Hypothetical Bliss

When it comes to living life, it is pretty obvious that something like confidence helps a lot. Confidence means the subtle difference between a straight back and one rolled out from insecurity, between strong eye contact and wayward glances, and between affecting your environment as you live your day to day life or living in response to and as the slave of that environment. It's difficult to write about something like this without sounding a bit like a broken record, repeating worn out stereotypes common to the self-help media craze. I can't help but think about the inspirational speaker on Dexter (spoiler alert): "If you want something, TAKE IT." Of course, this character epitomized the self-help trope in a negatively out of balance way. Confidence is not necessarily so specifically masculine as this character (and many authors) would have you believe, nor is it necessarily tied to the hunter-gatherer image we imagine of our ancestors. No, confidence is a marker for strength of personality, success, and security in ones finances, sex, and romance.

But confidence is actually a result, not a cause. Confidence is the digested product of something else, a thing that actually causes the positive results that confidence goes with. Confidence is a side effect of living life in the right way. I don't mean 'right' in a moral context: it has nothing to do with good, evil, or any sort of moral compass. It is right like a key is right for a lock. If the lock is your highest potential, the key is the right way of doing your life.

The key involves many factors, and factors that differ depending on the lock--the person. These factors are like the grooves in the key, each section must be shaped a particular way in order to access the lock. This is one reason that human being's quality of life (generally) improves as they age. The more you live, the more you learn and the better you understand the shape of the key (or the best way to unlock your highest potential by living your life right.) At 17 you realize that your days are better if you journal about it every morning before you start, at 28 you learn that losing touch with your friends causes a deep sadness that you dislike, and at 35 you learn that caring for your spouse while they are sick brings out a sense of emotional endurance and value that you didn't realize you had the potential for. All these factors create the complex landscape of the key to your life, and when you add that information together, you learn how to adjust your daily practice so that you maximize your own happiness, social output, help of others, and impact in the world. You learn what is important and how to keep those things prioritized.

Now, some people learn more quickly than others. Some people know what to pay attention for, and some have a hard time understanding the patterns in their life. Some people simply have more difficult lessons than others. Alcoholism and drug abuse tend to pair with those difficult lessons. There are some tools that help people progress ahead of others: things like therapy, emotional integrity, and some spiritual teachings.

When you see confidence sometimes it indicates only a step along the journey to living in the right way. This is because confidence is not just the product of using the key on the lock. Confidence isn't only associated with success in living your life correctly, but in the process of realizing that goal.