Self-confidence is a very nice thing to have, or so they tell me. In fact, its importance nowadays seems even more sharply pronounced, I'd say largely due to the openness that social media provides, what with people being, or having to be, at least occasionally, more honest about their shortcomings and insecurities. When everything is visible and recorded you might as well call attention to it in order to take the edge off, I suppose. Additionally it seems as though motivational videos and other such content is quite popular. Everyone seems to be gunning after something they aren't entirely sure they'll ever achieve, and so they often turn to sources of motivation to keep on going or to find the strength to get up after getting knocked down. Then again, there are also the cynic pessimists like me who think it's all a bunch of baloney... Or well, not always. I do think there's an important place for self-confidence, as evidenced, for example, by my thoughts on Conor McGregor, but I also think too much confidence can come back to haunt you, as too much of a good thing always does. And so I couldn't help to think of Julianna Peña as a perfect and, at the time of writing, somewhat recent example.
Hers is an interesting story I wanted to run by some people I took a class with, but since that class is over and those people are long gone I decided to write it down here... So, in the UFC there's this fighter goes by the name of Amanda Nunes, and she's extremely dominant. She holds titles in two different weight divisions and she often wins so spectacularly that it seems no one can beat her. But due to the nature of the game there's always someone competing for a chance to fight her. One of those people was Julianna Peña, a fighter with a lot of heart but whose overall technique left her being seen as a constant underdog, and even though for a long time she kept saying she could beat Amanda nobody paid her no mind. Well, eventually it was her turn to have a go, and still everyone counted her out, so much so that betting on her to win netted you a hefty profit. But against all odds, against every single so-called hater out there, which nowadays can refer to legitimately nasty people but also to basically anyone who don't agree with you, and with seemingly no one on her side except herself, Julianna shook the world and took the title from Amanda.
It's not really my intention now to lean real heavy on the details but I do think this story paints a very universal picture, maybe because the art of fighting is itself such an universal act, at least metaphorically speaking. In other words, if your self-confidence helps you succeed at something but then you fail quite badly, then was said confidence ever warranted to begin with? Could it be that you did in fact get lucky your first time around? If so then confidence could indeed be a pitfall because instead of admitting your luck and working hard to catch up to your newfound success you instead relax and rely on your skills that were recently put to the test, and since you passed with flying colors you're the champ for a reason, right? Problem is, if you rely on your self-confidence, and your opponent also has some pretty high self-confidence, then it would seem the confidences cancel each other out and you're back to having to rely on skill. I guess at the end of the day self-confidence is no more than a potential boost, one that could help you tremendously if, and only if, your opponent severely lacks it. Then it could pay, then it could make a difference, but more often than not, behind all that self-confidence needs to be some actual skill with which to back it up. Luck may not be that bad a choice, but for how long will you get lucky?
It all actually seems rather intuitive. If you have such a low opinion of yourself you could begin to feel defeated, you could slack off a bit, lacking the motivation to put in the work, and so on, all of which does give you a huge disadvantage, you lose and on it goes this vicious circle. But then again the same could be true of self-confidence. You feel like the best, you also slack off a bit, you may not necessarily lack the motivation but you might feel you don't need to work as hard, all of which does give you a huge disadvantage, you lose and you're on track to develop a low opinion of yourself, or maybe you remain in delusion thinking you're the best, which is its own problem. The solution would be moderation, a boring answer to be sure, but maybe part of why it's so boring is because it's often universally correct. Had Julianna considered the possibility that she fought at a huge advantage the first time around she might have looked at the rematch more closely and would know to expect something different. Otherwise, like with most things, this creates an optics game. The fact that she was so over-confident going into the rematch but then lost so decisively does give a lot of weight to any told-you-so statements, and if there's anything that people like, myself included, is to be proven right about any given prediction.
Now, the reason I mentioned the class I took is because it was a class in which the teacher and a lot of my classmates had this self-confidence mentality. This thing of everyone is great, everyone can accomplish what they want, everyone has valuable things to say, there's no right or wrong, there's only my perspective and your perspective, everyone should believe in themselves because we all have what it takes to succeed, and so on and so forth. If I try to go at this clean and without pessimism I can see the appeal, and maybe I can see how some of that thinking might could be useful in my own life. But then again I can also see how it is kinda silly, even pathetic, and just factually wrong. Sometimes you aren't great, sometimes you fail to accomplish what you want, sometimes on some subjects you actually don't have anything valuable to say, sometimes there is an obvious right and wrong, some perspectives are meaningless, and sometimes you actually don't have what you need to succeed. So while them pretty words can be refreshing to someone who just needs that extra push, they can also be poison to someone who needs to do some hard work to begin with. At the end of the day, if someone offers you ten million dollars to solve the Rubik's cube in five minutes then it don't matter how much or how little you believe in yourself, you either know how or you don't. But for some reason we tend to act as if for our ever-illusive hopes and dreams we already have within us everything we need to succeed, we need only reach in and take it... Julianna most certainly had a sizable portion of self-confidence, and yet simply couldn't beat Amanda the second time around. So what did she need? More confidence or more work? Or then, perhaps more cynically of me, what if she actually doesn't have the skills to begin with?
Because that's another thing, our inherent limitations... Part of this modern mentality is that, with seemingly infinite options at our disposal, we may lean towards desires that are achievable at least practically speaking, but are they realistically achievable? That remains to be seen, but in the meantime the prevailing theory appears to be that you can do anything you set your sights on. But isn't that kinda generic? If everyone can be an awesome guitarist, then does that mean no bands from now on will ever have a drummer? If everyone can be a striker, then does that mean no team from now on will ever have a defender? In trying to include everyone at a baseline level of talent and goodness you kinda end up washing people in the same paint, thereby taking a varied and idiosyncratic group of people and making them into a team of generic individuals who could just as easily fulfill any necessary role, thereby making any actually special individual kinda worthless and irrelevant. And like a wise man once said – And when everyone's super, no one will be...
And so what in the goddamn am I even saying? I reckon I'm droning on, stretching a very simple idea into longer than it needs to be. If a constant spiral of pessimism and lack of self-worth leads you down a dark path, then likewise so does a constant spiral of unbridled optimism and prideful self-confidence. I suppose both situations happen to everyone once in a while, we've all been on either end of that bridge, and so like with most things it's not so much a question of picking one or the other. It's more a question of finding the right balance and holding on to it. Have confidence in what you can back up, be weary of what you can't, accept people's kind words when you can back them up, reject them when you can't. And between one and the other be sure to edge your bets. If you act super self-confident and you back it up then your stock rises tenfold, but if you act super self-confident only to get slammed tremendously then your stock drops hard. I guess the trick is to occasionally hide your doubts, especially from your opponent, but likewise hide your strengths too, maybe even from yourself. And when it comes to other people always leave them a little hungry because it's easier to rise above a bar you yourself set low... Then again, you either fall into a pitfall of over-confidence or a pitfall of never having tried in the first place. And although Julianna lost, at least she fought, which is more than can be said for most of us.
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