Confidence Is Never Permanent — Andrei Vasilachi

It’s a constant struggle

5 min read

We often have this illusion that confident people are always like that. You see it in the way they handle themselves, the way they talk, the way they smile, how much people like them and want to be around them. It just all seems easy to them.

“Sure, they’re physically attractive, people naturally like them” you say.

Yeah, you’re right, that’s part of it. I won’t bullshit you. We like attractive people, it’s in our biology.

However, and that’s a BIG however, you’re misguided if you think that they’re always confident just because they’re attractive. In fact, If you get to know some of them closer, you’d find out that they have a lot more insecurities than it seems at first glance.

Why?

Well, first of all, their attractiveness — albeit giving them an advantage in our society — is really just a normal part of who they are, they’re used to it, and the way the human mind works most of the time is that it seeks negatives and dangers in its immediate environment — it is pure biological behavior inherited from our pre-historic ancestors.

To ensure your survival your mind is primarily focused on negative triggers. In evolutionary biology, this term is called the negativity bias.

Our nervous system has been evolving for 600 million years, from ancient jellyfish to modern humans. Our ancestors had to make critical decisions: like approach a reward or avoid a hazard — hunt for food or hide from predators.

But there’s a key difference between these choices: if they missed the food, they could survive for a while, but if the predators ate them, well then…they became food.

Because of that your body generally reacts more intensely to negative stimuli than to equally strong positive ones. That’s part of the reason why we’re so obsessed with sensationalist and negative news, it’s a low-hanging fruit, it feeds on our instinct of self-preservation.

So what does this mean for normal social interactions?

It means that all of us are aware of our insecurities and have specific fears about being perceived a certain way in social settings. That means that the “confident” people that you look up to are just people who got their shit together more often than you, but they’re not invincible, heck, they even forget they have this advantage of being attractive because their mind is busy with BLOWING THINGS OUT OF PROPORTION and making them feel like crap because boo-hoo the predators are around and the snake is gonna’ bite them. (little wussies)

Except there’s no snake and no predators, it’s just you and your mind making things up.

Because the damn ancestors had to find a way to survive and preserve the species, they became anxious little bastards and searched for danger in every little bush — HOW DARE THEY ENSURE OUR SURVIVAL! I want my calm and peace, and a cup of tea, please, with no sugar, and thank you.

So the truth is, no one is shielded from self-doubt and insecurity, it’s human nature. Which means that these “confident” and attractive people you look up to have a lot of their own stuff to deal with.

In fact, more often than not, the really attractive people are so dependent on their looks that they’re more anxious than “average” people about looking good and impressing others — a behavior which I totally understand, however, would you PLEASE TAKE IT EASY AND GIVE SOME OF THOSE QUIET AND RESERVED PEOPLE IN THE GROUP SOME SPACE TO EXPRESS THEMSELVES WITHOUT INTERRUPTING EVERY DAMN TIME, thanks.

Anyways, where was I?

Right, confidence, beautiful people and stuff.

So, what do I want you to learn from this? That I LIKE TO YELL-no

Sorry, I mean, look, I’m not going to give you a phony ass motivational speech and tell you that physical attractiveness doesn’t matter. No, you know it does, I know it does, everyone knows it does.

How-freaking-ever, every single confident man or woman that has walked this Planet Earth had at least once (or dozens of times) felt insecure, humiliated, embarrassed, lonely, neglected, etc.

We’re all in this together, we’re all struggling to become who we want to become. We all have our hopes and dreams, and we all want to be confident.

-Well, Andrei, how do we do that? How do we become more confident?

Well, young Padawan, young Leprechaun, uhm…(where am I going with this?)

Look, the thing is, it takes sweat and tears and disappointments and moments of self-hate and moments of forgiveness and moments of bliss — the whole whirlwind of emotions and physical exhaustion, it all comes down to one thing — YOU.

You have to move on from that heartbreak, from that failure, from your self-doubt, and ACT. Take your time, do it at your own pace, but you’ll have to take the jump. Do the thing that makes you feel alive, fail multiple times, get back up and learn from your mistakes, don’t be bitter, don’t hate “attractive” people, they’re as fragile as you, they just know how to hide it.

Whatever the case is, YOU HAVE TO ACT. Because if you don’t, and you continue to wallow in your self-inflicted misery, you’ll lose your confidence, you’ll lose the momentum, and you’ll think you’re worthless — and that’s OK, that’s fine, I’ve felt that too, and I know I will feel that in the future. But you have to move on. Permanence is an illusion, so let go of it. Embrace uncertainty. Face it head on. Be defiant. Be bold.

Confidence is never permanent, it’s a constant struggle. It’s part of the lifelong project that you have to constantly nurture. And that project is YOU.

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
― Albert Camus