Self Confidence

Self confidence knows your way round yourself, knowing the ins and outs so instinctively that you always have strength to draw on. Somewhere inside, from the stillness, you can find something. Even areas of weakness don’t shake the mind, because they’re already under demolition; they’re empty houses that your thoughts don’t even bother to enter anymore. And if you do bump into such a part of you, confidence brings the power to walk gently away. Where there is no confidence, you think you ought to stay and make a display of what is bad, a celebration of the weak.

Self confidence makes you move more slowly, speak more quietly, stop to look at whom you’re communicating with instead of flattening life by rushing heavily on. It enables you to stand happily and quietly in a gap of ignorance and let everyone wait until you’re ready. Then in the quietness, to fill the moment with strength before a word has been said. And when nerves persist in shaking your poise, it enables you to administer softness and silence and make the whole machine calm down. Self confidence runs deeper, much deeper than nerves.

Self confidence works gently, but it can also cut sharply the web of false connections that make you think that people are criticizing. And at its strongest, it makes it possible to disintegrate a thought in some one’s mind before it’s even been realized by the thinker. So they were going to shoot, but they veer off into passivity. Confidence is power.
What is the method to gain self confidence? One way is to talk, not to others but to you. At moments of insecurity, it’s warming to talk to someone else, but is safety to talk to you. Because inside there is a reserve of love that will see you through anything.

Friendship isn’t so consistent or eternal. After talking to you, giving nerves a niche to quietly panic in, then it’s best to ‘do’. Action together with quiet love kills nerves and creates a reserve of courage that, stored, can be drawn on later. The more you love, then do, the deeper the store of courage, and the less you have to prime yourself. Ultimately the love you needed can be given to someone else. Complete and untouched. And not only love: peace, serenity, loyalty....can all be given, without you touching them. Life may be asking you to be determined, but you can still find a drop of serenity for someone else’s use. Then you’re not just giving on the basis of mood, but you’re filling a need.
Where confidence is deep, there is the foundation for real giving. Real means “I” am silent; no jangling nerves or loud thoughts. Stillness. And in that stillness, I can hear you.

MeditationInfo.org

Self Confidence