Confidence can lead you to a fearless, happy life.
Once you wake up to a few simple truths.
A life unafraid.
A life where you can just ‘be you’.
Here is insight that will set you on your way to being confident, fearless and happy.
It is part of the story of why confidence comes and goes in life.
The Story of You
- Age 0 to 2 – FEARLESSNESS. You’re little. You don’t understand fear. You explore and adventure. Anything goes.
- Age 3 to 5 – NATURAL FEARS. You start to recognise bumps and scrapes, needs and wants, friends and enemies, sharing and selfishness, togetherness and loneliness. You start to fear, naturally, not having what you want when you want it. This changes you. You have tantrums. But, largely, you’re OK.
- Age 6 to ‘you choose an age‘ – LEARNED FEARS. You and others begin to shape and make learned fears. Fears that contain you. Fears that hold you back. Fears that shrink you. Others ridicule your quirks and your uniqueness. The things that make you different. They tell others about your mistakes, too. So everything gets muddled. You begin to question things. You worry. You fear what people think of you. And these learned fears breed more fears.
- Age ‘you choose an age‘ to death – FEARLESSNESS (AGAIN). You – somehow – wake up to the fact what others think of you matters only as much as you allow.
Keeping these 4 stages in mind, you just need to remember 3 things if you want to live a more confident, fearless and happy life:
- Anything learned can be unlearned.
- Confidence and fearlessness feed into and from each other because confidence erodes fear and fear erodes confidence (you are most confident in stages 1 and 4 above).
- You choose your ‘you choose an age’ age. No one else.
There’s this great big block of time in any person’s life, normally between (about) 7 years old and (about) 60 years old – so about two thirds of your entire fucking life – where fear erodes confidence and this lack of confidence results in less happy and fulfilled days.
You know it’s true.
Kids are bonkers.
Older people, once they wake up to the fact what others think of them matters only as much as they allow, are bonkers too.
You’ve seen older people like this.
Bonkers is great!
Confidence. Fearlessness. Bonkersness.
Bonkersness
So, all you have to do to be more confident, fearless and happy – is to choose a ‘you choose an age‘ age (see above).
Suggestion…
… your ‘you choose an age‘ could be whatever age you are now.
If you like.
Endnote: I’ll talk about tactics to help you on this journey in other stories.
Because – I know – it’s hard.
2 Comments
As indie business owners, we’re very lucky that we can choose how to have the most fun every day. We can choose who we want to help, who we’d like to chat to, what we’ll wear and when we’ll work or play Thanks to going into business with Clare Francis, my best friend, who you met on #MicroBizMatters Day in Hull, it’s now 33 years since I last had a boss.
I, often feel guilty about how long I’ve lived, in comparison with 5 of my friends, including Clare’s husband, and all the fun I have with family and friends and alone too – I’m off to Malta for another month to write more stuff. But then again, to quote your fab article, I’ve had a lot of luck but I did choose not to have people telling me who I should help, what I should do, how I should behave and what I should wear. Selfish, I know.
What’s my top tip on choices? Choose a way of earning a living which gives you the most fulfilment and fun rather than dosh and status. Is that bonkers?
I think you’re right to choose what you have. I want to make choices that I’d want my children to look at and be influenced by. I want my daughter to do what makes her happy, not what others suggest she should. Life is short. I’d rather people spent it doing something shiny.