There’s a bizarre link between confidence and dishonesty. To display confidence about a thing is to misrepresent your level of comfort with said thing. Who is this mythical person who has no insecurities about that which she claims to be assured about?
The way I convey confidence is by misleading others about how certain I am about what I am saying. I’ll attempt theatric command of my vocal inflection. I’ll avoid words that hedge, even though qualifying my statements and quantifying my uncertainty would be the intellectually honest thing to do.
When I’m told to be confident, all I hear is an invitation to lie ever so slightly more convincingly.
