Do You Have More or Less As You Get Older?

Are you hearing two conflicting things from your friends when it comes to confidence?

“I’m more confident and comfortable in my skin than I’ve ever been!”

AND

“I don’t know what happened to my confidence – why am I constantly getting in my own way?”

Often both comments come from the same person…maybe it’s you.

As crazy as it may feel, there’s a logical reason for the yo-yo confidence we experience as we get older.

Here’s what’s going on…

By the time we’ve got a generous handful of decades under our belts, what OTHER people think about us tends to become less important.

We’ve also had some first hand experience with life’s finite and fragile nature and that wisdom compels us to show ourselves a bit more love and forgiveness.

The net effect is that we’d rather go out singing “I Did it My Way” than “Wishin’ and Hopin'”.

It’s that kind of wisdom and experience that INCREASES our confidence.

But something happens when we try to lean into something big – something that requires stepping into new territory.

In those cases, you may find that you’re LESS confident than your younger self.

Here’s why.

Your brain is much, MUCH more likely to embed the memories of things that did not go well in your life that the ones that did. (It thinks it’s protecting you by doing this.)

So your database is skewed to your real-life negative experiences. The more experiences (aka years) the more negative the database.

So, when you’re taking on something that feels important (and therefore risky) – your database shoots out a whole lot more warnings than it did when you were younger.

And that erodes your confidence.

The good news is there’s a relatively easy fix.

While your brain may not have embedded all the little wins along the way, it DID let you hold onto anything that had some emotion attached to it.

And after all these years, you’ve got a bunch of those stored up.

This Week: Conjure Confidence

The next time your confidence is flagging, close your eyes and conjure up some of those triumphs.

Include the horrid times that your thought would kill you but didn’t. Those are triumphs too.

The truth is, you’ve actually got much more evidence of success (you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t) than failure.

It’s just that your wiring keeps the failures front and center so you’ll need to dig a bit to get to the good stuff.

I promise, it’s worth the effort.