On Confidence
Author: Alain De Botton
Personal Score: 7.2/10
Goodreads Score: 4.1/5
Get it here on Amazon.
🎨Impression
It's an interesting introduction into the philosophical nature of confidence and has many good insights but it lacks in-depth and actionable content. The author also doesn't tie any strong connection between confidence and self-worth and I believe this to be a foundational pillar of confidence that should be clear and present.
🚀This Book in 3 Bullets
- The premise of this book is to reveal to the reader how to develop free-ranging confidence that can be applied to multiple facets of life. It's a simpler task to develop confidence in one very specific area (ie. Jitsu, pole vaulting, writing) however developing confidence itself is also a skill and we should invest in it.
- Much of confidence has to do with how we perceive our environment than any specific actions we take. In the form of ego and identity defense, personal biases, and the singular lense with which we view the world we end up sabotaging ourselves out of confidence.
- Much of the way we perceive our environment comes from programming at an adolescent age. Programming is done by unwitting parents or parental figures. Their conditions with the world are transferred to us at a young age but also our relationship with them and their dealings with us as young children leads to habits of seeing others as more put together than us.
📜Book Summary & Lessons (by chapter)
Idiocy & Confidence
- The author shares about a book written in 1509 named Praise of Folly by Erasmus and it reveals that it's been known for ages that everyone is foolish in nature. Whether you were a king or are a cop, politician, or model. Everybody's weird deep down. It's in our nature.
- Part of what keeps us from being confident is that we hold ourselves to a respectable image of dignity and pride. We wish to always come off gracefully and in order to protect that image, we remove ourselves from circumstances that may open us up to be vulnerable. We proceed with caution.
- "We grow timid when we allow ourselves to be overexposed to the respectable sides of others"
- However, if we instead accept our ridiculousness and folly, then coming off as silly one more time to a stranger or friend doesn't surprise us. There's nothing to protect and we can embrace the vulnerable circumstances life present us.
- "The road to greater confidence begins by telling oneself every morning that one is a fool."
Imposter Syndrome
- Anytime we inherit great responsibility or ownership in life, we're immediately filled with the sense of being an imposter. Like an actor filling the role of a pilot or business owner but having no real-life competence in it.
- This feeling arises, not from our own flaws but from the fact that we cannot imagine the worlds elite players having the same deep rooted problems and insecurities we hold.
- It starts in childhood. As children, we walk through the world seeing the parents around us competent in their activities, enjoying things (like sitting around talking for hours with drinks of nasty beverages) that we disdain. This sparks a powerful impression that we are not like the people we admire at all.
- The sense of Imposter Syndrome only grows as we shift into teenage and young adult years because of our own human condition - "We know everything about ourselves from the inside but only no others from the outside." This means we get a sliver of what people are willing to show us but constantly deal with all of our own insecurities, incompetency, & challenges.
- We're left with an intimate awareness of our own gross bathroom attendances, shameful decision making, regretful moments, & freakish inner thoughts but we fail to see that these are universal feelings affecting our most admired and impressive individual just as much as us.
- The antidote is "a crucial leap of faith." Reminding oneself that everybody has their own quirks, sexual fantasies, gross misconducts, and embarrassing stories. A consistent practice of reminding ourselves of this develops a saner sense of what powerful people are like.
- "Kings and philosophers shit and so do ladies" - Montaigne
Trust in the System
- Through negative feedback, denial, and NO's we've been beaten down by a system we put our faith in as something that wants us to grow and prosper. We put too much faith in the benevolence of this system.
- Our attempts to change it with our behaviors, actions, ideas, and thoughts are misinformed by this source of trust we hold in it. Like a child being told No by their parents but not fully understanding Why and having no power to change the circumstance even though it could be an unfair decision by an unrested and frustrated parent. "Our childish selves struggle to flesh out the reality of adult existence"
- We believe it can only be done for good reason but we have to accept that the world, like us, is very imperfect. Humanity, it's organizations and individuals are deeply flawed and the "system" created by it does not always provide great feedback. The greatest feats often have been accomplished despite and around this system, not with its agreement.
- "However, maturity means, ideally, going from the myth of a person, however high their status is a system, to a full recognition of their humanity. We finally pay others a strange but valid compliment when we accept them as versions of the same complex and imperfect creatures we know ourselves to be."
History is Now
- Unconfident people see history as being made, whereas the confident see it as in the making.
- Another experience from childhood is that everything already seems to be completed to its farthest ability and more important, unchanging. Religion, school, and family traditions seem to have existed from the dawn of man and have no hint of changing. It appears to our young, ignorant adolescent eyes that society has mapped everything out and change seems unfathomable.
- This discourages your willingness to act on new ideas, businesses or alternative paths.
- It's not until we study history that we first get a glimpse of how much has changed but even then, it's difficult to apply that knowledge to daily living. We can't escape the feeling that all that volatility in the past has settled and history can't be occurring around us now.
- "History we feel, is what used to happen, it can't really be what is happening around us in the here and now."
- It's difficult to see this in our daily lives but we must. Everything that we associate with history; revolutions, the silent overturning of power, great innovations, epic overthrows of old traditions, is happening right now. We have the ability to be an agent to it.
- "Any one of us has a theoretical chance of being an agent in history, on a big or small scale." Instead of thinking the world is unchangeable for somebody like us we should be asking why not us? Why not be the next Elon Musk, Buddha, or Martin Luther King Jr.? "Why not build a new city as beautiful as Venice, to change ideas as radically as the renaissance, to start an intellectual movement as resounding as Buddhism?"
- "The present has all the contingency of the past and is every bit as malleable. it should not intimidate us." Everything is up for further development. "The majority of what exists is arbitrary, the result of muddle and happenstance".
- Stop imagining what you see as fixated, and be confident in your ability to change the course of history.
Experience
- We lose confidence because our expectations are that the path to achievement will be easy, and so when we're inevitably met with failure, problems and challenges we take this as humiliating signs of our inadequacy to achieve.
- Western culture has fetishized success without concern for the difficult ups and downs a path toward achievements is encumbered by. We only hear and see stories about the outcome of tribulations and not the tribulations themselves.
- "We are surrounded by stories that conspire to make success seem easier than it is, and therefore that unwittingly destroy the confidence we can muster in the face of obstacles."
- "Art lies in concealing art" Horace (Roman Poet)
- In the modern-day, we pay to not see or hear the struggle behind success. When we go to a restaurant, we complain if something is wrong with our food and we expect the chef to already be a professional. We pay to go see plays & comic standup routines and forget the late nights and long hours that comic practice to make that performance seem easily charismatic and hilarious.
- We forget the hours that the comic spent on whether to deliver that line standing, with an impression, or sitting down. Every little detail was scrutinized. We see the final product and it looks so easy we could do it, but when we start awkwardly stumbling over our words, we are surprised. It's not so easy for us.
- This shouldn't be the case, the author teaches that ancient Greeks used to spend lots of time teaching and sharing the difficult daily lives of high achieving societal roles. For example, they would often show their soldiers dying on the battlefield in art and sculptures. They wouldn't glorify the soldier's life as something heroic but forgiving.
- Western culture should emphasize the ups and downs and peril of pursuing grand dreams so that when the dreamer was met with these difficulties, they would assume it's a normal part of the road. Our setbacks would take on very different meanings. Not halt our belief.
- "We have not seen enough rough drafts of those we admire, and therefore cannot forgive ourselves the horror of our own early attempts."
- We develop confidence not by believing that life will be easy, we develop confidence by accepting the reality of ambitious goals and readying ourselves for the obstacles that inevitably present themselves. Being open to setbacks and ready to extract the most information from them.
Death
- There are many decisions we make in an effort to not upset anybody, not embarrass ourselves or maintain a certain level of security for our families. The safer path becomes the chosen path. We don't divorce so we don't hurt someone's feelings, we don't ask him/her out to save ourselves and we don't make an abrupt career change if our family relies on us. We make decisions based on their level of risk in all of these areas yet we forget the crucial risk involved with passivity and death.
- We too easily ignore the deepest fact about our existence. It's incredibly short. So we go about our lives making safe decisions thinking we'll be able to fix our longings someday in the future. The future comes and goes, fast.
- "By hyping up the dangers of failure in action, we underrate the seriousness of the dangers lurking within passivity."
- In light of our inevitable and horrible exit, the boldness and danger of our riskier decisions don't seem so terrible.
- "It's hardly surprising that we struggle with the notion of how long we will be here. At first, life seems quite endless. At seven, it feels like an eternity till Christmas. At eleven, it is almost impossible to imagine what it might be like to be twenty-two. At twenty-two, thirty feels absurdly remote. Time does a disservice in seeming so long, and yet turning out to be so resolutely short."
- Typically people only become gripped by their own mortality at a few points in their lives. A midlife crisis is not an awakening, it is a sign of being ill-prepared. We should never need to be awoken, our society should be faced with the idea of our mortality as often as possible.
- "There should be monuments that say "To Those Who Wasted Their Lives." and it should be an admirable trait to say "There's X, they're so concerned about wasting their life."
- In the meantime, there are individual things we can do, we can carry around mementos or place them in our house to remind us of the inevitable. Own a skull. Or a quote that you see often. Meditate on death, hold a Memento Mori - something to remind you.
Enemies
- "The judgements of others have been given a free pass to enter all the rooms of our minds."
- Even if we have one thousand positive remarks, our enemies are allowed to run freely within our thoughts and their comments leave visible effects on our conscience. Even if we were benevolent in our behavior and had no ill will, therefore the situation was unjust, we still will not let it go.
- We're stuck because their objections feel unbearable, like physical discomfort, but we are unable to dismiss it as unwarranted either. So we end up carrying the opinions of others like weight.
- This stems from childhood; by a number of parenting choices and any one has its consequences:
Unknowing parental figures shower us with love upon external conditions (Like a teacher's positive remark, or a gold medal in a sports competition) or punish us for the same (A teacher's poor remarks) which makes us respect the opinions of others too much. It's doubled by us watching the remarks of our parents towards others opinions, like reading a critics' review of a movie and holding a bad opinion about the movie or hearing negative gossip from another parent and then repeating it as opinion. Over time this behavior, implants in us a heavy weight of concern and respect for the approval and opinions of others.
The contrast is parents who criticize the external and instill in the child a confidence that "what people say and how you act, is not who you are." You are first and foremost our child and we will love you no matter what. This embeds a lasting impression that the external does not matter and does not change you. A better approach but how could the parents of known? What is past, is past.
- We can't go back and change this, however by understanding the framework of our childhood programming we are better able to shift our thoughts to more productive messages.
- "We cannot change the presence of an enemy, but we can change what an enemy means to us"
- Panicking about the opinions of others puts a dangerous level of trust in their motives. Accepting that they might have positive, unbiased, and fair reasoning rather than just being an individual with their own problems, taking it out on you.
- An antidote to this is fierce pessimism - see everybody with a healthy dose of skepticism. Investigate their motives rather than just accepting them as coming from a source of positivity. See an individual's judgments and enemy opinions as something impossible to avoid: an outcome of human nature. Where the specific reasons are a complex blend of emotional flareups, jealousy, desires, and personal biases. All inevitable consequences of human interactions.
- In the 17th century, Dutch painters began painting boats in the middle of stormy seas to represent their seafaring traditions and symbolize that no matter how intense the storms around the ships were, the ship was built to withhold the surge and the crew was well prepared for any circumstances. A reminder that if you prepare yourself internally and stabilize the surge of emotions, you can withstand any storm that occurs around you.
- The author brings up this painting, by Ludolf Bakhuizen, that portrays this imagery well.
- He ends the chapter with "The storms will die down, we will be battered, a few things will be ripped, but eventually, we will return to safer shores - as the sun rises over the spires of Alkmaar."
Self-Sabotage
- It is natural for our conscious mind to seek out happiness in the important areas of our life. Therefore it becomes unnerving when our unconscious becomes a blockade to this happiness. Throwing a wrench in our plans with odd overreactions, emotionally driven poor decisions, and a number of others.
- This form of sabotage comes from a number of sources: Not wanting to over-shadow and outgrow one's peers and adolescent guardians, or being burned by hope enough times to know not to ask for its cost again, or from a sense that we are unworthy of the achievements.
- Protecting our loved ones from a sense of inadequacy or envy is no reason to bury ones own dreams - instead the antidote is to meet that worry with generosity and proactive in our efforts to alleviate those feelings from those around us.
- In adolescent years, we may have experienced terrible blows to hope and therefore "somewhere, in our characters, a deep association has been forged between hope and danger." but the answer here is to simply remind ourselves that "despite our fears, we can survive losses of hope." We can survive the letdowns and become stronger for them.
- Knowing our weaker selves, we may feel that we do not deserve the gifts we hope for from the universe but this is attributing too much importance to ourselves already. We should remind ourselves of the "sheer randomness and amorality of fate." The bad and the good will enter our lives undeserved, this does not mean we shouldn't accept and move on, despite it.
Confidence in Confidence
- Sometimes we have a hidden struggle with confidence itself, we may unconsciously see it as unappealing. With characteristics like we'd rather stay away from like being arrogant or boastful.
- We then attach ourselves to this modesty, timidity, and hesitancy and be proud we're not the type to call back a plate at the restaurant or play loud music.
- For centuries, Christianity, the greatest influence on the west heavily favored the quiet and timid over the upright and confident. In their view, arrogant.
- However, all this may be based on an unreliable representation of confidence because it is possible for it to be compatible with calm, witty, sensitive, caring, and kind.
- "Furthermore, our attraction to meekness may mask some cowardly resentment towards self-assertion. We might not so much as admire timidity as fear confidence."
- "We should take care not to dress up our base deficiencies as godly virtues" it is not virtuous to forgive and accept a burden if it is only because of lack of power to take revenge. It is not virtuous to bow and serve because you don't have the courage to stand.
- "Confidence is what translates theory into practice. It should never be thought of as the enemy to good things, it is their crucial and legitimate catalyst. We should allow ourselves to develop confidence in confidence."
🎴Top Quotes
- "We grow timid when we allow ourselves to be overexposed to the respectable sides of others"
- "The road to greater confidence begins by telling oneself every morning that one is a fool."
- "We know everything about ourselves from the inside but only no others from the outside."
- "Our childish selves struggle to flesh out the reality of adult existence"
- "However, maturity means, ideally, going from the myth of a person, however high their status is a system, to a full recognition of their humanity. We finally pay others a strange but valid compliment when we accept them as versions of the same complex and imperfect creatures we know ourselves to be."
- "History we feel, is what used to happen, it can't really be what is happening around us in the here and now."
- "Any one of us has a theoretical chance of being an agent in history, on a big or small scale."
- "Why not build a new city as beautiful as Venice, to change ideas as radically as the renaissance, to start an intellectual movement as resounding as Buddhism?"
- "The present has all the contingency of the past and is every bit as malleable. it should not intimidate us."
- "The majority of what exists is arbitrary, the result of muddle and happenstance".
- "We are surrounded by stories that conspire to make success seem easier than it is, and therefore that unwittingly destroy the confidence we can muster in the face of obstacles."
- "We have not seen enough rough drafts of those we admire, and therefore cannot forgive ourselves the horror of our own early attempts."
- "By hyping up the dangers of failure in action, we underrate the seriousness of the dangers lurking within passivity."
- "It's hardly surprising that we struggle with the notion of how long we will be here. At first, life seems quite endless. At seven, it feels like an eternity till Christmas. At eleven, it is almost impossible to imagine what it might be like to be twenty-two. At twenty-two, thirty feels absurdly remote. Time does a disservice in seeming so long, and yet turning out to be so resolutely short."
- "There should be monuments that say "To Those Who Wasted Their Lives." and it should be an admirable trait to say "There's X, they're so concerned about wasting their life."
- "The judgements of others have been given a free pass to enter all the rooms of our minds."
- "We cannot change the presence of an enemy, but we can change what an enemy means to us"
- "Somewhere, in our characters, a deep association has been forged between hope and danger."
- "Despite our fears, we can survive losses of hope."
- "Furthermore, our attraction to meekness may mask some cowardly resentment towards self-assertion. We might not so much as admire timidity as fear confidence."
- "We should take care not to dress up our base deficiencies as godly virtues"
- "Confidence is what translates theory into practice. It should never be thought of as the enemy to good things, it is their crucial and legitimate catalyst. We should allow ourselves to develop confidence in confidence."