There has been some discussion here about confidence being appealing. I don't disagree, I think that confidence is sexy in women and I certainly am not surprised that women find it sexy in men. To start though I want to make a distinction between a lack of confidence and something more akin to depression. Let's leave out the dysfunctionally shy and the people who won't go out in public as problems beyond mere confidence. In my experience "on the ground" I have found that what I sometimes see as confidence in someone I just met, often turns out to be something else. Overconfidence sometimes or insecurity hiding behind bluster or just an inability to admit being wrong. So, part of why I am writing is to ask what you see in others that spells self confidence.
The second thing I want to do here is to relay an anecdote which I think might illustrate what I see as a problem of too much focus on confidence. To do this I have to digress into some personal stuff about me, don't lose interest, I'll try to make it short. I am pushing 500 lbs big, which means that my pants have a hard time finding a wide part to hold on to stay up. To keep my pants up I like to wear suspenders under my shirt (underneath, so I don't have to tuck in my shirt). Occasionally one of the clamps at the end of the suspenders will pop open an my pants will sag on that side, but they wont do more than sag, the remaining clamps keep them up. This is important because without suspenders once the pants slip off the belly, they're going to the ankles very quickly. So you know now that we're talking about pants staying up, or not staying up, right? The scene is in front of an elementary school. I do duty as a crossing guard at my neighborhood elementary school, so yes, I have a reason to be there. I'm carrying a couple of traffic cones into the building and I feel my pants slip down a bit. Because I am wearing suspenders I am confident that though one of the clips may have slipped off, my pants will not be falling down and in that confidence I just keep walking until I get the cones to their place and set them down. I hitch up my pants casually on the way back out, and after the last of the kids clear out in a couple moments I fish around in my shirt to find the errant suspender end... which isn't there. It turns out that the suspenders are hanging down at my hips, apparently I forgot to put them over my shoulders when I put my pants on. Which brings me back to what confidence looks like, for me confidence almost looked like a guy standing in front of an elementary school with his pants fallen down around his ankles, and while I can appreciate the slapstick quality of the accidental de-pantsing, I am also quite aware that the man standing in front of the elementary school with his pants fallen down is the man about to be crucified. So, yeah, confidence, hmmm, maybe it isn't always a good thing.
Carl
DISCLAIMER - No actual children were in danger of any sort of actual exposure to any sort of wardrobe malfunction. If the wardrobe in question had shown any indication of malfunctioning it's way any further towards the ground drastic measures would have been taken to prevent the malfunction from harming any of the children.
The second thing I want to do here is to relay an anecdote which I think might illustrate what I see as a problem of too much focus on confidence. To do this I have to digress into some personal stuff about me, don't lose interest, I'll try to make it short. I am pushing 500 lbs big, which means that my pants have a hard time finding a wide part to hold on to stay up. To keep my pants up I like to wear suspenders under my shirt (underneath, so I don't have to tuck in my shirt). Occasionally one of the clamps at the end of the suspenders will pop open an my pants will sag on that side, but they wont do more than sag, the remaining clamps keep them up. This is important because without suspenders once the pants slip off the belly, they're going to the ankles very quickly. So you know now that we're talking about pants staying up, or not staying up, right? The scene is in front of an elementary school. I do duty as a crossing guard at my neighborhood elementary school, so yes, I have a reason to be there. I'm carrying a couple of traffic cones into the building and I feel my pants slip down a bit. Because I am wearing suspenders I am confident that though one of the clips may have slipped off, my pants will not be falling down and in that confidence I just keep walking until I get the cones to their place and set them down. I hitch up my pants casually on the way back out, and after the last of the kids clear out in a couple moments I fish around in my shirt to find the errant suspender end... which isn't there. It turns out that the suspenders are hanging down at my hips, apparently I forgot to put them over my shoulders when I put my pants on. Which brings me back to what confidence looks like, for me confidence almost looked like a guy standing in front of an elementary school with his pants fallen down around his ankles, and while I can appreciate the slapstick quality of the accidental de-pantsing, I am also quite aware that the man standing in front of the elementary school with his pants fallen down is the man about to be crucified. So, yeah, confidence, hmmm, maybe it isn't always a good thing.
Carl
DISCLAIMER - No actual children were in danger of any sort of actual exposure to any sort of wardrobe malfunction. If the wardrobe in question had shown any indication of malfunctioning it's way any further towards the ground drastic measures would have been taken to prevent the malfunction from harming any of the children.
