The secret to Self-Confidence is in our Emotions
A few years ago, my first start-up failed. I had quit my well-paying job of 8 years and moved countries to start up my own. Within a year, I had to stop working on my dream company.
I was 32, unmarried, no relationships, no job and I had absolutely no idea what to do next. My self-confidence was in the dumps. I just locked myself inside my room all day — not talking to anyone, not doing anything else.
I knew I couldn’t blame anyone else. It was completely my doing. Somewhere inside me, there was a tiny voice that if FAILURE was my doing, then SUCCESS can be too. There was a tiny ray of hope amidst all the chaos. I followed that tiny voice. I decided to write one blog article a day. That’s all. Nothing more. Nothing less. I don’t even know why I chose this task — I have never written before this in my entire life. Guess I just needed a task that is clear and specific. Writing one article per day was that task for me. I wrote 30 blog articles in 30 days.
I didn’t think anything would come out of it. But it did. In a short while, one startup approached me to write content for them — something I have never done before. In 6 months, I lead Growth Marketing for them, taking the startup through Product-Market fit — again something I have never done before. Now, a few years later, I am building Konvos to change the way individuals perceive and understand their own emotions.
In hindsight, I realize that the one thing that I did right despite everything going wrong was this —
RELYing on ME.
I relied on myself, even when I failed, even when I crashed on the ground and broke my face. Even when everyone around me said that I SHOULD NOT believe in myself. Even then!
When you rely on yourself every single time — you build a brain muscle.
Just relying on ourselves— completely and without any apologies, our brain will realize that there is no other way. It cannot put the blame on anything or anyone else. It cannot use others as a way to solve our problems. It cannot give any excuses anymore. But, there is one huge barrier here to relying on ourselves — Emotions.
I struggled with this. Every day, every moment I had moments when I had no clue of the emotions I was going through. I felt overwhelmed and no idea why. I ended up with analysis-paralysis on why I am feeling the way I did and what I could do.
If our emotions don’t make sense, how can we rely on them? If every moment we are questioning why we are feeling the way we are feeling — when will we ever rely on ourselves? If our actions based on our emotions seem stupid — how can we be self-reliant?
Relying on our emotions to truly guide us is a critical part of self-confidence. Anxiety, Fear, Depression, Anger — this could undermine all our actions to achieve confidence, making us self-critical despite our best efforts.
Take any role model you adore or any confident person you know — you will observe that their confidence comes from the complete belief in themselves and a critical part of that is believing that their emotions are truly guiding them. And this doesn’t happen by chance. They do put in a lot of conscious effort to build this Emotional Intelligence.
If self-reliance is a critical component of self-confidence, Emotional Awareness & Understanding is a critical part of Self-Reliance. This is exactly what we are solving for at Konvos.