So forget about the goal of feeling good about yourself. Enjoy bursts of confidence when you can and take credit for your hard work, but beware making confidence a goal, because that implies control, responsibility, and blame when you can’t make it happen, and it’s wrong and cruel to blame yourself when you’re stuck with a hard life, crap luck, or some deadly combination of the two.
Instead, assume you’re stuck with shit and ask yourself what a good person should do in your situation. A good person is not someone who is trying to be happy, because that’s not possible, but someone who is trying to do right. Make your plans as concrete, realistic, and businesslike as possible, with numbers and timelines. Then monitor your progress, grading yourself according to how you do, not how you feel. You may seem to do little more in a month than get your work done, feed the kids, and make a few phone calls. If, however, you’re doing everything you can reasonably expect yourself to do, in spite of poverty, loss, social isolation, and all the other dispiriting feelings that can drag down your soul, you’re right on course for success.
It’s hard not to compare yourself to others, but try instead to set your own standards, taking into account what you know you’re capable of, and refer to them often. You might not always feel like a winner, but you’ll never lose.
Quick Diagnosis
Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:
• Some ability that doesn’t suck
• A friend or lover anytime before you die
• Just one reason for confidence and optimism
• Dreams that might actually happen
• The ability to look in the mirror or back on your life without horror
Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:
• Do your best to survive
• Act as if you like yourself
• Keep busy and distracted
• Avoid adding to your troubles
• Change your underwear in the hope that it will change your luck
Here’s how you can do it:
• Replace “should have” and “could have” with “just can’t” and “it is what it is”
• List the daily activities you consider necessary for work, health, survival, and nurturing a personal life
• Grade yourself daily, as if you were evaluating a friend
• Give extra points every time you treat yourself or do something positive during times when you feel like a loser who deserves nothing
• Get a dog (cats are an acceptable substitute, but it’s not exactly confidence building to have a box of shit in your house)
Your Script
Here’s what to say to someone/yourself when you feel trapped, stuck, and totally below average.
Dear [Me/Beloved Pet/The Ceiling],
I know I lack self-confidence, related to my lack of [skills/cash/education/good looks] and inability to [feel more self-confident after I see my therapist/take antidepressants/read self-help books]. However, I haven’t let it drive me to [insert illegal and/or addictive activity], at least not yet, and I’m still taking care of business. I’m still confident in my ability to ignore how confident I [don’t] feel while I wait for my luck to turn.
Did You Know . . . About the Scourge of ESE (Excessive Self-Esteem)?
If you’ve never heard of ESE, you’re not alone; this devastating but, until recently, unrecognized condition afflicts a large number of people who, until now, were thought to suffer from nothing more serious than bad hair and an inability to respond to humor.
It was previously thought that LSE, more commonly known as “low self-esteem,” was the more dangerous condition, because it prevented people from developing the confidence required to make friends, influence people, and become a motivational speaker. Or at the very least, get laid.
It turns out, however, that most LSEs learn how to function quite well in spite of persistent self-criticism and self-doubt, whereas those with ESE are unaware of their offensiveness and resulting broken relationships, and so don’t seek help. Their overconfidence in everything they do, from their terrible decisions involving relationships to their incomprehensible fashion choices, are, sadly, troubling only to those around them. They can continue in life with intricate facial topiary and numerous (mostly illegitimate) children they can’t support, still thinking they’re God’s gift and deserving of their own reality TV shows.
Meanwhile, health care professionals who encounter a flood of clients traumatized by their relationships with ESEs have mistakenly thought the problem was their clients’ own low self-esteem. From a treatment standpoint, it helps a little to feel better about yourself, but it would help humanity a lot more if those suffering from ESE adjusted their self-admiration to more reasonable levels. Until this disorder gets the recognition it deserves by the medical and/or Oprah-centric communities, we all have to protect ourselves from this unfortunately-not-silent killer.
Unleashing the Power of Persuasion
Of the many things you’re supposed to feel for yourself before others can follow suit—i.e., love, admiration, even lust—confidence is among the most misleading. The idea that if you believe in yourself, you can persuade others to follow your command, is sold to us near the end of many movies when the unlikely hero finally takes the crown. Sadly, what’s true for Luke Skywalker is rarely true for the rest of us.
People often believe that, with enough training, fitness, or self-hypnosis, they can gain the ability to influence others, sell goods, get clients, get votes, get laid, etc.—all of which depends on the strength of their self-belief. If anything interferes with that self-belief, they become obsessed with trying to figure out how to release the magic or undo the damage, a process that can become a self-critical, self-centered spiral into the dark side.
In reality, persuasiveness depends on, and can be harmed by, factors that are beyond your control, including anxiety, depression, and other illness. Just because you’re successfully persuasive today doesn’t mean you will be tomorrow, and believing that recovering or maintaining this ability is all up to you just worsens your feelings of failure.
In addition, many people just aren’t articulate and never will be. We love to see shy, ugly people transform into great, persuasive performers and politicians—in what other universe would The King’s Speech become a movie?—but the fact that we have to pay to see it at the movies, or get a personal intervention from God, tells you that most of us are who we are and have to work with what we’ve got.
Certainly, you should work hard, train well, and do what you can to build and rebuild your confidence. If, however, your influence is nevertheless waning or just wan and unimproved, don’t self-destruct on self-doubt. Be prepared to admit, after trying all the usual remedies, that maybe there’s nothing you can do to get it or get it back, so there’s no point in ruminating about what you did wrong. You can still believe in yourself, as long as you believe that your flaws and misfortunes are part of the package.
Don’t blame yourself for an accidental encounter with self-doubt, because there’s still much to be done. It may not be as easy or as much fun to win someone over as it would be if you were silver-tongued, but having a silver