Confidence, the missing piece for me until now

I wonder how much success relies on confidence. If I were to draw a graph with success on the y-axis and confidence on the x-axis, the line would definitely be growing upwards. Here’s a “very scientific” graph demonstrating this phenomenon:

Confidence is something that could not have been given to me.

After high school, It didn’t matter that people told me I was capable of doing great things since, I hadn’t accomplished much at the time. I know that I could do things like travel on my own, succeed in college, and build software with modern frameworks and programming languages, but the confidence only came after I threw myself in the water, litterally.

Not quite the bridge I jumped off of, but it sure felt like it

Wagon Creek Bridge, the actual bridge I leaped from

For me, confidence stems from feeling like I’m doing things that are meaningful and productive. When I develop a steady streak of daily coding sessions, constantly watch the sunrise, starting my day early, and workout, I develop confidence.

Consequently, this steady schedule can lead to me feeling stagnant.

I need to be constantly reinventing myself to feel confident in my abilities. Prior to 2022, I would not consider myself a cook at all. However, I can confidently pick up a random assortment of groceries and cook up something decent, whereas prior, I had no idea what common spices like Tumeric or Cumin were. I also picked up a few essential tools and do my own car maintenance and am able to fix common car issues. These skills help me feel independent, which in turn helps my confidence.

Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

I find myself coming back to the idea of balance. While talking to my partner about this blog topic, I came across the idea that I’m okay at being “Bad” at a lot of things but “Good” at a few things, referring to the things I’m passionate about. I think for me, this is the sweet spot in between being a jack of all trades and being obsessive over a couple of things.

I never thought confidence was so tied into my daily routine and the essential urge to diverge from that routine also having a say in my confidence. To end this off, if you are like me, you need a reminder to love yourself and not beat yourself up over divergin from schedule, it could be a confidence booster!