What does it take to be confident?
While I would stress the importance of knowledge and skillful mastery in the domain at hand as those qualities yield an unshakable foundation for confidence, there is another ingredient worthy of attention.
Consider these maxims:
If it is not "Hell Yeah!, then it is "No."
A thing worth doing is worth doing well.
Pursue excellence, or cease pursuing. (aka, Go big, or go home.)
The marginal, subjective costs and benefits of a pursuit should dictate the extent and effort one exerts in doing it. --paraphrased from James Buchanan (i.e., "If at first you don't succeed, try a few more times and then give up. No sense making an ass of yourself. --direct quote from my grandpa)
Variety is the spice of life plus you never know until you try it.
At the extreme combining any two or three of these maxims will be contradictory. One cannot maximize probably two and definitely not more than two. Finding a balance among them the key.
In all cases success for any one of these or some group in balanced concert requires a high degree of care. If you are not highly interested and enthused, you are very likely not going to fulfill the maxim. How could you even have preferences by which to judge success or make pursuits?
Despite the virtue of these maxims, I believe there is a paradoxical secret to confidence orthogonal to these maxims that relies on not caring. While perhaps not essential, it does seem to be quite helpful.
Consider these quotes from one of history's greatest experts on confidence, Don Draper:
"You're born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. I'm living like there's no tomorrow, because there isn't one."
"Well, I hate to break it to you, but there is no big lie. There is no system. The universe is indifferent."
“Get out of here and move forward. This never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened.”
"If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation."
"Is that what you want, or is that what people expect of you?"
"You want some respect? Go out and get it for yourself."
Michael Ginsberg: "I feel bad for you." Don Draper: "I don't think about you at all."
[NB: I'm not the only one who has noticed this.]
There are many lessons in these quotes. One is that much to our surprise, nobody cares. Or at least most of the time people care vastly less than we expect they do. And even when they do care, they either easily forgive or forget. As the late Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman said, “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it.”
There are lots of versions of caring, and I want to stress that caring is a virtuous quality. It just isn't the only quality worth pursuing. And often it is not a very important one at least in certain facets.
You can want to do a good or even great job, but that doesn't mean you care about everyone's evaluation equally. Nor does it mean you'll let the risk of failure dissuade you from aplomb. The key to poise under pressure is to become immune to the pressure.
Great standup comedians don't just risk bombing on stage. They actually aim for it—under the right circumstances at least. They test material in the wild. It is likely that all the great comedians who had showcase performances—albums, hour-long specials, Vegas residencies—had that success because of rather than despite many, many on-stage bombs. And it is likely an audience member who saw the bomb would not enjoy the successful performance any less than someone oblivious to it. They might enjoy it more.
Life is a lot like comedy—the next moment can be great (hilarious) even if the last was bad.
So what am I advising that you stop carrying about? You’re losing your care about failure. Stop caring that you might fail. If anything, lean into it.
This is indeed paradoxical since minimizing and mitigating failure are essential to success in most domains. Most things are a loser’s game.
To find the edge one must eventually fall off it. The key isn't avoiding the fall; it is being able to survive and even thrive from it.
Dangerously this can foster arrogance—confidence's ugly cousin. Likewise it can be a slippery slope from stoic resolve to uncaring frivolity or even indifference to disgrace. So tread lightly, but stop "caring" so much.