The Mental Toughness Handbook: A Step-By-Step Guide to Facing Life's Challenges, Managing Negative Emotions, and Overcoming Adversity with Courage and Poise

by Damon Zahariades

Realigning Your Confidence Levels with Your Abilities Sometimes, our confidence levels move out of alignment with our abilities, knowledge, and readiness to adapt to changing conditions. When this happens, it’s important that we evaluate ourselves and realign our confidence levels with reality. If we’re overconfident, we might be inclined to take excessive risks, dismiss others’ opinions, and ignore our weaknesses. When we confront setbacks and challenges with this frame of mind, we risk being unprepared regardless of our courage. If we’re under-confident, we may avoid taking risks, allow others’ opinions to control us, and perceive our weaknesses as a harbinger of certain defeat. With this frame of mind, we’ll be hesitant to respond to setbacks and challenges altogether. It’s difficult to be mentally strong when our confidence levels are unrealistic. Both arrogance and unjustified self-doubt are the enemies of cognitive resilience and resolve. Arrogance might sustain us in the short term, but will lead us off course over the long run. Unjustified self-doubt may prevent us from responding to adversity altogether, fearful of certain defeat. Given the potential pitfalls of harboring unrealistic confidence levels, it’s important to perform a periodic self-assessment. Ask yourself: “Are my confidence levels reasonable given my circumstances?” “How do I respond to criticism?” “Am I immediately inclined to back down when challenged?” “Am I eager or reluctant to share my thoughts...