Jar of Confidence

Pawel Czerwinski

We are always the same age inside. ― Gertrude Stein

Let’s start with acknowledging that confidence doesn’t appear out of nowhere, it’s deliberate even when we miss it. A tricky thing about confidence is that it’s sometimes invisible. It only became visible to me when I examined it through my shyness.

Shyness is annoying, it exposes you to the awkwardness of having to be perceived when you can’t charm your way out of it. All through my schooling, I relied on my shyness to afford me alone time. To read for hours & hours, even at night under my blanket (with no lights). It was my escape.

When you mix shyness with the unfamiliar rigor of university students and courses, coupled with an anxious-filled environment such as a college campus - it is a disaster.

Slowly but surely it was no longer an annoyance. The stakes felt high, I needed a way to separate my current-self from my past-self - a way to measure progress. The jar of confidence was born. It is a concept that helped me visualize what was before me - be it school, my interests, or making friends. Action-oriented ilhan was here.

Every time I took a step, danced towards a challenge, introduced myself- it was added to my jar of confidence. Since I deduced that confidence only came from practice, I decided to keep this going.

Through this exercise, I started to understand how my shyness has protected me. It contributed to my interests in academics, reading every book I could get a hold of, and thinking critically - which my mom loved ‘cause it meant I was not as susceptible to peer pressure.

Whether I was willing or not, being thrown into an unfamiliar environment set me up to fall short. My shyness becoming a liability when it has thus far acted as a blanket.

As a proper adult now navigating a career change, finding myself, and even in my current move to NYC - I’m continuously adding to my jar of evidence.

All this evidence builds up and starts to resemble what I’d call confidence.