What if self-confidence is really just confidence in other people?

I recently had a shiny little epiphany about the nature of confidence. I think what we call self-confidence is actually better thought of as confidence in other people.

To explain what this means and why it matters, allow me to give you too much insight into my grocery shopping habits.

Everyone wants the last loaf of bread, and also to destroy you

Usually when I'm at the supermarket, I hate everybody.

You may know this feeling. Everyone’s in your way - and more than that, they’re probably out to get you. Or at least the last fresh loaf.

Consider the context. You’re hungry (literally the only reason I ever remember to go shopping). It’s the end of a work day, and there are about 10,000 other people in the supermarket, also hungry, also tired. A recipe for widespread misanthropy.

And everything's so well-lit. I feel scrutinised, no matter what I'm doing. The other day I rented a rug doctor from the Woolies, and carting it through the mall imagined the internal monologue of everyone I passed in chorus: ‘oh, look at this guy, cleaning his carpets, what a fuckhead.’

At the same time, I've noticed that on these shopping trips I spend a lot of mental energy judging my fellow shoppers. 'These people are awful. They're in my way.'

I've started to think these two things might be linked: I'm afraid of being judged by everybody else, so I pre-emptively judge them. It's a stand-off happening entirely in my head. The upshot is, I feel very cut off from the rest of the world, and I just want to get out of there as soon as I possibly can.

The best friends you’ll never talk to

Lately though I've been trying something different when I go shopping. As I navigate through the crowd, I'm actively telling myself, ‘These people could be your friends. They're not out to get you.'

It’s such a simple idea, but it has a real effect. I find myself able to hold my head up rather than stare at my feet. To see each fellow shopper as an individual, not a faceless mass.

Taking this attitude probably makes me look like a more confident person. But it’s not that I’ve convinced myself of my own self worth, of my right to take up as much space in the world as other people. It’s that I’m more confident in everyone else. In their basic goodness. Or maybe just in their basic humanness.

I’m more aware that all of us in that supermarket are in the same boat, trying our best to balance two awkwardly opposing needs: the messy, urgent need to feed our faces, and the cool, detached desire to seem like people-with-our-shit-together.

David Foster Wallace says our default setting in checkout lines is to see ourselves as the centre of the world, which inevitably leads to frustration and disconnection. But this isn't our only option:

"Traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop.

Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way....

The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do."

People are your comrades (and they probably don't hate you)

The good news is, choosing to focus on the shared humanity of strangers can do wonders for your confidence.

Consider this, you’re about to give a speech. If you think, 'these people are judgemental assholes', you’re going to have a hard time out there. Those natural public speakers whose words flow with ease, it’s not simply that they’re thinking ‘I’m a fucking star, I’m so good at this’. It’s that they know on a basic level their audience wants them to succeed.

There’s maybe one person sitting there thinking ‘who’s this asshole with the microphone? Oh yeah I remember him, that's that guy who shampoos his carpets.'  But the rest either don’t particularly care, or are actively rooting for you. Being confident in your audience means assuming they're mostly good, friendly people.

Early 1900s psychologist Alfred Adler put it this way: “people are your comrades”.

For Adler, confidence in other people is key to a good life, whether or not you want to give more wedding toasts. The same thing applies when you're circling the block deciding whether or not you can muster the courage to walk in the door of that party full of people you don't know. So often, the fear is not just 'what if I make a dick of myself', it's 'what if I make a dick of myself, and these people are total dicks about it?' 

Adler says the only way to have deep meaningful relationships with others is to have confidence in their basic goodness. And that matters because deep, meaningful relationships are the only way to be convinced of your own basic goodness.

So how do you have more confidence in others?

Step one: consider that the people around you are basically good people. 

Step two: test out this new belief. That means trying little experiments, like telling your friend when you're annoyed by something they’ve done, because you have confidence in their ability to engage in an honest, respectful conversation about it. Or, approaching that presentation you have to give as if your audience is maybe not actively trying to expose you for a fraud. (At least not today, they're playing the long game.)

These experiments will look different for each of us, since we each have a different experience of safety and comfort in public spaces. You find what works for you.

And one more thing. 'People are your friends, we’re all in this together', these can so easily seem like just banal platitudes. But as Foster Wallace says, "the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance.”

Seems like small stuff but trust me comrades, it can be revolutionary.