Letter from Lhasa, number 161. (Burton 2006): Building Confidence
by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi
Burton, K., and B. Platts, Building Confidence for Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, West Sussex, England, UK, 2006.
(Burton 2006).
Kate Burton,
Brinley Platts
This kind of books is less banal, or perhaps more banal, than one may suppose. The first obvious question, although one may suppose be useless, is why one should be confident. It may be, somebody will write, or somebody have already written, a work on the advantages of being unconfident.
The authors give, in the first lines, a utilitarian answer: “Confidence is one of those odd things in life that turn out to be surprisingly difficult to tie down (beauty and quality belong to this strange group too). You may think you know what it is, and you may feel certain that you can recognise it when you see it, but you may struggle to define exactly what ‘it’ is. Confidence is an everyday experience, something you have quite often, except on those all important occasions when it seems to leave you and you could really use more of it – whatever ‘it’ is.” (Burton 2006, p. 001)
They tell that you must have it when you need it, although frequently you have not it ...precisely when you should have it. This is why some people write this kind of books and other people, evidently, read, or anyway buy, such works.
The formal definition of confidence is: “At its heart, confidence is the ability to take appropriate and effective action in any situation, however challenging it appears to you or others.” (Burton 2006, p. 010)
...usual lists of “advices” reassuring the readers in their unconfidence...
Self-confidence needs resilience. Resilience needs that one know who and what one is. The need of recognition, for example, is for non-confident people.
Clearly, who writes and sells this kind of books needs to fill some hundred pages of good advices. If they are too may, they are practically useless. Here, they are too many.
Perhaps, an unconfident person should simply work out at the annihilation, or at least at the neutralization, of one’s own personality. Perhaps, only later, one could try building something else. How and how? One should find one’s own way of destruction and one’s own way of new construction. Not of re-construction. Simply, of a new, different, construction of oneself.
Does it worth? ...Who can know? Sometimes, the best thing to do is to do nothing. Other times, the best thing to do is to do something or everything.
Burton, K., and B. Platts, Building Confidence for Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, West Sussex, England, UK, 2006.
