Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

When you’re unhappy, you lack confidence. When you lack confidence you’re unhappy. Which comes first, unhappiness or lacking confidence? That is the paradox I will attempt to solve.

I ask this question because confidence is a key ingredient for mental toughness. Lacking confidence makes you vulnerable to negativity, triggers fear, and undermines focus. All of which leads to unhappiness.

Or is it the other way around? Does unhappiness lead to negativity, fear, and a lack of focus which in turn leads to lacking confidence?

This is the chicken or egg paradox of lacking confidence:

1. It’s frustrating when you don’t know what to do next. When this frustration persist, it leads to unhappiness.
2. When you’re overloaded with things to do, you become overwhelmed, which leads to unhappiness.
3. Not having a support system of peers and mentors who can empathize with you and support you in your present situation leads to unhappiness.
4. Making mistakes that delay or prevent the achievement of goals leads to unhappiness.

As these situations trigger unhappiness, this unhappiness will without a doubt trigger a loss of confidence. However, what if you face these situations and don’t let them make you unhappy. Will they still cause you to lose confidence?

What if you become comfortable being uncomfortable in:

• situations when you don’t know what to do next,
• dealing with an overloaded schedule,
• needing peers and mentors for support, and
• making and learning from mistakes?

For one thing, the only way to become comfortable being uncomfortable is through experience. So it follows that in order to gain confidence you first must learn how to be resilient in the face of lacking confidence.

In addition, learning to become comfortable being uncomfortable improves mental toughness. Which in turn teaches you that you don’t need comfort to be happy.

In short, while it may be true that being unhappy causes a lack of confidence, it is not true that lacking confidence causes unhappiness. Instead, learning how to remain happy as one struggles with lacking confidence is the key to gaining one’s confidence back.