Tag: faithfulness

by Julian Bartlett-Keates

I read something interesting the other day. Well I didn’t, really. I watched a youtube video.
It was about the nature of confidence. Confidence is something we see as an answer to so many things. It’s something we aspire to be. But what, really, is confidence? How does it look? Is confidence assertion, or acceptance? A boxer or a monk?

The video suggested that for advice on the nature of confidence we can look to the word itself. Fidence comes from the latin word fidelis, meaning “faithfulness”. Con is a latin prefix that can be taken as“with”.  We can read “Self Confidence” as “Self, with faithfulness”.

Something about that really resonated with me. Confidence really isn’t about being any specific way or thing. It’s about trust. Trusting yourself to be worthy of the world and the things in it.

Could this be about cultivating a relationship of trust between your current self and your future self and knowing that your current self will work to be better ? Could it be about trusting  your future self to appreciate and capitalize on that work? 

We need to feel assured that our future selves won’t throw away the things we are building today. We need to know that we’ve got this, both now and then.

What is it that you would like to be? Not an astronaut or a CEO. How does the best version of you look? Perhaps you’re kind. You always help others but sometimes can be a people pleaser and you wish that you could be more assertive. Rather than dream of being someone different, who speaks their mind and has their way and never gets pushed around, acknowledge the value of the seeds that you have to grow. What would that kindness look like in its best possible incarnation?

There are times we’d all like to be different. We’d all like to have different tools and capabilities and building materials. The world is full of monks who wish they were boxers and boxers who wish they were monks. What you have is enough.  Have an open-eyed look at what you really have to work with. With time, I suspect you’ll find it more than sufficient for the task at hand.

Final note to give credit where it’s due. I was introduced to this idea of self-faithfulness in a video by Dr. Thomas Smithyman on youtube.com. I found him to be clear, concise and genuine.