Шарль Пепен

Self-Confidence


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only a few minutes, before it starts to gambol. And we should have self-confidence?

      We compensate for this natural deficiency through culture – family, mutual assistance, and education. Thanks to the artistry of human relations, we eventually finish the work that nature left in draft form, and we acquire the confidence that nature withheld from us.

      Little by little, children gain confidence in themselves, thanks to the ties they have developed with others, the care that has been lavished on them, the attention focused on them, the unconditional love they receive. Small children don’t feel that this love is given to them for the things they attempt or succeed at. They are loved for what they are and not for what they do. This is the most solid base for the self-confidence they will later acquire. Being loved and looked at in this way gives us strength throughout our life.

      While self-esteem is based on our assessment of our own value, self-confidence is tied to our capacity for action, our ability to venture forth despite our doubts, to take risks in a complex world. To find the courage to adventure into the outside world, you have to have an inner assurance.

      Look at feral children, those children who have been abandoned at birth and raised by animals (bears, wolves, pigs …), only to be found and reintroduced into human society at a later stage. As François Truffaut’s The Wild Child dramatises (in a film based on real events), these children’s lack of attachment to other humans obstructs their development. They are as frightened as hunted animals, unable to learn human speech, seemingly irrecoverable to humanity. In the very best cases, using great patience and gentleness, the professionals who look after these children have managed to nurture fragile bonds with them and guide them toward limited progress. But their self-confidence always remains precarious, vanishing at the slightest obstacle. In the language of modern psychology, these wild children suffer from a lack of ‘attachment’ to other humans. They never bonded with others during their early childhood. They had no one to protect them, reassure them, speak to them, look at them. Deprived of the inner sense of security that comes from these attachments, they are unable to muster the minimal confidence they would need in order to see the world and other people as anything but hostile.

      The education process has been successful when the ‘student’ no longer needs his teachers, when he has enough self-assurance to leave his teachers behind. By taking a few steps toward the stranger who enters his house, the little boy is already starting to learn to be on his own. Others have shown him confidence, and it’s now his turn to act and show he merits it. In order to set off on his own, he draws on the love and attention given him by his family and those around him.

      I remember a concert that Madonna gave in Nice, France, when I was not yet eighteen. I was fascinated by her stage presence, her way of singing and dancing, her freedom. I remember the giant screen and her face in close-up when she sang ‘Like a Prayer’. Drops of sweat dripped into her eyes. In the look she gave the audience, in her smile, there seemed to be enormous gratitude. Naturally, Madonna was a highly skilled and experienced performer. The woman striding across the stage in every direction already had years of concerts behind her. But charisma can’t be attributed entirely to skill. There’s something more, an element of grace that the charismatic person must have. It’s in the eyes of others that the charismatic person seeks her own truth; she relates to others through constant reinvention. At the time, I didn’t understand very well what I was seeing on that giant screen. Today when I think back to Madonna’s vibrant smile, I believe she was finding in the audience’s response, in their energy, in their love even, that same confidence she had seen long before in the eyes of her dance teacher.

      If we have had the good fortune, in our early years, to experience warm and nurturing personal ties, later encounters that reinforce our confidence will still be important. But they will be experienced in a different way: through them we will relive, at decisive moments, the grace of someone’s early confidence in us.