I often get asked by clients I work with on confidence issues, whether they will need to be free of anxiety to be truly confident. The image they have of truly confident people is someone who is pretty much relaxed about everything. They think that a confident person is so full of self-belief that this prevents them from experiencing anxiety.
This is a myth, since even truly confident people feel anxiety in certain situations. Confidence does not mean the absence of fear. It does not mean the absence of anxiety. Confident people may get anxious in certain situations that they are not comfortable in. But the difference with the confident person is that they respond to anxiety and fear differently.
A less confident person sees anxiety and fear as unpleasant and a trigger to either not act or to run away from the situation. A truly confident person, on the other hand, feels the anxiety and fear but uses this as a trigger to take action. They have felt the fear, but are able to act in spite of it.
Remember someone who has practiced a particular skill like playing the guitar may be confident in that particular skill, but that doesn’t make them truly confident. Their strong confidence while playing the guitar might crumble when you put them in a social situation like a drinks party. Confidence is the ability to take action even in situations where one is not so comfortable or practiced. Confident people will still feel uncomfortable in certain situations but it doesn’t stop them from acting.
Knowing that confidence doesn’t mean the absence of fear can be very liberating. Some people say that they thought they could never be confident because they felt so anxious. But again, it’s not whether you feel anxiety that determines whether you are confident, but what you do with that anxiety.