The Self-Confidence Jar

How to build (and destroy) self-confidence...

If you have a ton of self-confidence already, this post probably won’t help you.

But if you have days where the self-confidence tank feels a little low, this blog will help.

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I’m not an artist.

But there’s a concept I’ve been thinking about a lot and I think it’s best explained with a doodle.

So today, I am an artist.

I present to you: the Self-Confidence Jar.

I’ll explain below.

The Self-Confidence Jar

You’ve got a ton of relationships.

Relationships with:

• other people

• your favorite restaurants

• sports teams

• music

• a pair of pants

But, by far the most important (and overlooked) relationship you have is the one with yourself.

Expectations for ourselves and others

In your relationships, there are expectations:

• Go to your favorite restaurant → expect to eat awesome food and receive friendly service

• Go to a trusted friend with a problem → expect them to listen and give you their 2 cents

• Buy a “Make Video Horizontal Again” hat → expect to get an awesome and hilarious hat in the mail in under 7 days (I will never stop trying to sell these hats)

And the relationship with yourself is no different: there are expectations for it.

But weirdly enough, we don’t hold ourselves to those expectations as strongly as we do with other relationships.

Here’s some examples.

If you went to your favorite restaurant and they served you a Pop Tart instead of fancy pasta, you’d probably be like “Wtf! This is a Pop Tart, are you guys pivoting the business or do you just hate me?”

Similarly, if your friend said “Hey wanna go to the gym tomorrow at 7AM?” and you said “Yeah, sure that sounds like a really good way to spend the morning, let’s totally do it.” and then you show up tomorrow and they don’t come…

You’d be pretty upset.

You’d probably say something like “Hey wtf man, what happened to the gym this morning? I was there all alone like a loser. I don’t even like gyms, why the hell did you do that to me?” (you know, a very rational response)

But, on the flip side, if you thought to yourself, “Yeah, I’m definitely going to hit a lift in the morning. I’ll set my alarm for 6:30 AM and I’ll be in the gym by 7 AM” and then you wake up, hit snooze, and don’t go, there isn’t any big blow up. Nobody seems to care.

Because you aren’t really damaging any relationships, so no harm done, right?

Wrong!!

You’re forgetting about the relationship with yourself.

And you damage it when you make and break promises to yourself.

It’s the sneakiest form of damage, because it’s not visible on the surface.

• No angry texts

• No silent treatment

• No tough conversations

Let’s use the Self-Confidence Jar to examine this further.

The Danger in Breaking Small Promises to Yourself

The Self-Confidence Jar (SCJ) concept is simple:

1. Every time you make a promise to yourself and keep it, you are adding a ball to the SCJ.

2. Every time you make a promise to yourself and break it, you are taking out a ball from the SCJ.

3. Your self-confidence is a measure of how many balls are currently in your SCJ.

Let’s define a “promise” as anything you tell yourself that you are going to do.

And not in a sarcastic or wishful thinking sort of way.

But like you genuinely mean it when you say it.

Examples:

• “I’m going to go to the gym first thing in the morning.”

• “I’m going pick up a daily journaling habit this year.”

• “I’m going to call my mom Sunday night.”

It may seem inconsequential to break these small promises.

And on the surface, it is.

There are no immediate, visible consequences.

Your day won’t really be affected, and its unlikely that your self-confidence will deteriorate too much.

But the danger comes in the habit you’re forming.

You are setting up bigger dominos that will come crashing down later on.

By breaking these small little promises, you are slowly teaching yourself that your word to yourself holds no weight.

And one day, down the line, there’s going to be something where you really need to trust yourself, to trust that you’re going to follow through.

And in that time you’ll have to look inwards for reassurance that you’ll be able to pull it off.

You’ll look back at your track record and all you’ll see is a dusty road full of empty promises.

And that’s a scary thought.

But have no fear, there is a way to fix this using our trusty Self-Confidence Jar.

Building self-confidence is like building muscle.

We need to get reps in.

Reps of keeping promises to ourselves.

We can use small promises as practice reps to start building back up our self-confidence.

If you have super low self-confidence, start with little baby weights (promises) before moving up to the big boy weights.

Make some small promises and keep them.

Promises you can deliver on in a day.

Every time you successfully keep a promise to yourself, you are adding a ball to the Self-Confidence Jar.

Small promises are small balls.

Big promises are big balls (lol).

If you make a habit out of saying things to yourself and then following through, you’ve got a habit of filling up your Self-Confidence Jar.

And that’s a great habit to have.

Before you know it, you’re going to have an overflowing SCJ.

In my life, I’ve had times when I’ve felt super down on myself and this framework ALWAYS helps me get back on my feet.

But you have to make it a habit.

Commit to filling your SCJ back up.

Make the promises and keep them.

Less, But Better

A secondary effect of using the SCJ framework is that it forces you to be more aware of the amount of promises that you make, knowing that you have to deliver on all of them now.

You can’t make as many promises as you used to.

Let’s do some basic math.

Assuming you have the capacity to deliver on 100 promises each week, if you only keep 10% of the promises you make (a recipe for low self-confidence) you could make 1000 promises each week.

But now that you’ve changed your ways and are hyper-aware of keeping your promises (not because you care so much about the promises themselves, but because you don’t want to feel lousy and have low self-confidence) you can only make 100 promises per week because you are going to deliver on 100% of the promises you make.

That’s 1/10th the promises you were making before.

Basic math baby! Einstein would be proud!

So if you only make 1/10th of promises that you used to make, you’ll naturally start to be extra careful with the ones that you do choose to make and only choose promises that are worth making.

Wrap it up, Flickman

So here is the TL;DR.

Breaking promises to ourselves = no bueno.

Use the SCJ framework and visual as a guide on how to rebuild your self-confidence.

Get some momentum going, make promises, keep them, and start to prioritize which promises are even worth making.

Hope your 2024 is off to a hot start.

Love you,

Flickman

INSPO ARTICLES:

https://oliveremberton.com/2014/the-problem-isnt-that-life-is-unfair-its-your-broken-idea-of-fairness/

https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person