Confidence is a skill. Building the skill of confidence takes time and effort. Everyone starts at level one. It’s just that some people are willing to grind right off the bat. These are the people with “natural” talent in socialization and self-confidence. That’s not you. That’s not me. We’re stuck at level one. It doesn’t have to be that way though!
Massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) serve as a useful model here. At their core, a lot of these games are based on a skill-building model. Your character can specialize in certain traits, skills, or characteristics and build on them gradually. Take the game Runescape as an example. It has a skill tree1 that features a couple dozen individual skill paths for a player to develop (see attached image).
These skills all start at a baseline level one. From the Runescape fandom page, they’re developed through the following:
Skills are a player’s trainable abilities that may be levelled throughout their game play. Any given skill can be trained by various actions that relate to the skill. Performing any of these various actions grants the player experience in that skill.
You can choose to focus all of your energy on a single skill or you can become a specialist. Through repeated actions and practice, you hone and refine these skills to the point that they become easy. Likewise, developing a skill means that you can handle greater and greater challenges related to that skill.
Life Is Like A Video Game
Without me hitting you over the head any further, you get the point. Life is just like one of these video games. All of the things you’re good at or experienced in required an incubation period where you built those skills through repeated actions and exposures. Everything. Babies can’t walk when they’re born. The funny part is that we don’t think of our interests like that. They just come naturally and are grown seemingly without any effort on our part.
To some degree, the “without any effort” part is true. All of us have innate tendencies and interests. These are the things that grow organically without us having to think about them. Our interests drive our actions and we readily get better. The problem comes when we want to mature a skill that isn’t one of our natural tendencies.
Why is it that socialization or self-confidence build so slowly for some of us? Unlike the naturally-developed skills described above, these things take a conscious effort. This is true of any characteristic that you can’t readily see in yourself. It’s likely that you already know which skills are lacking. We just need direction on building those.
Continuing with the video game model, we just need to take hints from digital progression systems. From the first level, you get some quick wins. It usually only takes three or four wins for you to reach level two. This progressive flow means that higher levels take longer to reach. However, the quick lower levels build immediate positive feedback loops. The easy early wins snowball into rewarding later wins that require a little more effort.
Confidence As A Buildable Skill
How does that translate into building confidence? It follows the exact same pattern. Focus on early small wins. Talk to two people that you haven’t before and consider it enough to progress to level two. At level two, talk to an additional three people and you’ll be sitting pretty. Your confidence can’t help but grow under the continual flexing of your comfort zone.
Take a genuine interest in the people around you. If you dig deep enough, the average people you meet on a daily basis are more nuanced than just about any video game character. Use this interest as motivation to keep going. Foster the same external focus I discussed in a previous post.
What happens when you hit a roadblock in your development? Say you’ve tried talking to a handful of people, but it just isn’t clicking yet. Maybe you talked to a couple people who steamrolled you and left you feeling demoralized. No worries! We can take another lesson from video games here.
At some point, you need to find less powerful “enemies” to practice your skills. It might sound strange, but you should seek out easier challenges to continue waxing your confidence while protecting your morale. Try to find a few people who are quieter or less confident themselves and talk to them. That way, they won’t strongarm the conversation and you can both feel heard.
Eventually, you’ll have talked to enough people that it becomes second nature. These upper-middle tier levels will start to feel repetitive. You may even stall out. That’s okay as well.
Challenge Yourself Further
At that point, your progression will rely on increasingly challenging scenarios. You could continue spending your time talking to cashiers and the random people you encounter at the gas station, but you’ll only be maintaining your current level. There’s no problem with that if you want to stay there. However, further challenges await for the daring.
You could sign up to give a public talk. Lead a weekly special-interest group in your community. You could even talk to your boss about a promotion or change of roles. The sky is truly the limit at this point.
Most of us will sit happily at the middle level of progression. We don’t need accolades or positions of leadership, but it should give you a sense of comfort knowing that there’s nothing stopping you from reaching far beyond your initial reach. Remember, everything in life is a skill and all skills can be practiced. The best part about starting from zero is the only direction to go is up. Get out there and get practicing. Get it done.
- Runescape skill tree ↩︎