Climbing and Confidence
What a wall, oddly shaped pieces, dusty mats and failure teaches you about confidence
At the start of 2022, I committed to climbing. Or, more specifically, bouldering, since there are many forms of climbing.
Bouldering, in my biased opinion, is the best sport. You stare at a wall, observe the oddly shaped pieces protruding out of it, and then you attempt to climb, contort, jump or stretch your way up the wall. What’s not to love?
When you climb, beneath you are thick padded mats to protect you from hurting yourself badly should you fall off. Despite knowing the mats are there for protective purposes, fear tightens its grip around your throat as you sweat the possibility of missing the next hold and have gravity yank you down.
I particularly feel this fear on slab climbs. Slabs require you to lean forward on a wall, balance on tiny little holds and have a lot of faith in your feet not slipping off. I’m not a religious man, but there have been many moments where I’ve prayed for my soul as I precariously balanced one foot on a ½ inch foothold and clung on to dear life from my fingertips. It’s not the height I’m scared of. It’s falling and not being able to control the fall or slipping unexpectedly and having my body grated like cheese along the wall.
As a way of getting over this fear, I break down the climb into parts and practice the crux (the hardest part of the climb) over and over again to minimise the fear and familiarise myself with falling at funny angles.
How does any of this relate to confidence?
Well, at the start of this year, I set out on a mission to rebuild confidence. I’m not quite ready to fully write about how and why I lost it, but my confidence was in short supply, and the looming mountain of responsibility I had taken on was viciously demanding I find it.
I’ve learned a lot in the past eleven months about confidence: what true confidence is, where it comes from and how to forge genuine confidence.
But first, let me tell you what confidence is not.
I had confidence all wrong.
I believed confidence was a personality trait that caused people to become more successful in general.
I believed confidence was a quality you must practice: Fake it til you make it and power poses. But the idea of practising confidence is silly. It’s like saying you need to practice love.
I also mistook confidence for adventurousness and optimism. A sense of, “I’m going to do this thing because what is the worst that can happen?” That’s closer to courage or bravado, and those are still fine traits to have, but confidence comes from a different place entirely.
I thought confidence came from success — If you work at something long enough and become good at it, then confidence is the byproduct. While this is a bit more accurate, it’s still not what confidence is. I played poker for a long time and was good enough to make an indulgent living out of it, but I still didn’t feel confident. I felt the need to be validated at every point of my life.
After that one eventful high-stakes session, I moved down stakes to try and regain some sanity. I thought I’d be able to deal with the smaller monetary and emotional swings. But things turned from bad to worse: I started losing most sessions. Instead of reassuring myself that it was variance and spending more time studying strategy, I began to doubt myself and my decision-making abilities. I suffered what I thought was a crisis of confidence.
Upon reflection, it was not because I had lost confidence, but rather I never really had it in the first place. What I gained as a result of sustained excellence and hard work was mastery. Mastery is the product of working at something long enough and well enough to become so successful that it becomes a habit. But mastery in poker is a fickle mistress. It’s only as enduring as your next poker session.
If confidence is not a precursor for success, nor a product of it, then what is confidence? Well, let’s go back to bouldering.
After a while, you learn that the falling isn't as unpleasant as you thought. From there, you begin climbing other harder routes, knowing that if you fall off, you’ll be able to handle it. You feel the fear and do it anyway. Before you know it, you’ve mastered the climb, feel comfortable with risk, and grow stronger as a climber and as a person. That is confidence.
The confidence I get from bouldering isn’t entirely transferable to every area of my life, but more of it exists now than before. Confidence is a product of repetition and a product of failure. Confidence is knowing what the fall feels like and being familiar enough that you can be comfortable with taking the risk.
It’s nearly the end of the year, and it’s customary to do a little reflection. This year, I’ve spent my days failing at multiple things while growing more skilful at them. Bouldering, making conversations with strangers, public speaking, business, and writing. I learned what failure feels like, how I can prepare for it and how I can embrace it as a learning tool for growth. I’m not a master of any of these things. In fact, I’m a very long way away, but I can say without a doubt I’ve gotten better and grown more confident from seeing my progress.
How do I know? Last weekend I spontaneously went to a real estate seminar. At the start, the speaker asked who was shy and unconfident to put their hands up. He was trying to make a point that real estate was a people’s game. The speaker then asked whether anyone would like to come up to the front of the room and introduce themselves and what do they do. I’ve always had an irrational fear of public speaking. The last time I had done any kind of public speaking was at uni over ten years ago, and even then, I tried to get out of giving a presentation. But I volunteered to go up and introduce myself because there was no better opportunity to take the first step of overcoming my fears.
The way to forge real confidence is to set ourselves up for failure not in a way that we’re surprised or defeated but rather encouraged and comforted. When we allow a margin for failure, we become familiar with it, and we can develop certainty in our ability to overcome it.
So, what is confidence?
Confidence is something that comes from repeatedly hitting the mat, dusting yourself off, and climbing a little bit higher until you reach the place you were supposed to be all along.
— Jason Vu Nguyen