Confidence?
The other while chatting on TikTok live, someone commented.
“I wish I had half the self-confidence you had”
My Indonesian is not quite fluent enough to respond to such a comment immediately on the live but then I thought about his comment later. I was not born with confidence, I don’t think anyone is born confident. It is something that is built up or beaten out of you over time. Let me explain this in-depth while referring to a dog I once owned.
It reminds me of my dog Nicky. Nicky was a regular German Shepheard that was owned at one point by Tiger Jit Singh, a wrestler who gave up his dog to Olympus Dog Training. We were looking for a guard dog and came across Nicky.
Nicky…
Nicky was not born with confidence, dogs bark because they are yelling at you to leave and usually only bite when you ignore the warning. It’s a defense mechanism. So when I watched Nicky train, he was being trained to never lose against a human. Thus built up his self-confidence and since he always won he was thought to be confident and taught to never back down. Now Nicky was not a young dog when he was given this gift of confidence. We think he must have been at least 7-8 years old at the time but no one was sure.
Sure, some breeds and certain dogs are better at this than others but you get the idea. So when this comment came on my live I got to thinking about myself and my confidence and lack thereof. On the soccer field, I was very confident and I could get the team going a rallied up. But put me in front of the class in school and I would turn beet red with shyness and beratement. It was all because I was not in control, whereas on the field, I was.
Gain Control
Often when we know about a topic, we speak about it with confidence. Talk about business or production and things are great. But go up to a random stranger and suddenly you are lacking confidence. It is because you are out of your element. You are not in control and not on your home turf. If that same person came to your house and you greeted them, you would feel more comfortable. Being in public, or on my TikTok Live, I am in control. But that being said, I am much more comfortable walking up to random strangers with a microphone and asking them questions than I would have been in high school. it became a learned behavior and I gained the confidence because in the end, I know that no one will give a damn if you make a fool out of yourself. So yes, put yourself out there in baby steps and you can build up confidence.
