DISTINGUISHING SELF-CONFIDENCE AND EGO-STRENGTH

After the last post, another question was brought to my attention, “What’s the difference between self-confidence and ego-strength?” Given that I’ve been highlighting important distinctions between self-esteem and self-confidence, self-efficacy and self-confidence, it seemed right to focus on this distinction as well.

We again start from the definition. Self-confidence is the “faith” and “trust” you have in yourself to be able to do something (credeo, Greek, faith, trust). You trust that you can do some activity or some skill. As such, self-confidence is your mental judgment and the feeling that follows that conviction. Unless you are messing it up with perfectionism and creating a standard that hardly anyone could meet, then when you discover that you can do a thing (i.e., ride a bike, type, produce a report, play tennis, swim, etc.) you count it as evidence.

At that point your self-confidence is a function of your competence. That means that the question about self-confidence is always a behavior question, “Can you do X?” “To what extent can you do X?” “How well can you perform X?” Then, the degree to which you can perform, that degree determines the degree of your self-confidence. Is it low, medium, or high? It depends on your performance level.

The worst mistake people make about self-confidence is trying to base it on a feeling. Many people often go to a coach or counselor with the goal “to feel more confidence about X.” Big mistake! And the problem with many NLP practitioners is that they do not make this distinction. Falsely thinking that self-confidence is a feeling, they then jump in to access the feeling of self-confidence and then link it to the target activity. An even bigger mistake! That will only result in creating a false confidence that is not based on reality!

If you want to feel confident, then focus on competence. If it is public speaking, then learn the key variables that make a person skillful in public speaking, practice those skills, get feedback, refine how you present yourself, your material, use your voice, breathe, etc. When your competence improves, so will your confidence. The person who feels confidence about something that they are incompetent about is a fool.

Ego-strength is not about specific skills and competencies, it is about the inner ability to face reality as it is. It is the “strength” of your “self”—your mind or ego (capacity to face reality). That’s why small children have no ego-strength at all. So for many, the first day of going to school is very disturbing for them. “Will the teacher like me?” “Will I have any friends?” “What if someone laughs at me?” “I don’t want to be away from mommy.”

The mental strength required in ego-strength begins with knowing your world and what to expect. Once you have a good idea of what’s going to happen, then you need the mental strength to know what to do to cope with the situation. This is true if you are going into a meeting for the first time, or meeting a person on a blind-date, or making a presentation to a group you have never met, etc.

Ego-strength is the “strength of your self” to be able to cope, to be flexible enough to handle a situation, and to not go into a “fight, flight, freeze” response. If you do the latter, then in some way you feel threatened or overwhelmed and so you go into a stress response. Instead of effectively coping, you freaked out. You ran, froze, or become inappropriately aggressive.

With ego-strength, the question becomes, “What mental or emotional resources do you need so that inside yourself you feel that you have the strength to cope with situation X?” Do you need more acceptance of things as they are? Appreciation of differences? More ability to question and explore? More ability to match people and create rapport? More ability to manage your stress? More ability to catch cognitive distortions in real time and minimize them? Whatever mental or emotional resource that you need, as you identify it and then access and practice that resource, you develop your own ability to “remain calm and cool under pressure.”

With both self-confidence and ego-strength, once you develop these complex meta-states, and they begin to habituate—you lose consciousness of them. You don’t even think about them. They are not of concern to you because they become part and parcel of your inner “sense of self.” Now they give you a center from which to operate. Now you are ready and free to begin to unleash the potentials within you that are hidden. Now the adventure of life truly begins. If you want to read more, check out Unleashed! and The Crucible and the Fires of Transformation.