When we were young we were taught at school that confidence is important. That we would achieve more when we are confident. And that people like to be surrounded with confident people. However, I have always felt differently about this. That sometimes I rather be around insecure people. I felt that sometimes it’s the insecure people who actually have interesting stories and minds to share.
After googling the definition of confidence I found: “confidence is generally described as a state of being certain either that a hypothesis or prediction is correct or that a chosen course of action is the best or most effective. Self-confidence is having confidence in one's self.”
From the perspective of evolution, we can assume that our body and mind is made to survive. That’s why we are attributed with a complex physical and mental system that’s able to self-sustain and to keep us alive. This is why we are able to stand up and start walking without our body falling apart or that we are able to remember things so that we don’t end up swimming in circles.
Besides the primary instincts of adrenalin rushes when a sabretooth tiger jumps us, we are also equipped with deeper and more complex feelings like loneliness, happiness, confidence, and insecurity. I believe that all these feelings have a certain purpose. And I think it’s important to ask ourselves what they are and why we do have them?
Insecurity lets us question the world
When we are insecure about ourselves, we tend to question more things. Do we belong here? Who are we? Or how is everything related to me? And how am I related to everything? Insecurity could be a kick starter for us to understand things in new ways from different perspectives.
Why I personally like insecurity is that when being around an insecure person, a possibility exists for a multi-dimensional conversation. A conversation that involves not only direct and simple strong-minded opinions, but also a dialogue that elaborates on each other’s views, doubts, opinions and feelings. These conversations are often deeper and more meaningful to me than conversations with confident people who are more straight forward. Maybe this is the reason why introverts, people who seem to be more shy and often appear (but are not always) insecure, are over-represented in the categories of giftedness. It’s because they experience the world differently than extraverts. In our civilization introverts are dominated by extraverts by 3 to 1. But contrary, 75% of people with IQ-score over 160 are introverts.
But is confidence bad?
I think that confidence can be something very pleasant, but also something quite unpleasant. Maybe we can see confidence as an expansion tool of our own personality. When personality got exerted in confidence we express ourselves stronger, but not necessarily more thoroughly.
I think it would be great that people become confident after they have gone through a phase of thorough self-questioning. So that after a phase of insecurity they can truly become matured confident individuals.
Unfortunately, people have bypassed this pit stop. We have largely skipped the stage of insecurity before arriving at confidence. Today everywhere you look we have too many confident people. People who are confident just for the sake of being confident. They walk straight with their chins pointed at the sky, talking loud, listening less, and having opinions ready on every subject. And interesting dialogues with these people are rarely possible.