I have confidence in sunshine
I have confidence in rain
I have confidence that spring will come again
Besides which you see I have confidence in me!
The Sound Of Music - I Have Confidence
Ah that we would all be so confident!
And yet, many of us are not.
And of that many, most are women.
Enter journalists Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, who wondered why that was.
Their research has led to the interesting new book: The Confidence Code.
Chock-a-block with the most cutting edge research about the social, psychological and biological factors that play into whether or not someone has confidence, the book aims to understand why, all things being equal, men tend to over-estimate their abilities by 30% while women tend to under-estimate their abilities by around the same amount and what implications that has not only for the men and women involved, but for society as a whole.
I used to see this confidence gap manifested a lot in my former career.
Young bright women would doubt their hunches, second-guess their abilities, whereas their young male counterparts would brashly take a shot regardless.
Eventually, you take enough of those shots, you show enough chutzpah, you will make some big wins. And get promoted.
Too many women describe themselves as "lucky" when they do well, beat themselves up over every little mistake, and feel they must prepare twice as hard in order to be taken seriously.
I'm not going to give away much more about this book - it must be read and digested properly and I highly recommend you do so.
Despite achieving a lot professionally, I would often feel like I was a fraud, that somehow others were more intelligent or quicker than I was, and I was constantly questioning my abilities.
So it was a relief to see that I am in good company and the authors provide concrete tactics, based on research, as to how to address these feelings of inadequacy.
At the website for the book, you can take the confidence quiz. While many would consider me quite confident, in fact, I came out as having only medium confidence.
The description of medium confidence:
What does that mean?
It likely means one of two things. First, you might be generally in the middle range of the confidence spectrum regarding a variety of your judgments. Alternatively, you could be high in confidence on some matters but relatively low on others. That is, there are times when you do feel confident about your abilities, or confident about successfully addressing a challenge. But there may be other times when you may be risk-averse, or may choose inaction over action. You may also spend significant time ruminating—a huge confidence killer.
As soon as I got to the last sentence, I knew I was nailed. I am a terrible ruminator, and having just completed the Brene Brown course on whole-hearted living, this is my number one to-do: stop playing the endless negative loop in my mind, the coulda, shoulda, wouldas of every situation.
This is a wonderful book for:
- the person who wants to boost their confidence
- the person who wants to help mentor a person, particularly a female person, and help them gain confidence in their schooling or workplace.
- the person who wants to understand why we are still struggling to have women run for office, assume leadership roles, stay in leadership roles, etc.
I highly recommend this book and will be telling all of my girlfriends and the smart women and men in my life about it!
Some more thoughts on confidence by two woman I greatly admire:
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt
“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.” ― Virginia Woolf
And in the fake-it-till-you-make-camp (of which I excelled at times...)
How about you? Any struggles with confidence? Have you read this book yet?
Have a great day and stay safe out there!
xoxo wendy
