Unshakable Confidence, Unquestioned Humility

There have been a few times in this book when I’ve linked together concepts that may have felt strange, such as when I paired the leaders of social change movements and terrorists. In this essay, I believe it is essential to link confidence with humility. But it may take some explaining.

Confidence, in our deranged identity-manipulating world, has deteriorated into entire industries designed to pump us up with slogans, posters, coffee mugs, cards, even billboards in the United States. We’re supposed to believe that we can be anything we want—the greatest, the fittest, the smartest, the fastest—need I go on? And we’re supposed to tell everyone about it—all the time. This is hype and self-promotion, not confidence.

In fact, it works in the obverse: the less confidence we have, the more we brag about ourselves. This dynamic has been well entrenched in human behavior for eons, but social media has raised it to an art form.

Hype has stolen the true meaning of confidence. In early usage, from the Latin, it meant to have “full trust.” And the full was emphasized, “con.” When we speak of unshakable confidence, this is close to its original meaning. And what is it that we can trust so fully? Only ourselves.

We can’t trust ourselves to be perfect; we can’t trust ourselves to be the best at anything; we can’t trust ourselves to succeed; we can’t trust ourselves to never cause harm and hurt. What we can trust is our disciplined effort to get to know ourselves. We can learn to know our triggers, our habitual reactions, our strengths and weaknesses. All of this is possible—and essential—if we are to lead sanely in the midst of falling-apart craziness.

What I’m about to say here should, by now, feel familiar: We see the world through powerful filters of self. The more we know our filters, the more we can see beyond them. As we get a richer glimpse of our environment, we can respond more intelligently. Intelligence is what gives everything alive the prospect of healthy survival.

The more we know ourselves—how we filter and react to the world—the more trustworthy we can become. It’s been said thousands of times, in all faiths and philosophies. Know thyself. What may be less clear in these wise expressions is the reason we learn to know ourselves: we develop a knowledge of self so that we can give up the self and serve others.

The distinction between self-help and self-knowledge is important. There are thousands of self-help methods available to design a better you. But here, we aspire to high levels of self-awareness, not to help ourselves but to learn to trust ourselves in difficult situations.

We learn to know situations that trigger our aggression; we learn to recognize fear and anxiety when they arise; we learn to recognize when we’re relying on hope and fear rather than right action; we learn to notice judgments as they appear. Our motivation is to be more in control of ourselves so that we don’t get in the way, and don’t give ourselves away, as we work in service to others.

We are not trying to change ourselves; we’re not trying to fix anything. Rather, we get curious about who we are, how our mind works. We practice to remove the obstacles that cover up our basic goodness, the fine qualities of being that humans never lose. As we come to know ourselves, without fixing anything, these better qualities surface on their own: We are calmer, more present, more compassionate, more awake, more light-hearted. People enjoy being around us and we enjoy being with them.

Humility is a natural consequence of getting to know ourselves. Yes, we are basically good, but as you see what’s in your mind, all sorts of shit surfaces. (Sorry, I can’t say that any other way because this is what it always feels like.) In the warrior training I lead, our most popular slogan is “First, be friendly to yourself.” If we can’t be compassionate to ourselves, there’s no chance we can be genuinely compassionate to others. Compassion has to begin at home.

Self-compassion is not to be confused with self-love of the common self-help variety. We’re not trying to pump ourselves up so that we believe in ourselves. We’re committed to knowing ourselves so we can benefit others.

Yet even with that good intent, the self we encounter is quite painful.

We see the harm we’ve created, the problems we didn’t handle well, our unstoppable jealousies, passions, cravings. In other words, when we see all the ways we’re being human, it’s hard not to beat ourselves up—especially in the West, where self-doubt and self-loathing are our specialty. The challenge is to treat ourselves with as much kindness and love as we offer a good friend who is suffering.¹

The qualities we extend to a friend in need usually are quite tender and patient (at least at the beginning.) As we learn how to hold ourselves with tenderness, perhaps even with curiosity, we develop a quality of gentleness and acceptance. We accept that we’re just like every other human—we try hard; we mess up; we try again; we fail again—this is what it means to live a life. There’s no avoiding it—it’s just the way things are. Once we know this and truly accept it, we can’t help but be gentled. And it is this gentle quality, arising from true humility, that gives us the confidence to be in the difficult places and do whatever we can for others.

Behind the confidence is always gentleness. Behind the gentleness is always confidence.