How Mastery of Unconditional Confidence Can Lead You to a Happier Life
Originally posted in Medium publication Mind Cafe.
When I was doing one of the most challenging jobs — selling educational books door-to-door in the USA and Canada, I learned a valuable lesson about unconditional confidence.
I came across this concept of unconditional confidence in Dustin Hillis’s seminars — Dustin Hillis is a CEO of Southwestern Family of Companies and has been a company’s record-holder in sales for many years.
I must admit that I had been struggling with self-confidence a lot since my teenage years. A significant breakthrough came when I learned to love myself and applied the concept of unconditional confidence in my life.
The unconditional confidence concept is essential in a world that values and aims for tangible results — money earned, followers gained, status earned, and sales or leads acquired. Unconditional confidence asserts that we should not base our confidence, value, and self-esteem on these things.
Without unconditional confidence, we will be on a never-ending rollercoaster of emotions, doubting our value and abilities.
Conditional Confidence
First, let’s break down what is conditional confidence.
Conditional confidence is when you base your confidence upon external circumstances — results and others’ approval. Your confidence increases or decreases whether things go as planned or don’t. When you get the intended results, you feel happy; you feel sad and low-confident when you don’t.
When I was selling books, we were working on straight commission. It means if you sold books, you got paid. If you worked for 12 hours but did not get clients, you did not earn a single buck.
That was such a fertile ground for exploring that my confidence indeed was conditional.
When I sold, I felt confident — happy and full of belief that I can achieve the sales goals I had set for myself. The next day or next week, when sales did not really come, my shoulders hung, my voice became phonier, and my mind was cluttered with thoughts of “maybe this is not going to work.”
Have you ever felt like that in your job, career, business, athlete’s or musician’s career?
The pandemic time has been a real test for many people — it has given a chance to reveal that their confidence has been conditional. How confident do you remain when plans get canceled, the job is lost, or the business loses revenue?
If your confidence is conditional, you will doubt your skills, abilities, who you are, and if what you are doing is enough when facing adversity.
Unconditional Confidence
I love the word “unconditional.” Whether in the combination of “unconditional love,” “unconditional loyalty,” or “unconditional confidence.” The word “unconditional” itself contains a feeling of confidence — unshakeable and unchanging despite the challenges we face.
In the book Redefining the Possible, Dustin Hillis and Ron Alford define that unconditional confidence is based on beliefs and habits, which you can develop and control. It is when we are aware of our fallibility. But we don't accept failures as the status quo.
Unconditional confidence starts from accepting ourselves as we are — being compassionate towards ourselves also when we fail. Learning to not judge ourselves when we fail and forgive ourselves our mistakes might seem like a minor thing to do. Yet, it is way more significant than we think.
Our confidence is tied to how we view ourselves — our self-esteem and self-image. In the Mindvalley blog, Shannon Terrel writes simply and straight-forwardly, “Confidence is a product of self-love and respect.”
“The question is not about what else we can improve and which weaknesses we can fix but how much we can learn to love ourselves with our faults and shortcomings.”
As we learn to love and accept ourselves, the next step is to examine what we focus on.
If we focus on things that can change, fluctuate up and down, then our confidence will be conditional. If we focus on things we can control, however, then we will be able to master unconditional confidence. What are the things that we can control? Our work ethic, habits, gaining knowledge and wisdom, our attitude, and mindset.
When I was selling books door-to-door, I experienced rejection daily. I got rejected by many different people — good people, angry people, rich people, poor people, old people, and young people.
People occasionally misunderstood me, thinking I am doing scams or selling magazines. People laughed at me and yelled at me. Of course, there were tons of incredibly amazing people too.
However, encountering people who did not like what I do, or did not trust me, taught me that I will always run into awesome people too. As long as I don’t give up. “Sales is a number’s game,” they say. It really is, just like many things in life and business.
Sometimes we focus on people’s rejection so much that we start seeing ourselves as victims — “people don’t like me,” “something is not right with me,” “maybe I am not just good enough at this”.
Instead, learn to switch your focus on how you can put in more effort (show up more, practice more) and keep persisting until you succeed. What we focus on, we give energy to in our lives.
Once we untie our confidence from results, status, and others’ opinions, we can learn to place our confidence in the controllables.
Depending on your industry, these controllables can be different. Still, they all have one thing in common: it is an effort that you can fully control whether you do it or not.
For example, how many people you meet. How many articles you write. How many emails you sent out. How many people you demonstrate your product to. How much you practice?
In short, the question is, are you doing your best? Are you putting in the maximum effort you can to make things happen (yet maintaining a healthy schedule — sleeping enough and taking care of yourself)? Or are you taking shortcuts?
Sometimes we cannot measure our effort in tangible statistics. Then the question is, do we have the right mindset and attitude? Are we doing our best to keep the faith in a successful outcome and persist with a winning attitude?
What if I am in a position where I am not doing my best?
It is entirely normal and common to feel guilty when you realize you have not been doing your best. You have not been putting in the necessary effort and proper mindset.
But remember, I wrote that we need to start with accepting ourselves to build unconditional confidence. So, right now, you need to learn to forgive yourself for not doing what you promised yourself you will and figure out a plan for how you will start doing it.
Have accountability with someone about sticking to your plan and building the right habits. And take pride daily in accomplishing little victories.
Step by step, you will learn to tie your confidence with small daily wins, which will grow the unconditional confidence.
Unconditional confidence starts with loving and accepting yourself as a unique personality with unique gifts and talents to share with the world in a way that only you can. And, please, don’t say you don’t have unique gifts and talents. Even if it is something that most people can do in the world, there is one unique way of how only you can do that.
How Do I Build Unconditional Confidence?
Where Is Your Confidence Anchored?
To build genuine unconditional confidence, you must first realize where your confidence is anchored. Is it anchored in results, money, status? Or is it anchored in the human being you are — your character, work ethic, and personality? You see, these are things that can never be taken away.
You might fail at new endeavors, but it is part of the journey as long as you have the work ethic and persistence. Work ethic and perseverance will be what will matter. Work ethic and perseverance will be what will bring your results.
Start With Self-Compassion
People who have conditional confidence are usually perfectionists, at least a little bit. They are also typically hard workers. But they might often perceive that what they do is not good enough.
If your confidence often is conditional and you are a perfectionist, start with self-compassion.
Kristin Neff, a leading self-compassion researcher, names the same concept of conditional confidence as contingent self-esteem. Contingent self-esteem is when our self-esteem is based upon others’ approval and whether we succeed in important areas. Kristin’s belief is that changing from self-criticism to self-compassion is the key to resilience in the face of challenge.
Self-compassion is embracing ourselves as we are, with our flaws and odds.
Forgive yourself for your mistakes and treat yourself with unconditional love.
Build Confidence With Self-Love
The key is to love yourself and see yourself as valuable, smart, and successful before feeling worthy because of achievements.
Only when we feel happy and worthy beforehand, we can achieve true and consistent results.
“We need to feel confident in our abilities and character before we get tangible results, not after getting results.”
The changes start not from becoming a different person and thinking that you feel confident then. But the changes start with accepting yourself and feeling confident no matter what — whether you fail or succeed.
Take Confidence In The Controllables
Review your day — what are the specific things in your daily work, business, sports practice, music, or something else that you can directly control, and what are things you can’t?
Choose to let go of the things you can’t control and trust that they will work out in the process when you will do your best. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later. But don’t compare yourself with others who might have gotten already where you want to be.
Re-think Failure
In his book The Possibility Principle, Mel Schwartz helps us re-think several different concepts according to a new quantum physics worldview.
One of the things that quantum physics reveals is that nothing is either-or — nothing is just “right” or “wrong.” Instead, everything is somewhere between and in the process of becoming.
We are used to seeing everything as either success or failure. If we haven’t succeeded, it means we have failed. If we have failed, we are failures and doing something wrong.
Instead, we can look at everything as a learning experience. Failure is simply a stepping stone towards achieving success. It is a necessary step on our way to becoming the best version of ourselves.
We are failures only when we accept and view ourselves as such. Until that, we are in the process of becoming who we aim to be as long as we don’t give up.
This type of paradigm is essential for building a life of unconditional confidence. It means accepting who we are and loving ourselves even if we are not there yet — building confidence day by day upon little victories.
Takeaway
Many people struggle with conditional confidence because they place their confidence upon things they can’t control. When these things change, they lose their confidence and feel sad and frustrated.
It takes practice to develop unconditional confidence, yet that is worth it for it brings happiness and success that lasts. To master unconditional confidence, we must first learn to love and accept ourselves as we are, and then focus on things we can control.
Things we can control are our habits and effort, attitude, and mindset. Learn to notice the things you do right and celebrate daily wins instead of evaluating your worth based upon the end result.
Do you feel like you were meant for more in this world - to do what you love, create a successful business, live an authentic and exciting life, travel the world, make an impact, but you feel held back by fear, self-doubt, perfectionism, procrastination, and lack of a clear vision?
Let's jump on a consultation call because my 1: 1 coaching program, "90 Days to Confident and Courageous: You Roadmap to the Life & Business You Love," is meant to help you get from fear and being stuck to confidence and taking bold action so that you can build your dream life and business!
