December 10, 2006

The Nature of Confidence

Whilst Instant Messaging with my Mother, she asked me, "is confidence an action or a feeling?"
This question set me up in an odd manner for an epiphany of sorts. My mind couldn't fit confidence into either category neatly enough. So I started working out the idea of what confidence really is, when it hit me.

I decided that Confidence is the purposeful (not necessarily conscious) mental deadening of possible stimuli.

As my brother and I have already agreed, this definition also describes false confidence and arrogance. This is a description of the result of confidence, but it's also the result of other bad mental states such as arrogance. (Perhaps this is why it's easily confused by an observer.) When an individual has sufficient reason to support blocking out certain negative things, such as excellent research and background knowledge blocking out the fear of public speaking about that subject, then they are acting confident that they will succeed. When an individual doesn't have sufficient reason to support that mental action, but instead is blocking possible stimuli out of fear, or worse motivations, they would then be acting arrogant or similar.

I suppose I should revisit this idea in the future when I have more time.

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