What we do, is who we become
Last week, I took a train to Edinburgh. Well, I tried to. The thing I love - loved - about train travel compared to flying is that it’s so much easier. You don’t have to go through security checks, you can arrive close to your departure time, and you can take the luggage you need.
Or you used to be able to.
I was taking a set of golf clubs up to Edinburgh to play a few local courses over the weekend. What I hadn’t realised is that I’d booked some sort of new budget fare that had restrictions on the type of luggage you were allowed to take on board. One of them being sporting equipment.
So at the last minute, I had to rebook a new ticket, navigate refund information, rush to a new platform and board a different train, while thinking about the knock-on effects of my new arrival time on the other end.
My brain was scattered as I tried to settle into the journey. An elderly woman with a thick northern accent took her seat next to me as I fiddled and phaffed with my phone, headphones, bottle of water and laptop.
I like to think of myself as being an organised person. I try to be one. But in that moment, in my discombobulated state, I wasn’t. I dropped my water bottle, I reconfigured my laptop position numerous times, I misplaced my headphones case. As I searched for the normally obvious white case, I tried to explain to this pleasant woman what I was looking for. But between her accent and my South African one, not much was being effectively communicated.
If someone had asked her what sort of person I was (and in the highly unlikely event she even cared), I must have come across as a scatter-brain. Someone who flusters easily and is perhaps somewhat chaotic.
These are things which, if someone accused me of being, I would dispute, and in many ways would confront my sense of myself.
But in those moments, they were also true.
How do you hold your view of yourself in moments like that? What is the true version of myself; the order, or the chaos?
I believe the ability to answer this question lies in what your idea of confidence is.
As we approached Newcastle, the elderly woman gathered her things and started making her way to the exit. We exchanged a friendly smile and brief goodbye, as she went on with her life, and I carried on towards the Scottish border.
As we pulled away from the station, I reflected on those moments a few hours earlier, when the train departed Kings Cross station and I had found myself scratching hither and dither for my headphones case.
And I laughed.
I believe a lot of people might describe me as Type A, if they were being generous, ‘anal’ if they were less inclined. But I found humour in the fact that to this woman, I would be anything but (if she even gave me a second thought, which of course she wouldn’t).
And I believe the reason I could find the humour in this, is that I know that I am an ordered person. Because I have stacks of undeniable proof and evidence, gathered consistently over years and years that says so for me.
I enjoy the discipline in how I approach my exercise routines and form. I take pride in keeping a clean and tidy home. I regularly delete unused icons on my desktop, and close the internet tabs I’m no longer using.
This stack of evidence allows me to develop confidence in the view of myself that I am an ordered person. I cannot control how others perceive me, but I can control the acts and effort I choose to exert on a regular basis that craft the perception I then hold of myself.
On the return journey, while assisting my elderly parents, with luggage, navigate the underground system through central London, we encountered an inevitable travel disruption. Through a 3-hour detour, we managed to keep an orderly approach in trying circumstances. And that’s another notch I can call on which backs up my view of myself when it comes to how orderly I might think I am.
Now all of this is not to say that I don’t have blindspots. Like anyone, of course I do. And that’s why including the views of others as an input into my world view is important.
But this stack of evidence allows me to entertain a counterview of myself when faced with a particular context; the view of someone else. It allows me to weigh up how others might see me against how I perceive myself, and make a considered call on which evidence seems to be greater. In this case, I believe mine was infinitely so versus the woman departing the train. And I can move forward knowing that moments don’t define me, my track record does.
When we don’t have a stack of evidence to draw on, or we aren’t able to see the examples of our past, that’s when we might lack the confidence to believe in the convictions of our own identity.
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The first step in gaining confidence, in shoring up our view of ourself, whatever we might want or think it to be, is not affirmations, it’s action.
It’s taking a conscious decision to gather evidence behind the vision of ourselves we want to see.
Want to be more ordered? Perhaps that starts with evidencing that by making your bed every day for a month.
Want to see yourself as a good friend? Create a stack of WhatsApp evidence that says you messaged your best friend each week to check in on them for a year.
Want to think of yourself as a writer? Develop a substack thread of posts that totals over 50, 000 words over the past 10 months.
Confidence starts with doing. And then doing again.
Until we have a stack of undeniable proof that we who are we say we are.
“Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become.”