The Difference Between Self Belief & Self Assurance
4 December 2006[Words: 828, Reading Time: 3-4 Minutes]Â
These two concepts could easily be mistaken, and there is a lot of overlap between them. But they both serve a purpose in developing your confidence and helping you get what you want. They’re complimentary, and they feed into each other.
Self belief is “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know I’ll be okay.â€
Self Assurance is “I don’t know how, but I know what the outcome will be.â€
There is, at least for me, a difference in the way I feel when I ‘believe’ something will happen and when I ‘know’ something will happen. Phrased in this way alone, it would appear that self belief is a weaker or incomplete stage on the way to self assurance, but that’s not it.
Self Assurance, for the most part, works best in situations where you have the skills or the rules are clearly set out and you know the outcome you have in mind. Self Belief really shines when you’re in situations you’ve never been before and you have no specific desired outcome.
With Self Assurance, you can see the end result, and you’ve absolute faith in your ability to manifest that end result. You’re going to win; it’s as simple as that. But self assurance never takes into account any setback. When you suffer from a major setback, and can no longer see a way to your goal, that’s when you need self belief. Self belief sees you through the dark times and keeps you going until you can see yourself achieving what you want again. At which point, self assurance takes over once more as your main drive.
Self assurance won’t entertain negative thoughts or criticisms - they simply don’t enter into the equation. But if all you had was self assurance and one criticism cracked through your defences or you were simply bombarded with too many to handle, you’d have nothing to fall back on.
Self belief, however, deals with these criticisms. It might be as simple as “I don’t know how I’ll deal with that, but I’ll be okay,†but it’s enough to keep you focused, positive and confident.
Before you can have self assurance you need to develop self belief. But self belief alone will only guarantee you’ll be okay if you fail to reach your target. You need self assurance to reach your goal in the end.
Take, for example, any goal you have. Say it’s to play in front of a large audience and have them cheer for you. The first thing you need to be to do is believe it’s possible, even if you can see how. When you start out thinking about it, if you don’t believe it’s possible, you’re really only dreaming it’s possible. Most of your mental energy is spent on creating the belief that it is possible, and then that it is actually possible for you. When you begin to believe you’re capable of achieving this, situations begin to occur which will bring you closer to your goal. Self Assurance is what will help you make the most of these situations.
(Whether you believe in Intention Manifestation is beside the point here. Either you’ll find yourself in new situations or you’ll see opportunities in situations you already put yourself in. How these opportunities come about isn’t important here, what’s important is the what – the opportunity.)
One could argue that self assurance can only come about as a result of previous victories, and as such is conditional confidence, not true confidence. Self assurance can be developed that way, but unless you take the time to actually acknowledge your past wins and internalise that you can and will succeed previous victories won’t help. If you’ve yet to internalise complete self assurance (or even complete assurance in a particular task/area) self belief is what gives you the strength to give your all to the interaction with the expectation you’ll come out better off than beforehand.
A great many people only see self assurance as task specific or highly conditional upon previous experiences. A major drawback to this is that, like all conditional confidence, is that it’s not transferable to new or different situations. Personally I think you can be self assured without knowledge of past victories or any external source of validation when you spend enough energy on developing self assurance, (not just developing things that will give you self assurance).
When you are completely self assured you carry with you that magnetic air that brings people into your life that you need and want. Since you’re a winner you can help people succeed with their goals and they’ll want to be around you. If you think about people who are self assured (not cocky, arrogant or abrasive) they’re also charismatic and inspiring.
As you can see now, self belief and self assurance are complementary aspects of self confidence which fuel each other, and having one without the other is denying yourself success in so many areas.
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