I’m not going to talk about this a lot, but I just want to touch this subject gently, as I believe a lot of us don’t think deeply about confidence. We have a lot of books on self esteem and confidence, but do we think about the discrepancy between the two?

Let’s start with a realization that literature talks about confidence all the time, but what kind of confidence is it? Confidence can be in oneself or it can just be an image of self-confidence. What’s the difference you may ask? well that’s the trick …

Let me start with an affirmative idea that without self-confidence, one won’t be able to achieve anything. If one doesn’t have any self-confidence, one doesn’t get anywhere. Sounds familiar? I’m sure you’ve read that before; however, do you know of what type of self-confidence our books teach us? Outer self-confidence that in many, if not in all, cases manifests itself in people as arrogance, selfishness, etc. In contrast, every teaching that comes from east preaches self-confidence, but one that stems from within. See the difference?

I can see a lot of people around me who learned how to maintain and portray an image of confidence pretty well, but when you look closely you’d see a person who lacks of any sort of self esteem and, in many cases, has some hidden flaw that he or she hides or tries to hide. Keeping up with appearances is the worst way to live because when you’re young and sassy, that would work for you somehow. You can project yourself as a good career-driven person with hunger, and that can get you hired, or allow you to swoop a girl from her feet and she falls into your arms and it’ll go on for an about of thousand times that it makes your bodies go like “woooowwww” or something. Or you may play the business girl for a bit and develop a nasty, sassy attitude towards the classic family “crap”. At most, it will serve you well up till you’re 45. What happens next? Aha, that’s where the revelation starts. And we’re usually told by elders about that. Do we listen to them?! No, we think they’re wrong because we know better, because we are smarter. I need to tell you, I’ve seen it in about a thousand times, that people who rely on their outer image of self-confidence too much become completely destroyed from inside by the time they’re 50. It is a very interesting phenomenon, and I honestly don’t know how many people are paying attention and analyzing or observing it, but I’ve seen it a lot.

It’s like there is a switch somewhere that, all of a sudden, happens and brings so much pain to one’s life.

What happens is by the time you’re 45-50, you’ve paid so much attention and energy to your ‘outer’ confidence that all your energy is gone, because no one can use their energy only for selfish purposes, and in this case to feed one’s personal egoistic image. And by that age, their inner bodies start to fall apart as they haven’t filled it with enough “good energy” over time. As I said before, it can serve you for a number of years, and there are few people who are sassy by nature but this is a different story. Most of us need to pay attention to our souls in order to ensure comfort, calmness and happiness in our later years.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that outer confidence is not important. It is the opposite — it’s very important, but it should be built on a different basis. Outer confidence should be built on inner confidence where one realizes that whatever is happening is not better or more worth it, he is not better than an average Joe next door, all his achievements are based on the universe’s desire to contribute to his life and therefore, there is nothing to be afraid of or worry about. Once he realizes that , all things in life start going in a particular order. In many cases that order changes. You’ve seen in movies when a character gets sick and has only a couple months to live, and he changes his life drastically. It’s not really fiction. You just truly understand what’s going on in the universe and whatever you have is given to you as a resource. The concept of life changes big time. We realize that money is not important and you stop craving it. Fame is no longer important, because what would you do with it later?

What is really important is relationship. This is the only thing we are going to remember, the only thing we are going to feel either happy about or regret.

Based on relationships we have developed, we would feel happy or miserable when there is little time left before we go. Only based on relationships would we have a certain number of people around when we are about to go or when we need help or we need to share our happy moments.

This all based on a very healthy inner self-confidence! And only inner confidence allows you to create a life like that because it brings calmness into our lives. With inner self-confidence our minds aren’t racing, thinking about the future or the past, or other problems in our lives right now; concentrating on this very moment becomes is important now. We become more balanced because we know that god and the universe only wants the best for us and we rely on the universe, which allows us to relieve all our woes. As a result, we develop a strong intuition, which speaks with us only when our mind is calm and steady.

Now tell me if there are benefits of working on self inner confidence rather than creating a fantasy around us that will eventually lead to depression and misery. I’m sure you know a lot of lost souls at that age group who put on masks and claiming that they’re “all-good” but is actually really miserable inside.

Maybe there is merit to looking into the eastern concept of an inner self-confidence, and start moving toward spirituality in their way, rather than in our Western way..?