What does confidence look like? How does it sound? Feel?

Are you envisioning someone whose confidence you admire? Perhaps yourself?

Relaxed body language, assertive voice tone, criticism acceptance, resilience and optimism, ambitious might be a few signals of what we call a confident person.

Confidence is an overused term we’re great at giving to others and don’t want to claim for ourselves. For most of my life the outward perception of the way I walk, talk, and hold space often gets labeled as confident, and yet most of the time I don’t FEEL confident.

Why?

Confidence is based on your ability or perceived ability to do things, and I’d further suggest it comes in some sort of scale or spectrum. Am I capable; can I do this? Personally, I’m a glutton for challenges. Many situations I find myself in or the things I’m working through or attempting to solve aren’t a repeated process or action for which I’d have confidence.

Admirable confidence isn’t what pushes me across the finish line in a big, meaty project. It’s not what propels me to speak up in a meeting, set boundaries with a colleague or enforce them with friends or family. It’s conviction.

Conviction so deep I have to do the hard, scary thing anyway, even when it’s not practiced, perfect or promised.

Sure, they’re related and to some degree conviction has a hard time existing without confidence, and confidence breeds conviction. Whereas confidence is focused on ability, almost a suggestion of repetition, conviction is based on belief or morality.

Perhaps confidence is so hard for us to claim for ourselves and so easy to associate to others because confidence is based on ability and demonstration rather than all the other stuff buzzing in heads and our hearts when we do hard things. Maybe we’re dismissing conviction all together.

Conviction looks like acting in accordance with a set of principles and values no matter the difficulty. It’s passionate and involved; consistent and virtuous. Conviction is clarity in your purpose, firm in decision-making, resilient in the heat of challenge, and inspirational.

Is it the same person whose confidence you admire?