With confidence, you can reach truly amazing heights; without confidence, even the simplest accomplishments are beyond your grasp.

— Anonymous

As I sat down to think about what I should write today, I asked myself, “Self, what seems to be most lacking these days?”  And into my head came “confidence.”  If you don’t follow “the market” you may not be aware that there are certain statistics that are tracked weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly.  And when the market runs – up or down – it is often the result of one of these statistics.

These days the market is obsessed with the strength of the consumer.  70% of the business that occurs in the United States is you and I buying products and services.  When we decide that we’re going to stop spending and start saving or pay off our credit cards, the overall amount of money going into the economy shrinks.  When you and I are no longer spending, then businesses stop spending.  If we’re not out there buying “stuff”, then the stores that sell the stuff don’t need to buy more stuff and the companies that make the stuff don’t need to make any more stuff and people get laid off, so you and I get uncomfortable and spend less…  You see the problem.  The less confidence we have in our ability to survive economically, the more we reduce our spending and the cycle of contraction continues.

One of the statistics that gets measured is called the Consumer Confidence Index – a measure of the confidence you and I have in the current situation as well as our expectations for the future.  Lately, it has been falling quite a bit because unemployment officially is 10.2% – a historically high number.  Beyond the numbers, we all seem to know people who used to have jobs and don’t anymore.  So we feel unsure of what will happen next.

The Continuity Myth

One of the ways that we inject “certainty” into our lives is with the myth that things will continue just as they are.  When things are going well, we believe that they will always go well.  Real estate will always appreciate.  Stocks will always go up.  If we follow the rules, we will be OK.

When things go badly, we use the same logic.  Unemployment is rising, it will “always” be bad.  We know that it can’t keep rising indefinitely, it can’t go to 100% because after all, our politicians will still have jobs – that’s a certainty.  Even so, we’re afraid of losing our jobs.  Our home value is falling so we believe that real estate values will fall forever.  Gas prices will go up and up.

When things are going well, we hide our heads because we don’t want to have to worry and when things get worse, we worry ourselves sick.

Reality is a little more complex and a lot more unpredictable than how we usually view it.  As they say when you take an investing class, “Past performance may not be indicative of future performance.”  In other words, things change.

And this is why confidence is so important.  Just like driving to work involves lots of little adjustments to ensure that you don’t run down that guy on the motorcycle that swerved in front of you, life requires that we adapt.

Adapt or ????

You and I have a long history of adaptation.  Before we were born, we lived in an inviting warm space that provided for all our needs without our needing to do a thing.  Then we were born and we adapted.  We learned how to let others know when we needed something.  We learned how to move around.  And once we got all of that stuff under our belts, we were sent out into the cold cruel world of pre-school or kindergarten or first grade.

At some point, we all were forced out into a bigger world.  In reality, there was a plan.  We didn’t know it.  We didn’t understand or control it, but it existed.  And each time we were forced into a bigger arena, we adapted.

You and I have been successfully handling what life throws at us for all of our XX years.  Each time we’re forced to change, we get scared.  That’s a normal and natural reaction.

Yet, what we’ve proven over and over is that we CAN adapt.  Sometimes we jump in with both feet yelling, “Yippee!!!” and other times we sit down hard like we did when we were learning to walk.  Either way, we develop a plan to handle the new challenges.

And this brings me back to confidence.  It’s time that we acknowledged all that we have accomplished, survived and overcome.  It’s time that we remember all that we have learned and how well we have coped when things were bleak.  We have done this before – not in exactly the same way – but we have survived/thrived and we will again.

I’m not saying that it will be easy.  It may be hard.  But if you look hard enough, you will find inside yourself a little seedling of confidence.  Nurture it.  Encourage it.  Help it to grow and it will help you to adapt in these uncertain times.