Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic - Confidence: Overcoming Low Self-Esteem, Insecurity, and Self-Doubt

It is a clich that most clichs are true, but then like most clichs, that clich is untrue. Stephen Fry

B iographers are quick to attribute the success of eminent people to their colossal levels of confidence, while downplaying the roles of talent and hard work, as if it were in anyones hands (or minds) to achieve exceptional levels of success merely through sheer self-belief. In line, magazines and popular blogs grossly exaggerate the role of confidence in determining fame and success. Consider the following examples:

No matter what you do, be sure to love yourself for doing it.

If you have confidence you will reach any goal you have; but without it, you have no chance of being successful.

If you love yourself, your life will be perfect.

We all admire confident peopleconfidence is the most important asset in life and it will always lead to success and happiness.

We can all teach ourselves to be confident and then all our problems will be solved.

Confident people are ten times more successful than those who lack confidence.

There are three big problems with these types of claims. First, it is not easy to make your confidence soar, just like that. If it were, nobody would worry about low confidence; we would just extinguish it like we do thirst or hunger. Second, even if we succeeded at deliberately boosting our confidence, it would not bring us any genuine success. Contrary to what some biographers and self-nominated experts suggest, Barack Obama did not become the first black president in U.S. history because he was confident; Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin, did not establish four hundred companies because of his confidence; Madonna has not sold three hundred million records because of her self-belief; and Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, and Roger Federer did not achieve total domination of their sports because they felt good about themselves. The reason these exceptional achievers have confidence is that they are exceptionally competent. It takes an extraordinary amount of talentand even more hard workto attain such levels of competence. In fact, the only unusual thing about these peoples confidence is that it is an accurate reflection of their competence. This sets them apart from the majority of superconfident people, who are just not very competent.

The third problem is arguably the most serious one. The illusion that high confidence can help us achieve anything we want puts an incredible amount of pressure on us to feel assertive, and to translate that assertiveness into success. As a consequence, those who lack confidence feel guilty and ashamed, and those who feel confident have unrealistic expectations about what their confidence will help them accomplish. The high confidence premium is such that people are prepared to do just about anything to attain and maintain extreme positive self-views, equating feeling great with being great. The result is a society that mistakes self-importance for importance and self-admiration for admiration, driving more and more people to be obsessed only with themselves.

Narcissismthink Donald Trump or Paris Hiltonis a state of mind characterized by unrealistic feelings of grandiosity and inflated self-confidence. Narcissists are self-centered and feel superior to everyone else; they pay no attention to negative comments from others and dismiss negative feedback. Narcissists are also manipulative and dont mind exploiting people in order to attain power, fame, or success. The word derives from the Greek myth of Narcissus, a beautiful hunter who was so self-obsessed that he paid no attention to others. In order to punish him, the goddess Nemesis attracted Narcissus to a pond, where he fell in love with his own reflection, not realizing that he was looking at himself. One version of the story says Narcissus drowned trying to kiss his own image; another version, that he remained on his own by the pond until his death, infatuated with his own reflection and unable to relate to anyone else.