Oct 15, 2019

Whenever I interact with other people, part of me is usually a little self-conscious. It happens when I'm trying to leave a good impression or when I'm meeting some one for first time. I feel like I need to be ready with a response to everything right away. And when they ask me a question that I'm unprepared for, I stutter and fumble my way to an answer. But it's often something foolish and definitely not what wanted to say. People tell me I need to be more confident, but how do I do that? Where does confidence come from? What am I missing? I'm Daniel Lam and this is Inner Monkey.

I want to believe in myself and I want to feel confident. But I don't know how. Beliefs aren't something I know how to just turn on and off; so when people tell me to, "just believe in myself". I think, I appreciate its, but that's not helpful. I already know that! Tell me how. What do I need to do to find the self-confidence others seem to have? Disappointingly, no one seems to have a good answer to this.

I've come to believe that my confidence is a function of how my inner monkey defines who I am. His definition of me is pretty fuzzy, but I get the feeling that I'm logical, friendly, a good person, and a bunch of other positive traits. But am I really all of these things?

He likes to think I'm logical, but am I logical all the time? No. I make rash emotional decisions every day. He thinks of me as a good person, but I know I can also be a jerk sometimes. Every trait he thinks I have has a counter-example, so why does my inner monkey still define me this way? He defines me this way, because he's confused who I am with who I want to be.

Figuring out who I am, is difficult. It requires that I look at myself honestly, which can get uncomfortable when I get to my less admirable qualities. But figuring out who I want to be is easy, because it's like daydreaming, and that's something my inner monkey is really good at.

So my inner monkey skips right over the difficult part and straight to the daydream. The problem with this, is it makes facing the truth about myself even harder to do because my inner monkey can't help but compare everything he sees in me, to this idealized version of who I wishes I was.

He can't help but notice that I don't quite measure up. And instead of inspiring him to make me a better person, it highlights all the way in which I'm just not good enough and this makes him feel even worse.

How does he solve this problem? Well, it's not by bettering myself. That would require work and my inner monkey is inherently lazy. He wants immediate gratification with minimal effort, so he goes all in on the daydream, and pretends that I'm already the person I want to be.

This is the root of my problem. Because he's mixing up who I am with who want to be, I start to develop an expectation for myself that's no longer grounded in reality. I start to expect that I should be something more than I actually am. And since this is all a lie, part of him knows that I'll eventually encounter situations that will challenge his lies. This is the source of my anxiety and my lack of self-confidence.

My anxiety is caused by his fear of being confronted by reality. This week at work, an intern came to me for help on his project. I'm supposed to be knowledgeable, and know what I'm doing, at least more so than an intern. I'm a full-time employee after all. But sometimes, I get nervous and my mind blanks on questions I should have the answers for, and my inner monkey starts to worry, "Oh no, he'll get the wrong impression of me. I'm actually really smart! Really, I am!"

But the thing is, he didn't get the wrong impression of me. Everything I say or do is part of the very definition of who I am. And this includes getting flustered sometimes. Just because I may not like it certain aspects of myself, doesn't make them any less true.

My inner monkey wants me to believe that there are things I do that don't accurately represent me, because they disagree with the lies he uses to define who I am. Every time he gets called out on it, he'll get defensive and do whatever he can to deflect. "I knew the answer to that question. I'm smarter than him. I was just under pressure."

Excuses like this, is how he hides from the truth from me. The truth is, I wont always have the answers to all his questions, and that's OK.

If I want to start believing in myself, I first need to accept who I am. The real me, not the me I want to be. But the me who's here right now. So that the anxiety that comes from these fake expectation, can go away.

Truly confident people aren't confident because they're perfect. They're confident because they aren't afraid to look at themselves for who they really are. They don't hide from their imperfections, they accept them. They don't pretend their mistakes never happened, they acknowledge them and try to mitigate or work around them the best they can. Nothing makes someone appear more confident and self-assure to me, than when I see them acknowledging their own flaws and addressing them, right in front of me.

I know doing this will be tough. My inner monkey feels like if I accept the real me, I'll be lowering my standards. That I'll get comfortable being some loser jerk who everyone hates. But this isn't what I'm trying to do. I don't want to accept that being a jerk is OK. But if I am a jerk, I want to see it. because it's only when I acknowledge my flaws that I can do something about them.

I've always loved the saying, "If everyone around you is a jerk, you're the jerk". The thing I love about this saying, is that it highlights how easy it is for everyone, especially myself, to not see ourselves for who we really are. If everyone who acted like a jerk, realized that they were acting like a jerk, we would live in a much nicer world.

The first step towards seeing who I really am, is letting go of who I want to be. Because, as long as my inner monkey is clutching on to the idea of who I want to be, he'll never be able to open his eyes and face who I really am.

When I make mistakes I want to learn from them, not hide from them. I'm not the person my inner monkey wishes I was. And I never will be. But if I actually look at myself, for who I am, the fear and anxiety of not measuring up to who I want to be, will go away. And in the process, I'll naturally take steps towards becoming a person and live the life I want to live.