Making the Crooked Straight
On confidence
“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."
– William Shakespeare, in “Measure for Measure”
‘Believing that you can is half the success.’ The saying is true, but also crushingly unhelpful. It only speaks to those who already have the strength to believe in themselves, and is thus as a statement quite trivial. What if you don’t believe you can? Is there a way out of the gloomy hole of shattered confidence?
We note how having strong self-esteem constitutes a virtuous cycle, and how weak self-esteem constitutes a vicious one. The less confident you are, the weaker and less appealing you appear, and the less other people are prone to liking or admiring you – which of course will further weaken your confidence. Similarly, the less confident you are, the less you willing you are to try, and the less full hearted you will be in your increasingly rare attempts. Even when you do try, at your core you will expect more failure. The expectation of failure takes the zest out of the attempt, which will make it all the more likely you will indeed fail.
But how can someone who has got used to failure genuinely and honestly expect something else? Imagine a boxer who has a career of 20 matches behind him. He has lost 20 of those 20 matches. Could such a man genuinely believe in his chances of success in the 21st match? I doubt it. Rather, I think his record of defeat would be evident the moment the audience sees him. There would be a distinct air of shame, of internalized weakness in his very posture and expression. The difference would be obvious when compared to his opponent who has won most of is matches, or at least some of them. Any fighter who has at some point got to taste victory would have an obvious psychological edge over the consistent loser.
Transfer this analogy to job-interviews, say, or to romantic relationships, and you will see how crippling low confidence is. Especially so for a man. In a woman a sense of weakness, bashfulness and frailty can be charming and feminine, and engender protective feelings in a man. But if a man is weak and frail, what could a woman possibly see in him? A man must have self-esteem for a woman to esteem him.
The best time to build confidence is childhood. Every parent should encourage, even demand, that their boys take up some sports or at least compete somehow, never shirk challenges, and get some victories under their belts. At least honorable attempts at victory! Nothing is worse for buildup of manly confidence than conflict avoidance. Even honestly losing a fight or a game can garner some admiration in a boy’s peers. Avoidance and refusal of challenge will create nothing but contempt. Ultimately that contempt will become internalized.
As part of basic care and prudence, parents should also make sure their children don’t become overweight, dress in a way that makes them a laughingstock, let their acne go untreated, etc. Not only for health reasons, but because how we look deeply affects our character.
“Our physical defects have powerful influence upon our temper, and are frequently the secret origin of the predominant feature of our character.” - Chateubriend
If the character forming years of youth are marred, the mental effect is often permanent, even if you at some point lose the physical weight, get rid of the bad skin, fix the way you dress, or make other improvements in your appearance. Though you now look better, the mentality of the unattractive, awkward child hasn’t necessarily gone anywhere. You may still expect negative judgment from others, and carry with yourself the attitude that you are worse than them. Now imagine going on a date or looking for a job with that mindset?
Another vicious cycle is the lack of romantic success which weak confidence garners. Lack of confidence is as off-putting to women as lack of chastity is to men. Many things women can forgive, but weak confidence generally isn’t one of them. What makes this so tricky is that normally having a woman is a powerful source of confidence for a man. Even in a day when he feels like a loser, he can remind himself that he has a pretty wife at home, so obviously he can’t be a completely hopeless case. A good wife also actively encourages and inspires her husband. The man of low confidence will have to do without this blessing.
The longer you spend flailing, the more rejections you accumulate. The more you get rejected, the less reason you have of being confident in your attractiveness to women. Thus, women, who are normally an important source of manly confidence, instead become a force multiplier for its absence.
Weak confidence tends to become a path of no return. The worse your self-esteem, the less likable people will find you, which will further damage your self-esteem. If your attempts have not led to success in the past, it will make you less enthusiastic with attempts in the future. You understandably expect defeat, and for that reason you’ll probably receive it. You’ve grown used to losing.
A broken confidence also darkens your outlook on the future. If you believe you’ve already given your best, and a failure is your optimal result, it’s unreasonable to expect anything different from coming years as compared to the past ones. This will take away zest for life. It will make your dreams seem fanciful, only something you can experience asleep, not something that could ever be fulfilled.
A man who has lost his confidence will age prematurely. He’s been measured and found wanting, why keep on rubbing in the lesson? Like the old widower, he has lost the sense of meaningful future prospects. In his eyes, the coming years will appear only mean repetitions of the past. Why indeed would anyone have particular zest for yet more failure, in a situation where the expectation of success has perished?
The way out
The trouble with life is that it can and ultimately will take everything away. Age withers strength and mental acuity. Misfortune can strip you of your family, career, status, wealth and friends. Maintaining success is uncertain even for those who’ve grown used to it. Memento mori. Perhaps most crucially, underlying all the worldly success and happiness always remains the sin and the brokenness. With the habitual loser the brokenness is visible and on the surface. With the habitual winner the brokenness is hidden underneath the gleam and glamour.
If the loser has one advantage in life, it’s that he has a clearer view of his brokenness, and better prospects for maintaining humility. He has no faith in himself, so he must have faith in something else. He’s not self-reliant, so he must rely on someone outside himself. The loser is in an excellent position to learn what Job has to teach. All the talents and strength of character a man has are gifts. If you were raised to try your mettle courageously and to win, it’s a gift of good parentage. If you were born with a tenacious, optimistic temper, it’s a gift of your creation.
A great example is offered by Charles Dickens in his novel A Tale of Two Cities (1859). He presents us with the character of Sydney Carton, an intelligent man whose confidence has collapsed, and who has sunk in despair, dissolution and alcoholism. His case is tragic in that he believes it’s all too late, that a worthless man like him can never experience love or happiness. The lingering despair is caused not only by lack of confidence but by hardness of heart.
“Is it not pity to live no better life?”
“God knows it is a shame!”
“Then why not change it?”
She was surprised and saddened to see that there were tears in his eyes. There were tears in his voice too, as he answered:
“It is too late for that. I shall never be better than I am. I shall sink lower, and be worse…. I’m like one who died young; all my life might have been.”
However, a powerful experience of unrequited love softens his stony heart enough to be able to dedicate it to something noble. Instead of believing in his own chances for love, Sydney Carton has faith in the love of another, and promises to dedicate his wasted life to its protection. This gives the man the drive for supernatural feats of self-abnegation.
Though Sydney’s example doesn’t take us the whole way, being obstructed by his lack of faith, it points us in the right direction. We realize that a shattered or weakly developed natural confidence offers an enviable opportunity to erect a supernatural confidence in its place. This time the foundation stone will not be personal accomplishment, or ability, or strength of character, or romantic relationships, or the admiration of others. Instead the new confidence will be built on the reality that even the sorriest loser is created in the image of God. Christ has died for his sake too, just as much as the winner’s.
This is why Christianity has spoken so strongly to slaves and the downtrodden. A slave hasn’t got much earthly reason to esteem himself. He’s some other man’s property, and has very limited agency, if agency at all. He often can’t set up any plans to fulfill in his earthly life, because his earthly life belongs to another. The loser is in a similar place. Because he doesn’t have confidence, he doesn’t believe in his agency, or at least he doesn’t believe that his agency can do him any good. If you lack confidence, you are essentially a mental slave.
But there is a spiritual liberation to spiritual slavery. Here we note the loser is again in a privileged position. It is easier for him to relinquish to God the authority over his path in life, because he wasn’t really going anywhere anyway. There won’t be conflict with God over the direction, because the loser was without direction on his own. It’s easier for the loser to offer his life to God. If you have no idea what your life is supposed to be about, you really have no choice but either to despair or to trust in God.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths….
The Lord will be your confidence.”
Proverbs 3: 5-6, 26