Confidence

Confidence, trust and reliance; belief in one's own abilities.  (Webster’s New world Dictionary, 2003). Courage, poise, and boldness, along with confidence all mean the same thing; believing in one’s self.  People always say confidence is key to success. Personally, I feel this is a true statement. Confidence is a strange feeling, some people have it and some people don’t.  Confidence is like an older brother, when you have it you feel safe; when you don’t you are scared and alone. Self-assurance is a bit like confidence in that when you have it you believe in yourself and you know you can do it.  When a person has confidence, they believe and trust in their own abilities. Confidence is an old man on the dance floor, he knows people are watching him, but he doesn't care. I think a lot of people lack confidence because people are constantly judging them for every little thing.  This definitely has an effect on confidence levels. If I were to dye my hair and end up really loving it, I would feel good about my decision. However, no matter what I thought about it, there may be someone ready to say something negative and try to bring me down and make me feel awful about my choice.  There is always going to be someone who will try to tear you down, and this is where confidence will come into play. Either you will stand strong in your confidence or you will falter to other people’s opinions and ideas of how things should be.

 If a person has confidence, no one can bring them down because they believe in themselves.  Confidence is powerful and when a person has it, no one can stand in their way. They feel and know that there isn’t anything they can’t do.   As Christina Grimmie says, “ Confidence is not, they will like me. Confidence is instead, I will be fine if they don’t.”

Back in middle school,  people always cared about what you wore, what you said, or who you hung out with.  I was the kid who was pretty self conscious in middle school. I cared about what people thought of me.  I tried to always dress nice and hang out with the cool kids. When I got into high school all of these things and then some carried over.  Again, I tried to dress super nice, say all the right things, and hang out with the same popular kids. Then, when I hit my sophomore year, something changed in the way I saw things and felt about things.  It was like a light switch flipped on in the back of my head and all of a sudden, I gained a ton of confidence. I stopped caring about what people thought of me. I would wear grey sweatpants every other day because I wasn't trying to impress anyone, and they were really comfortable too!  This was a great thing for me, because all the pressure I had put on myself to please so many other people, began to go away. It helped me focus on my studies more and my grades began to improve. I began to feel better about myself, was getting better sleep at night, and started to focus on myself and what I enjoyed doing.  Confidence is a great thing!

Another example of finding confidence came to me in the swimming pool.  When I was in eighth grade, I made it to state in diving. I was very excited but extremely nervous being down at the state meet as an eighth grader.  It was hard for me to focus on diving because I was so alone and so scared. The next year I made it to state in diving again. This time I had a better idea of what to expect, didn’t feel so alone, and had a little fun when I was there.  I was still nervous, but I had one year under my belt already, and I was ready to go. You could tell by my diving that I was pretty nervous at first. I was the very first diver in the line-up which put some added stress on me. Towards the end of my dive list, I became more confident and started to nail a few of my dives.   Finally, by the time my sophomore year came, I was focused, formed confidence, and I felt ready to go. I was lucky enough to have made it to state again, and I felt like I knew what to do. I told myself “You can do this, you just have to believe.”  I was nailing my dives and getting great scores on them.  I was confident in myself and knew I could do it. I ended up sixth that year, placing in the top ten, and winning a medal.

           When I went to dive camp in the summer, one of the counselors Manny Polland, used to dive at the University of Minnesota.  He told me a great quote and it has stuck with me ever since.

He said, “Do you want to be scared, or do you want to be great?”

That quote has given me so much confidence in all I do, not just with my sports.  It is always in the back of my head when I think I can't do something. If a person doesn't have confidence then they have already defeated themselves. Confidence is not just going around bragging about how much you believe in yourself.   It is about believing in yourself when nobody else does. It is about being humble, being grateful, and knowing you self-worth. Confidence is trusting in yourself and your abilities.