Where Confidence Comes From

This is one of those realization that i wish my children will learn sooner than latter: confidence. The way I see it now, confidence comes from realization of:

1. What people are expecting of you
2. What you actually can do
3. What others can do, compared to what you can do

The way I learned and experienced it, these three things stem from knowing. In other words: information and being well-informed person is what giving you edge.

Now that I mentioned the gist of it, this is how I ended up with the conclusion above: years ago, I joined the company and the performance of the employee is reviewed every year. Every year for the first couple of years, I'm super anxious about my performance. However after years of having above average performance, I start to be more at ease. The reason? I am now fully realize that the output of my work remains beyond average. As long as my work habit doesn't change, I assume the output of my work doesn't change. Therefore I am fully aware that what I can do, relatively compared to my peers, is in a pretty good spot.

That realization helps me having better confidence.

Off course, you still need to be very careful not to let the confidence grows uncontrollably and turns into arrogance. However that's not the intent of this writing. The intent of this writing is:

1. I, too, suffers from anxiety and lack of confidence. I'm not sure whether i'm on correct path or not.
2. However those confidence starts to appear after several years of performance and information on how my performance were evaluated, and compared to others' performance.
3. Therefore having insecurity and lack of confidence on your first couple of years are normal. How to build your confidence: performs + do the best of what you can do, review your performance, and figure out a way to know how do you perform compared to other; In this case, information is the key. Figure out a way to be a well informed person. Be nice, be kind, be thoughtful, be someone helpful and reliable, and befriend people. Information are usually pops up unintenionally in casual conversation.