Between Confident and Right, Always Choose the Former

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How often have you stopped yourself from speaking up in the fear that you might get the answer wrong? How often have you noticed yourself overthinking what you have to say way too much, and then hearing someone else voicing the same thing you wanted to say? How often have you felt in someone else’s shadow, not because your thinking is less credible, but because this “someone else” simply puts away the anxiety and second thoughts and just makes their ideas heard?

Welcome to the club, dear you. I’ve struggled with this way too long, and when I finally had a revelation on how much this lack of confidence doesn’t help us get through life, I decided to write about it. Now listen up, here’s the main thesis of today’s article:

Being confident is sometimes more important than being right.

Yes, sounds very controversial and adamant, but let me tell you a little story of how I came to this conclusion.

I learned this by observing one of my former classmates at the university where I pursued my Master’s. She was the kind of person that gave zero damns whether she was right or wrong. If she had a thought to share, she would do so. What other people thought of her didn’t bother her at all. At times she would go a bit extreme in indulging in meaningless monologues, but despite that, she had this distinguishable tendency of making her point — whatever it was — with full-scale confidence.

In the beginning, I would notice myself getting slightly pissed at that: there’s me, having so many accurate things going through my mind, yet stopping myself from speaking up because I overthink too much and let myself be trapped in this fear of being wrong. And then there’s her, free to express whatever comes to her mind, and in a manner that just screams: “I’m just here to talk to you all and discuss, even if what I say doesn’t make a lot of sense”.

One important disclaimer: if you ever feel this itching irritation from someone else’s actions, although they don’t imply anything negative, try to explore these feelings deeper. Chances are, it’s your growth area talking to you. We often feel uncomfortable around someone who allows himself to do something we are not yet ready to allow ourselves or dares to do things we are reluctant to do, whatever the underlying reasons are.

The funny thing was, nobody looked down on that classmate of mine if she made mistakes. Nobody judged when she said something unrelated or slightly missed the point of the discussion — at least, not publicly. Her opinion was valued no matter the content because she always talked with this striking confidence, and eventually, it made its impact and mattered more than what exactly she had to say.

And that’s when it hit me: in healthy, liberal societies and societal groups, we all have this right of expressing ourselves freely and not being judged for that, whether what we say is legitimate and “right”. Who decides what is right, anyway? This sharp contrast between two behaviors — mine and my classmate’s — made me realize that by staying silent and fearing making a mistake or sounding stupid, I was just taking away so much from myself! I was taking away the chance of being recognized. The chance of being heard out. The chance of exchanging ideas and opinions, discussing, debating, and deriving new ideas. The simple opportunity to expand my connections list and engage with inspiring people. That looks like quite many missed opportunities to me.

The good thing is, as with any other issue: as soon as you realize it exists, you’re already one step further to combating it and making your life better. Here is some advice to help you on your journey of becoming more courageous to speak your mind:

• Whatever you say, say it with confidence. No one’s gonna trust a single word you say if you are looking down, showing closed postures, and don’t make eye contact.
• Between being right and being confident, always choose the latter. No matter how constructive your speech is, how knowledgeable you are, or how correct of an answer you are giving — if you sound unsure and always try to subtly question your credibility, no one is going to take you seriously.
• Whether at school or work, learn to be courageous enough to be wrong. Too often people who have something to say stay in the shadows and don’t speak up because they fear being wrong. But the harsh truth is — say what you wanna say. Not to just blather things that don’t make sense: think it through but don’t overthink it. In a healthy educational and professional environment, it’s all about enabling discussion and sharing views and opinions. Just because yours differs or you are offering an uncommon point of view doesn’t mean that you’re automatically wrong or lack knowledge or experience.
• What doesn’t make you sound confident: speaking with an upward inflection at the end of sentences and inserting “I think”, “I suppose”, “I’m not sure”, “I might be wrong”, and so on. Why? Because when you’re delivering your thought, you’re already telling people what you think, so accentuating this fact makes you sound uncomfortable and unsure. Publicly admitting that you “might be wrong in saying that…” automatically devalues your credibility by some points, so people do not get to make their judgment — they already got the subconscious green light to assume that you’re not sure about what you say and might indeed be wrong. You don’t want that, trust me.
• Being confident = being convincing. A 1982 study by two American psychologists, Barry Schlenker and Mark Leary, showed that perceptions of competence are equally important for success as the actual competence. What that means is — when a person sends non-verbal signals of confidence (by the way he speaks, in our case), others perceive him as competent, even though in reality, his expertise and qualifications might not be that high.
  The researchers of the study explain this phenomenon with the term called “confirmation bias”, as in people’s general tendency to believe what they’re told and to confirm those beliefs by selecting pieces of information that support it. If you project confidence, other people in the room will tend to believe that you know exactly what you’re talking about, and they will unconsciously filter ambiguous information or some non-verbal signals that might prove otherwise. Another important finding that Schlenker & Leary’s study showed: between a humble person and a confident one, people always tend to choose the latter one. Remember this next time you’re about to deliver a speech or make a point.

All this is by no means to encourage you to fall into another part of the spectrum and become this obnoxious know-it-all who takes too much space with their overwhelming overly confident being that has no grounds to be proved legit. Just keep in mind that if you wanna be heard and respected, and your opinion — valued and taken seriously, don’t go with “humble”. Take a deep breath, and land on the famous “fake it till you make it” to spread confidence with every word you say. Once you start behaving assertively, it won’t take much time for this behavior to sink in and for you to exhibit it naturally and effortlessly.