Self Assured

Sean Connery as James Bond - hand-painted poster by Robert McGinnis.

I’ve been wrestling with what it means to be confident.

There are a lot of skewed images of what a confident man is, stereotypically culminating in my mind as a James Bond archetype… smart, secure, and smooth with women, of course. Bond is a cool character, and the Daniel Craig films rock, but he’s only confident because he’s being, albeit unrealistically, himself. If I tried to chase the James Bond image of confidence, I’d be an awkward, repelling mess.

The main issue men who confront their confidence face is that they try to embody an archetype of confidence based on movies or social media. Sometimes this results in bravado-filled overconfidence (i.e., picking fights in bars, an irreparable case of Invisible Lat Syndrome (ILS), etc.) but mostly it makes you say and do stuff you later cringe at lying in bed at night.

This archetypal imitation strategy quickly deters people.

I spent a lot of elementary school trying to be accepted into social groups, which usually left me feeling like an outsider. But in odd moments when I let my guard slip and acted like my genuine self, I’d often say something funny or do something cool that was well received by the people I was trying to impress. People liked me more than my imposter. The social warzone of elementary school taught me that people are good at detecting inauthenticity, and inauthentic people are an immediate turnoff.

This is an unspoken universal truth. People will gravitate towards you if you’re genuine, regardless of what genuine you looks like. If someone doesn’t vibe with genuine you, they may not befriend you, but they’ll still respect and admire you for being you.

That’s why I believe self-assuredness is a better aim than confidence.

The self-assured person says what they believe and does so in a way that feels natural, without glancing at their audience in search of validatory nods. They don’t tailor themselves in false attempts to appease their audience. Confidence is not archetypal. It’s not James Bond or LeBron James. Confidence is merely responding to the world in a way that feels natural and true to you.

There’s a saying that courage is taking action despite feeling scared. Logic being, there’s no courage without fear. It’s the same idea with confidence. Daily in-the-trenches confidence is self-assuredness in the presence of self-doubt.

I don’t know how to work the rest of my thoughts on confidence into cohesive, non-rambling paragraphs. So here are the rest of my best ideas on confidence:

• Confidence is often unspoken.

• Be more humble and you’ll be more confident.

• Confidence is when the outside matches the inside.

• Never pretend. The self-assured person admits what they don’t know.

• Aim for egoless confidence. That is, confidence detached from identity.

• A lack of confidence is like having a lot of money in the bank but not being able to access it¹.

• Self-assurance is saying and doing what you believe without chameleoning yourself in an attempt to impress your audience.

• A confident person is just someone who is comfortable with who they are and who doesn’t try to be someone else in public.

• Embrace your category of one. Confident people admire and are inspired by others, but they don’t compare themselves against them or try to imitate them.

• The fitter, more educated/skilled, and more prepared you are, the more confident you’ll be. So, spend your free time doing challenging and interesting things.

• To be self-assured, you gotta know your beliefs and values and what you stand for. Getting out into the world and doing things, then coming back into your head and reading and writing, helps you figure that out.

I try to live these things out, but I fail and stumble more than my ego enjoys admitting. I hope these ideas are helpful to you, but I’d also love to hear in the comments what I missed or what I’m wrong about.

Big love,

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In other news…

I got my jiu jitsu blue belt! This means I’m not a complete beginner but still suck compared to intermediate (purple belt) advanced (brown and black belt) practitioners.

Something I wrote down after receiving the belt: I’ve put a lot of time into developing this skill (approx. 500 hours on the mats), yet somehow the journey has only just begun. I believe the crafts worth pursuing in life are the ones you will never stop honing but can never fully master.

I finished my tattoo sleeve! This is something I’ve wanted to finish since high school, so it’s cool to get it done. I got my first tattoo in 2019, then another in 2024. Then I started jiu jitsu and met the artist who has since tattooed most of my arm. Awesome dude and an amazing artist. If you’re in Toronto and are looking for a great artist, check out @nightowldrawings.

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1. I heard this somewhere but can’t remember who said it. Credit to an unknown source.