How One Flavor of Confidence Helps You Find Another

Are you great at starting projects and terrible at finishing them?

It’s such a common problem among my friends! We’re a curious, excitable bunch. In my Flavors of Confidence framework, a person with this pattern usually has a lot of access to their Adventurous Confidence (the kind that makes people feel excited about new things) while they’re blocked on their Steady Confidence (the kind that helps people persevere). 

This pattern is common in people with ADHD, and seen beyond ADHDers as well. It can feel like an immutable personality type. But recently, I got the opportunity to give a session to a friend and fellow coach, Alan, who was dealing with this pattern. In this one session, he was able to get in touch with his Steady Confidence and disprove the idea that he just doesn’t have what it takes to persevere. 

This session shows one reason why it’s helpful to understand that confidence comes in many different flavors: a flavor of confidence that you’re strong in can actually become a portal to a flavor of confidence that you’re out of touch with.

Alan gets in touch with his Adventurous Confidence

Alan loves to learn new things, but has trouble following through. He told me he could get all fired up about something today, and then by next week, not have made any progress towards it. 

Recently, he met someone who has published 110 peer-reviewed articles in his area of interest. Alan found that captivating – what depth of expertise! It wasn’t just that he envied the guy – he really found this idea exciting in its own right.

As we worked with this, he found his own sense of passion. It was invigorating and exciting. As he embodied this passion, he felt capable, high-potential, but not in a grandiose way. It wasn’t that he had more potential than anyone else, he clarified, but that we all have so much potential. This is what I call Adventurous Confidence: a passionate feeling combined with trust in your ability to take on life, in a way that’s confident but not smug or foolhardy.

Confidence steers him past self-criticism into curiosity

The problem, he said, was that he can get excited about anything. “I can’t decide what to focus on!” 

This is where a lot of people would have gone off into self-criticism and perhaps a sense of defeat. But from this place of Adventurous Confidence, Alan noticed the good side of it: the way he felt curious and open.

In this openness, Alan spontaneously remembered a man he once knew who was very introverted and, honestly, kind of hard to be around. “Many people wrote him off,” Alan recalled. But Alan had realized that there was more to this guy than others saw. He had been a master craftsman, and his skill had really inspired Alan.

Using an Aletheia technique for identity work, I asked Alan how he felt towards his past self who had realized that there was more to the craftsman than everyone thought. “Grateful,” he said. “I’d always had the seed of curiosity, but it really unfolded into something beautiful there.”

Adventurousness gives way to steadiness

I asked Alan what his gratitude felt like. He pointed at his chest, struggling to find the words. Struggling to find words is actually a good sign – it meant he was discovering something he didn’t consciously know about himself yet.

The first phrase that came to mind for it was “a cold ache.” But this was a terrible way to put it, he said. 

I wondered what a positive cold might feel like. I asked, “Is it cold like fresh, brisk?” I was wrong, but my question helped him see what was right.

“Oh, it’s cold like solid. It’s a solid pipe from my root to my sternum. But it’s hollow, it’s a tube, plenty of space for things to pass through.”

This got my attention. Solid, like metal, is a way that Steady Confidence is often first experienced. People often feel it as a sort of vertical support in their body, sometimes in their spine. This kind of poetic sensory experience is why I call these “flavors” of confidence instead of just types. People often experience them through imaginal versions of the five senses – sometimes even as imaginal tastes! Learning to recognize the feel or flavor of confidence can help you notice it more often and embody it more fully.

“And what about the ache?” I asked. He paused to feel into it. “Oh, it’s that it’s persistent!” he replied. 

Ah! Aches are persistent feelings, so his brain had offered up the word ache to express that this felt sense had a persistence to it. This was further evidence that he was touching into Steady Confidence, which helps us persist instead of giving up.

I asked him what it felt like to be himself, with this solid pipe feeling. “I feel decisive,” he answered. He decided to stand up. “I’m solid. I can’t be knocked over.” He felt like the hero in a martial arts movie, with guys coming at him and just bouncing off. “I’m impervious to threat.” 

By physically and verbally taking a stand as solid and determined, he was embodying Steady Confidence – not just feeling it, but being it.

A shift in identity

Alan won’t feel the effects of Steady Confidence 24/7 from this point on, of course. But now he knows that it’s an aspect of who he is, that it comes from within without needing to be forced on him. He doesn’t need to be hemmed in by an identity like “I’m just not the kind of person who finishes what he starts.”

After embodying a Flavor of Confidence, it’s important to act on it in real life. So I asked Alan what he wanted to do next. He was clear that he needed to go do something, not just get on Netflix. He decided to review the materials for a class he had taken that he wanted to be more committed to.

This isn’t just playing to your strengths

When you view yourself as fixed in an identity, like “I’m just bad at finishing projects,” you might think that you need to use your Adventurous Confidence to make up for your lack of Steady Confidence. But when you realize that there is more to you than even you are aware of, then you’re not limited to strategies like “well, I’ll only take on really short projects.” Sure, you can play to your strengths. But you can also use your strength as a portal to the flavor of confidence that you normally struggle to access. Whatever helps you be your best self can be a way to get to know more sides of your best self.