Something to Keep
“The only way to be truly confident is to simply become comfortable with what you lack.”
Mark Manson
A Second Look
Throughout history, confidence was seen as a sin, Mark Manson tells us in his latest video. People with confidence were looked down on and judged. In the modern world, though, we’re told to pursue confidence. This is the trait that gets us what we want, whether it’s the nice job, cool car, or hot spouse. So which is it? Is confidence a sin or a virtue? Well, it’s neither.
Confidence comes not from what we have, but from what we lack. This means confidence isn’t always a good thing because you could be confident about the wrong beliefs. In other words, you could be overestimating your competence in something, which would make you delusional or even narcissistic. As you’d expect, delusion and narcissism aren’t good traits to have.
So what’s the solution? We must develop the ability to tolerate failure. Instead of pursuing confidence, we should pursue courage. Courage is one of the four cardinal virtues that Aristotle talked about 2,300 years ago. For Aristotle, a good life was a virtuous life, and there are four virtues we should pursue: prudence, justice, fortitude (or courage), and temperance. And you build courage not by confirming you’re good at something, but by taking risks and knowing you’ll be fine even when you fail.
As counterproductive as it sounds, tolerating discomfort and weathering rejection and embarrassment is good for us. While positive psychology would encourage us to stand in front of the mirror and tell ourselves how beautiful we are, real change requires asking more difficult questions. What am I afraid of? How can I take action to change it?
Now let’s talk about something that has always scared me: fashion.
Something I Liked
In this beautifully shot, documentary-style video, Matt D’Avella talks about fast fashion and consumerism. I knew about Shein and fashion hauls, but I had no idea that it was this bad. Apparently, the people behind fashion apps are constantly coming up with new trends to get people to buy more clothes.
I’ve been trying to dress better lately, so I’ve been doing the opposite. This means I get the best items I can afford, and my one rule is that they have to be timeless pieces. Think Oxford shirts, T-shirts, classic sneakers, and dark-wash jeans. Or maybe I’m too old to care about fast fashion. Although I don’t use Shein to buy dozens of shirts from China, I still found the video interesting, and let me emphasize this again: exquisitely shot.
