I grew up learning to be and show confidence, it’s a survival skill. However, being confidence is tough. How you project confidence can have negative and positive affect on other persons you are interaction. Ove time I have made a deliberate decision in my speech and my demeanor not to sound too confident as I find that makes my relationship building difficult, let alone good rapport. I might have gone too far; I probably always look and sound unsure of myself, and of what I am speaking.
From time to time, colleagues must have found me difficult to work with because I don’t convey confidence in my work, and worse when they perceive my interaction with customers. I cannot “restore” my confidence because I have gone so far in my professional life, to gone through numerous journeys of adapting to working environment, that restoring confidence is going back to day 1 when I started work. It is something really difficult to explain and describe.
Confidence is a relational thing. A person can be confident on their own; they do not need to have others to “tell” them that they are confident. But that kind of confidence has no impact outside of that person. Confidence becomes impactful in relation to others. And here this is where people can feel that the person they are relating to, and the kind of confidence they show, is helping or hurting the person feeling the confidence.
When I was much younger, I was brief with words but also harsh in many of my words. There is not much avenue for me to demonstrate my confidence in something; when I get the chance, I say things in a rather crude way. My communication style becomes evident to me when my social circle changed drastically. I became sensitive to how people responded to me; and the obvious thing is that I ought to respect others well, in my action and my words, as basis for harmonious relationships. Fundamentally, we have capacity to care for each other, not because someone has talents or gifts to support others, but that all of us have equal chance to support each other, whether we are “gifted” or not.
Where relationships deny or minimise each person’s potential to care and support, this is where confidence can demonstrate its negative self. Perhaps also relevant is the saying “It takes two to tango”: it will mean the person who wants to care and support others, to set down those desire, and “match up” their own confidence to the other person who might appear to be dominating. That arises a problem of what might be “hurtful” relationship. What is more, is that the individual who continues to choose not to “match up with confidence” in the same context. The “two in tango” does not arise, the one demonstrating confidence does so in a sort of “vacuum”. The one who decides not to “match up” has to find alternative avenue to deal with the hurt.
It’s too many words to describe something that I think is what mental-psychological being. It is a way of approaching such difficult situation that I could literally peacefully end a conversation, or walk away; and still I could still sleep relatively well at night. Of course, fundamentally, my trust in God is answers to everything here. By not continuing in what could be confrontational conversations, by walking away, that’s not the end. I am God’s child irrespective of the manners of my job and relationships. That’s not where I stay, I aspire to be better, but I cannot not be myself. I find peace in God.
