Guest Post: Emily Talks Self-Confidence
This is Emily
Kate: What’s on your mind?
Emily: I have been thinking today about self-confidence. As a person who can swing back and forth from thinking that I am one of the most awesome people alive, to wondering whether anyone actually likes me, I am curious about the nature of this phenomenon. Lately I have been in a down swing. A string of rejections, stresses and bad decisions has left me wondering when I became someone who felt this uncertain about myself. When I interact with new people I feel unable to gauge their reactions to me. This leads me to seek social approval so that I can once again feel assured in my general worth as a person.
“But wait!” I think to myself “This is just the sort of thing I should avoid! Haven’t I always agreed with the wisdom that if you base your self-worth on what other people give to you, they will have the power to take it away?” This seems to be true. My confidence goes up when I get a new friend, someone laughs at my joke or someone reveals romantic interest in me. But, by the same token, it goes down when someone loses interest or I face some other form of social rejection. Shouldn’t I just be confident with myself regardless of what others say?
This seems to be the common wisdom of the day. Be yourself and who cares what the rest of the world thinks. But why? Why should we all have self-confidence no matter what the facts of the matter are? This, I think, is an unrealistic attitude towards life.
I believe that I am not automatically perfect, regardless of my actions. There are things I can do that make me a better or worse person, a more or less interesting person, a better or worse friend. When I assess my own value as a person, it is based on these factors. As a person who values relationships with people above anything else, every aspect that I evaluate has to do with my value to other people. I think that I am a valuable person because I make people happy, I am a good friend, I am interesting to talk to, etc. These are not things that you can abstract away from the people that I actually interact with. So, each interaction is a bit of data. It is evidence towards or against my value as a person. If I am not interesting someone, then it is evidence against my being interesting. How can this not affect me?
Perhaps I should follow my friend Josh’s example and take to emotional bootstrapping. With this method, one first believes that they are the most awesome person ever, and then assumes that everyone else will follow suit. When successful, you end up confident and loved, but your confidence is not dependent, it’s the cause. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy at it’s best.
Emily is gorgeous
Josh has mastered this art, and it seems to work well for him. No matter what happens, Josh has a way to spin it in favor of his overwhelming self-confidence. He is an ego machine, pumping out a constant stream of conversation about just how great he is. Sure, sometimes people think he is a narcissistic jerk, but he seems fine with that. Those people are clearly not getting something. For those of us that do get it, we are just confirming what he knew all along. And it kind of works. People either love him or hate him, but he uses both cases to confirm his deeply entrenched belief that he is awesome. And it turns out that he is right. People love him. He is a hilarious and fun person to be around – and not just in spite of his ego – in some ways, because of it.
Sometimes, I wish I could accomplish this impressive mental feat. And it seems that following the “believe in yourself, no matter what” attitude would lead to a Josh-like situation. But, it’s not really me and it’s hard to imagine “being myself” and being the sort of person who could operate like that.
Maybe the real answer is someplace in between. Maybe I should avoid using all the data. I have friends. I have a lot of friends. And they all seem to like me. Some of them seem to like me a whole lot. And that matters because I like them a whole lot. I guess when my self-confidence is high, it is at those times when I am paying close attention to the opinions of those people. If those people no longer support me, I should assume that something has gone very wrong. And I think that is fair. If no one agrees with me that I am totally awesome, I should probably change myself before I change my confidence. But, as long as I’m getting the thumbs up from the people whose opinions mean the most to me, I shouldn’t let the little things sway how I feel about myself.
Everyone: I’m really curious what other people think though. What should determine our level of self-confidence? Should some people be more self-confident than others?
Kate: Favorite thing about yourself today?
Emily: Mmm.. My sexy butt? It’s pretty hot.
Emily is a doctoral student in a highly competitive philosophy department. She also just kicks ass in general. She sent this message along with the above post: “I’m thinking about doing a blog about women in philosophy, where i ask women philosophers to share stories about what it is like for them to be a woman in philosophy. could be an awesome networking tool. thoughts? name ideas?”
I LOVE this idea! Can’t wait to see what she comes up with, and let’s help her out by coming up with names. You guys know how terrible I am at that. Um…”Kant Touch Us: The hidden world of women philosophers.” “We’re Totally Logical, Too: women in philosophy (finally).” Or how about “Philosopher Women: women who are philosophers.” Gets the point across. Practical. Succinct. Ok, everyone, HELP!
Kate on April 11th 2010 in guest post
Luke responded on 11 Apr 2010 at 8:13 pm #
Hey, this is Luke, friend of Emily
. I really like your compromise, putting worth in the opinions of the people you care about rather than the opinions of everyone. It keeps your self-confidence centered on relationships and building them while ignoring destructive, irrelevant information like the opinions of mean people ;P. My self-confidence is usually wrapped up in my ability to find what I like in other people and bring that out in myself. If I manage to let the parts of myself that I like in others bubble to the surface, I feel better about myself and if I don’t, I work harder to bring out that better part of myself. My view of self worth emphasizes social/emotional independence from others opinions of me, but in so doing doesn’t motivate meeting and getting to know people in more depth like yours does, so I think you’re going the right direction 
.
Alida responded on 11 Apr 2010 at 11:14 pm #
Emily, I saw this post on facebook — and as a fellow philosophy doctoral student, I think your blog idea is great! the profession is taking active steps to change things (sessions at the APA, pressure to hire women, etc.) on a surface level, but more needs to be said and done.
let me know if you start this blog – I would gladly post! suggestion: you might consider making it anonymous? we could sign it as “second year metaethicist in a top 20 program” or something. that way we could all feel free to be fully honest and straightforward (without risking job prospects if potential employers google us!)
a possible topic: quiet women in philosophy. in my department, there are a few really outgoing, social, talkative women (including myself.) there are also a few who almost never speak — in seminar, or even to other grad students socially. they are not very involved in department life (either social or academic) and people think rather negatively of them. in particular, I think the other women think negatively of them– in a “you make us girls look bad-speak up!” kind of way. I’m intrigued whether this goes on elsewhere.
great post! hope you’re doing well!
- Alida
PS: I recently met the wife of a philosophy professor who said “wow- I think you are the first female philosopher I have ever met (!)”
J.D. Meier responded on 12 Apr 2010 at 1:17 am #
A few weeks back I heard the difference between faith and belief is … belief is based on evidence. Faith is a belief that you don’t need evidence for.
I thought it was an interesting distinction.
If you have faith in yourself and faith in your worth, that’s not the same as “building a case” for your worth. It’s just a belief that you know to be true and it serves you.
Along those same lines, I remember learning that confidence precedes competence. I remember thinking that competence builds confidence, but the key is starting with confidence … that you’ll become competent.
Annerie responded on 12 Apr 2010 at 6:16 am #
Well, I like the emotional boot-strapping, it is not for everyone. I will say this. I think I am a pretty confident person, but I also think I had the advantage of parents who loved me unconditionally and thought I could do anything combined with making choices that always worked out. But then one year, a made a really bad choice and I really suffered for it and it kind of shattered my confidence. After that instead of being a risk taker I was more conservative and always questioned my decisions about big things. It took me awhile to build that back. But what I wanted to say is, sometimes your confidence is a matter of circumstances: having people around you that think your awesome and making decisions that turn out well, which as we know neither of these things necessarily is something we can control or take credit for. But you can let those times keep you confident when your current situation is not as rosey and don’t be so hard on yourself. That is my biggest challenge.
One thing I do remember is when I worked with someone who had little self confidence. And she said to me one day, “Not everyone is as cocky as you are.” And I realized she saw my self confidence as arrogance. I was so surprised and I realized that being someone who always expects that people are going to like them or that things I do are “ok” was so beyond her realm of thinking that it became overconfidence and cockiness. Maybe I was doing/living what your friend does, emotional bootstrapping, but I was totally unaware of it. If you’d asked me if I thought my shit didn’t stink, I would have said no, I am far from perfect, BUT I am perfectly happy and confident about my decisions, I know what I have/want to do and I do it. Not that sometimes it affects others in non-positive ways that I was not expecting, but hey, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
Emily responded on 12 Apr 2010 at 7:39 pm #
Thanks for the comments everyone! I love that I’m getting people thinking about this, its a very interesting issue to me.
Alida, I’m glad you are interested in the new blog
I would love for you to post!
Paul Atreides responded on 12 Apr 2010 at 10:05 pm #
Hrm. An interesting idea. But what’s it mean to assume that some people should be more self confident than others? How do you measure what should make people rationally self confident?
Nah, I think everyone should be who they want to be. If you’re happy being unloved by a world that doesn’t recognize your brilliance, so what?
-Scott
Adam Sennet responded on 13 Apr 2010 at 12:03 pm #
Don’t you reckon that putting the bootstrapping plan into effect takes a lot of self confidence?
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