Self-Confidence: A Philosophy. Charles Pepin

      This truth about relational confidence helps us to better understand the suffering of certain oppressed minorities. Often, the best way to oppress them has been to destroy the bonds between individuals by every means possible, and even to remove the possibility of forming interpersonal solidarity. The accounts of former black slaves, and survivors of the Nazi camps, illustrate this unequivocally: nothing is more effective in breaking men than breaking the bonds between them, separating families, pitting one against another, and creating a climate of pervasive distrust and denunciation.

In his powerful book The Fire Next Time, published in 1963, African-American writer James Baldwin exposes this implacable mechanism of oppression and at the same time confirms that the only way to resist it and maintain one’s confidence is to know the value of one’s ties to others, to find in them the strength to fight: ‘Yes, it does indeed mean something – something unspeakable – to be born, in a white country, […] black. You very soon, without knowing it, give up all hope of communion. Black people, mainly, look down or look up but do not look at each other, not at you, and white people, mainly, look away. And the universe is simply a sounding drum; there is no way, no way whatever, so it seemed then and has sometimes seemed since, to get through a life, to love your wife and children, or your friends, or your mother and father, or to be loved. The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moon and the planets, flowers, grass, and trees, but other people, has […] made no room for you, and if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can.’

The psychoanalyst and writer Anne Dufourmantelle, author of Power of Gentleness and L’Éloge du risque (In Praise of Risk), who died tragically in 2017 while rescuing two children from drowning, made the radical statement that ‘there’s no such thing as a lack of self-confidence’. Listening to the patients on her couch as they tried to find words for their pain, she understood that their anxiety was primarily a lack of confidence in others, the disastrous consequence of a childhood cut off from the precious sense of inner security. The survivors of these unhappy childhoods were so deprived of security and of people who placed trust in them that they were unable to have confidence in themselves. When Anne Dufourmantelle says that ‘there’s no such thing as a lack of self-confidence’, she means that her patients’ anxiety derives from a lack of confidence in others. Self-confidence and a confidence in one’s relationships therefore refer to one and the same thing.

      This is similarly illustrated by paranoiacs: they have no confidence in themselves, nor do they have confidence in others. Being suspicious of everything that comes from the people around them, from the media, from the world in general, they suffer from ‘inner insecurity’. Consumed by their general mistrust, they can find no basis for having confidence in themselves.

There is consequently one action that will help us to develop confidence in ourselves and at the same time have confidence in others: let us venture out, let us establish relations with different and inspiring people, let us choose teachers and friends who help us grow, who awaken us and reveal us to ourselves. Let us look for relationships that are good for us, that increase our sense of security and thereby free us. And let’s remember the little two-year-old: he walks up to the guest who has just entered his house. He advances toward the unknown. He is afraid, obviously. A stranger has just appeared in his house. But he approaches him anyway. He walks forward with his fear. He has confidence in himself, just as he has confidence in the stranger and in the familiar faces around him. This confidence is not genetically or biologically determined. It is developed, little by little, in the intertwining bonds that have enveloped him since birth and reassured him, just like the towels we wrap around infants when they come out of the bath. We sometimes give their little bodies an energetic rub, as if to remind them that we are there, that we are taking care of them, that they are not alone. These attentions give them confidence. This, more than anything, is what they need. Later, when we encourage them to eat by themselves or take their first steps, we will show that we trust them. No one can develop self-confidence all on his or her own. Self-confidence is first and foremost about love and friendship.

2

       Go into Training

      Confidence through practice

      Give me a fulcrum, and with my lever I will move the earth.

      – ARCHIMEDES

      As an adolescent, Madonna shook off her inhibitions thanks to the words of her dance teacher. But she already danced well, having studied the art for years. And it was because he had noticed her talent for dance that the teacher singled her out for particular praise. We have stressed the relational component of self-confidence, but we mustn’t forget that it also has a great deal to do with skill.

The father of Venus and Serena Williams set his daughters on the path to success. He gave them confidence in the best way: he told them he believed in them, said they would rise above their social circumstances thanks to tennis, emerge from poverty and become the best tennis players in the world. But he didn’t just show confidence in them. He trained them long and hard from the moment they were old enough to hold a racket. The residents of Compton, California, found it fascinating to watch the Williams sisters training: they spent their life on the tennis court, with their father and a basket of balls. Even the gang members in Compton respected the Williams sisters and made sure that no one disrupted their practice. Their father taught them an aggressive style of tennis, starting with a powerful serve and heavy strokes from deep in the back court. He coached them to use an attacking strategy, where the point is decided in two or three volleys, a kind of tennis that hadn’t existed in the women’s game before. He made them hit the same stroke again and again, train and train some more, with a particular focus on serving – and Serena was the first woman to hit a serve that clocked at over 124 mph. The sisters did in fact become the best tennis players in the world, one after another claiming the number one spot in the World Tennis Association rankings. Serena Williams became the best women’s tennis player of all time, racking up thirty-nine Grand Slam titles, twenty-three of them in women’s singles events (beating Steffi Graf’s record), and fourteen in doubles including one when she was two months’ pregnant! In the history of tennis, she is the only female player to have thrice won a Grand Slam title after saving match point in the finals. It takes astonishing confidence not to falter in the finals of a major tournament when you are facing match point.

      This confidence came from her tennis skills, a product of her intense training. But it doesn’t just come down to skill. Thanks to repeating the same gestures over and over, they had become second nature to her. Her extreme skill in the end coloured her personality: in Serena Williams’s case, expertise seems to have transformed into confidence. Does this always happen?

In a book that has become a worldwide success, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell attacks the idea of innate talent and argues for the seductive ‘10,000-hour rule’, popularising an idea originally developed by the psychologist Anders Ericsson. Examining the careers of a group of violinists who trained together at the Berlin Academy of Music, Ericsson wondered what accounted for the differences between what were all excellent musicians. The very best became first violinists in prestigious orchestras or soloists with international careers; the very good ones became professional musicians; and the rest ‘only’ became music teachers. He asked them all the same question: ‘Since the time when you first took up the violin, how many hours have you played?’

      The results surprised him. By the age of twenty, none of those who would go on to become ‘just’ music teachers had played his or her instrument for more than 4,000 hours. All those who would become highly qualified professional musicians had played and practised on their instrument for about 8,000 hours. And the highest achievers, those who would become stars in the violin world, had all played for more than 10,000 hours. There wasn’t a single exception. Anders Ericsson then repeated his research with pianists and came up with similar results: professional pianists had about 8,000 hours of playing under their belts, while virtuosos had at least 10,000 hours. He didn’t find a single case of a musician who became a virtuoso without passing the 10,000-hour