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    On Confidence
    On Confidence
    On Confidence
    Ebook58 pages44 minutes

    On Confidence

    By Campus London LTD (The School of Life)

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    • LEARN THE SKILL OF CONFIDENCE and how to apply it to everyday life.
    • AN IN-DEPTH EXPLORATION of confidence and how we can achieve it.
    • A PRACTICAL AND INSPIRATIONAL GUIDE to overcoming imposter syndrome, self sabotage, and much more.
    • PART OF THE SCHOOL OF LIFE'S ESSAY BOOK SERIES including: Self Knowledge, The Sorrows of Work, The Sorrows of Love, How To Find Love, How To Reform Capitalism, What Is Culture For?, What Is Psychotherapy?, Why We Hate Cheap Things, Why You Will Marry The Wrong Person.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe School of Life
    Release dateJul 16, 2020
    ISBN9781999747107
    Author

    Campus London LTD (The School of Life)

    The School of Life is a groundbreaking enterprise which offers good ideas for everyday living. Founded in 2008, The School of Life runs a diverse range of programmes and services which address questions of personal fulfilment and how to lead a better life. Drawing insights from philosophy, psychology, literature, the visual arts and sciences, The School of Life offers evening classes, weekends, conversation meals and other events that explore issues relating to big themes such as Love,Work, Play, Self, Family and Community.

    Read more from Campus London Ltd (The School Of Life)

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    • 5/5
      Please can you send me the book at Gmail :
      chaimaeboualy20@gmail.com
      I really need it ?

    Book preview

    On Confidence - Campus London LTD (The School of Life)

    I

    Introduction

    It can be humbling to realise just how many great achievements have not been the result of superior talent or technical know-how, merely that strange buoyancy of the soul we call confidence.

    We spend vast amounts of time acquiring confidence in narrow technical fields: quadratic equations or bioengineering; economics or pole vaulting. But we overlook the primordial need to acquire a more free-ranging variety of confidence – one that can serve us across a range of tasks: speaking to strangers at parties, asking someone to marry us, suggesting a fellow passenger turn down their music, changing the world.

    We so often lack confidence because we implicitly regard its possession as a matter of slightly freakish and irreplicable good luck. Some people simply are very confident, for reasons that neuroscientists may one day uncover. But, we tell ourselves, there isn’t much we can do about our particular situation. We are stuck with the confidence levels we were born with.

    In fact, the opposite is true. Confidence is a skill, not a gift from the gods. And it is a skill founded on a set of ideas about the world and our natural place within it.

    These ideas can be systematically studied and gradually learnt, so that the roots of excessive hesitancy and compliance can be overcome. We can school ourselves in the art of confidence.

    II

    Idiocy and

    Confidence

    In well-meaning attempts to boost our confidence ahead of challenging moments, people often try to draw our attention to our strengths: our intelligence, our competence, our experience. However, this can have awkward consequences. There is a type of underconfidence that arises specifically when we grow too attached to our own dignity and become anxious around any situation that might seem to threaten it. We hold back from challenges in which there is any risk of ending up looking ridiculous – which comprises, of course, almost all the most interesting situations.

    In a foreign city, we grow reluctant to ask anyone to guide us to the nice bars, because they might think us an ignorant, pitiable lost tourist. We might long to kiss someone, but never let on, in case they dismiss us as a predatory loser. At work, we don’t apply for a promotion, in case the senior management deems us delusionally arrogant. In a concerted bid never to look foolish, we don’t venture very far from our cocoon. Consequently – from time to time, at least – we miss out on the best opportunities of our lives.

    At the heart of our underconfidence is a skewed picture of how dignified a normal person can be. We imagine that it might be possible, after a certain age, to place ourselves beyond mockery. We trust that it is an option to lead a good life without regularly making a complete idiot of ourselves.

    One of the most charming books written in early modern Europe was In Praise of Folly (1509), by the Dutch scholar and philosopher Erasmus. In its pages, Erasmus advances a hugely liberating argument. In a warm tone, he reminds us

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