Confidence 101

“Confidence is 10% hard work, and 90% delusion,” said Tina Fey in a 2010 Vogue Interview. This was not the view of confidence espoused during the Confidence 101 Anti-Oppression workshop that NSPIRG hosted on Nov.

21. The workshop was facilitated by Alana Paige, a fourth-year student at Dalhousie University.

Paige began by asking each attendee what confidence meant to them. The answers orbited around the ideas of self-assurance and strength. Paige’s definition, however, collected these ideas into a single phrase and made them infinitely accessible. “Confidence is the ability to know your self-worth and live in your truth,” said Paige.

She began a discussion around how to retaliate what she termed, “Confidence Cripplers.”She told the attendees about what her own Confidence Crippler was: throughout childhood, she was told “you’d be so much prettier if you had a narrower nose.” However, she said that through a process of self-reflection, she realized, “I have my dad’s nose, and why would I hate anything he gave me?” And so, the answer Paige and the attendees came up with for how to retaliate against insecurity is to surround yourself with people who boost you, with people who make it possible for you to be resilient.

Paige had the attendees play a game that she dubbed, “Friend Speed Dating.” The group went around and said what they thought made themselves a good friend. The answers ranged from funny — “I love sports even though I’m bad at them. We can suck together!” — to the heartbreakingly vulnerable — “I like to surround myself with people who I can grow with. I’m finally in a space where growth is possible.” The consensus? “That was really hard,” said one person. “Yeah, it’s different when you have to be vulnerable like that,” said another. Paige smiled and nodded in agreement.

At the end, one person asked Paige if the ‘fake-it-til-you-make-it’ adage is true. Paige responded, “Having confidence makes more confidence possible.” The answer was vague, but the total lack of power poses, mantras, and catchy slogans was telling: confidence, according to Paige, is hardly “90% delusion,” as Tina Fey would have us believe. “I wasn’t this person before,” says Paige, “how I developed my confidence was through trauma.” Experiencing insecurity and having the resiliency to overcome it. Paige’s brand of confidence, then, comes from a vulnerable place of self-knowledge through trauma that is crucial to the work of anti-oppression.

The work of anti-oppression is the work of re-imagining the world such that all people are safe to live in their identities to the fullest without fear of discrimination. However, to begin this process one must first examine their own identity and how the way they inhabit it affects those around them.

To create change, one must take ownership of their role in the systems of oppression at work in their surroundings. They must do so without shame, and with confidence, to leap past the hurdle of guilt that stops so many from making the necessary changes towards making our shared world a free one. In other words, anti-oppression must begin with confidence, simply because it must begin with the exact opposite of delusion. That is, the making of a free society begins with the ripple effect started by person daring to live their truth authentically.