Learn to become more confident!
34°12’40.8″N 35°52’39.0″E
A rock climber’s life is in the hands of the belayer. The belayer is the person who controls the safety rope at the bottom of the mountain. When the climber shouts: “Belay”, the rope should be tight, holding the climber’s in his position.
Before any difficult or long reach move, the belayer needs to ensure that the climber’s position is safe and secure. Some holds are even hard to reach that the climber might jump to get it. Two scenarios emerge:
1. Either the climber succeeds and the belayer has to pull the rope and secure the rope again
2. Or, the climber failed at making the move and a fall will happen.
During the fall, the climber has only one way to stay alive, to rely on the belayer’s ability to pull the rope and keep him in place. The confidence of the climber comes from his courage and technical abilities in climbing, but no climber would risk a jump without trusting the belayer at the foot of the mountain.
Confidence: /ˈkɒnfɪd(ə)ns/ the feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely on someone or something.
The etymology of the word comes from: con (with) and fidere (to trust).
Confidence can be tackled in two categories:
Basic Confidence and Extended Confidence
Basic confidence is a quality of trust that you have in your abilities. This may vary from one person to another, naturally confident people can generally speak up, state their opinion meanwhile, less confident people might have a difficulty at talking to a stranger or need to think about it before doing it.
Both confident and less confident people within the basic confidence spectrum wouldn’t dare taking that climber’s jump. In fact, having a very high basic confidence allows you to explore everything within your common abilities. For example, a trapeze gymnast could perform all the tricks within his abilities, but he needs to know that there is a net beneath him before performing a new jump.
In order to reach to your extended confidence area, and start outdoing your skills and improving your abilities, you will need to rely on confidence generators: the belayer for the climber, the net for the gymnast.
Extended confidence is what will give you the power and the momentum to get out of your comfort zone and explore new areas. Confidence is knowing that someone is watching, someone has your back and will be there if you fail.
Improving your confidence requires you to surround yourself with people who will encourage you to get out, grow and take the jump!
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