to avoid distractions, succeed far beyond our meager hopes for ourselves.