About confidence and how not to overdo it

I should start by saying that there are, probably, other people who are way more entitled than me to speak about how NOT to overdo confidence. I, for one, have been accused of lacking modesty more often than I care to remember. However, just because I’ve been found to lack it, it doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Saying that confidence is all about this or that is rather simplistic. There’s no genuine recipe for confidence. The best we can do is try to strike a balance between being so modest that our skills and talents go unnoticed and being so boisterous as to become a nuisance to other people. The million dollar question, though, is exactly how do you achieve that balance?
A confident person will often keep quiet and wait for when the time is right to speak up. But when he or she does speak up, there’ll be no hiding or downgrading the genuinely valuable features that person has. He or she will accept compliments at face value, knowing they are well deserved, and will wait for or even create the opportunity to show off his or her skills. He or she will not back off from a challenge, knowing that the risk of failing is also a chance to succeed. He or she will absorb the positive energy that other people’s trust and confidence in them creates, and will look for opportunities to reciprocate such feelings.
You might have noticed that showing confidence is often a case of opportunities. You might be as confident as a blue-blood British gentleman (silly example, but still, you get the point), if you don’t get an opportunity to show that confidence, you’re either forced to remain undeservingly modest or cross the line into becoming boisterous....
Which brings me to my second point. Confidence means being quiet AND patient. Now this is where I’m seriously struggling, as patience is a virtue I’m still trying to educate in myself. But it’s pretty obvious, really. Things don’t always go your way. In fact, they often don’t. Being confident means knowing that such an occurrence, when you don’t immediately get what you wanted, does not reduce in any way your value as a person, nor should it influence your sense of self-worth.
As it follows logically, being confident means, to a great extent, knowing what you want. And I mean really knowing what you want. That’s a tough trick to pull, as our needs, wishes, cravings, and desires are constantly caught in a whirl of external influences (think advertising, peers, media) and internal thought processes and emotions (think falling in and out of love, experiencing a loss, going through a period of intense excitement). Still, getting to know yourself and what you really want is a big part of being confident.
Last but not least, confidence is shy of absolutes. How many times have you read confidence-boosting “advice” saying: “Walk into a bar/room/wherever, look around, and tell yourself you can have any man in this room”? Or the even more simplistic: “Always tell yourself there’s nothing you can’t do once you set your mind on it?” The truth is this sort of advice is far from perfect. Get it into your head that you CAN’T have any man/woman you want, not because there’s something wrong with you (in which case your confidence might be affected by a rejection), but because people are so darn different it’s impossible for any given set of features, be it physical or psychological, to appeal to absolutely everyone. Same with being able to do anything you want. Sure you can... as long as the laws of physics allow it, so to speak. But do you really know what your goal involves? What are the sacrifices and investments required? What’s the ultimate satisfaction you’re getting from it? Once you’ve answered these questions, do you still want to do it? If so, go for it. But don’t expect me to ever believe you would answer yes to the final question to any given challenge whatsoever, just because it’s been presented as a challenge...
So there you have it. Confidence is that quiet, genuine light from within that guides us to where we want to go and allows us to get there when the time is right. And while achieving confidence is anything but easy, the peace that comes with it makes the whole effort well worth.