By 
On a scale of Kanye to a doughy pre-pubescent 14-year-old, where would you say your confidence is?
More pertinently, where should it be?
Increasingly, we’re told to lean heavily Kanye on this spectrum of ego or confidence (they are two different things, but in this context, they’re a little more similar). Be your own biggest fan, believe you can do anything, fart in everyone’s face and immediately say, “You’re welcome.” Walk into the room like you’re the baddest motherfucker alive over and over until you actually believe it.
Expressing this level of belief in yourself is not unlike running a cult. You’re the leader trying to convince the world of this crazy, completely baseless idea you have in your head, pay you $299.97 a month to advance to the next level of Emerald Wolf power, and drink your death kool-aid.
In order to sell people something so unproven and ridiculous (and you know, murderous), you really only need one thing: a projection of unflinching, over-the-top, “Dude, maybe shut up a little,” level confidence. You need to have your church collapse around you, and then, with a completely straight face, say, “This is the best built church of all time. I am the best builder ever. Now eat my magic space sand and join me in the eighth dimension.” You need to gaslight the shit out of everyone around you (including yourself) until they believe you.
Just as you can use this repetition and bravado to convince people to join your cult, you can also convince people (most notably yourself) of a similarly absurd notion: that you’re worth a shit. If repeated enough, your fake confidence begets real confidence.
This is what people on the Kanye end of the spectrum do. They express overwhelming, ridiculous self-confidence over and over until they trick everyone (themselves included) into thinking, “Well, I guess if he says his dick is a magic unicorn…”
In other words, everyone you’ve ever seen with an irrational amount of self-confidence is a fucking liar. They’re not acting like this because they really believe in themselves that much, but because they don’t–because they’re filled to the brim with self-doubt, and they’re trying to shout that down. They’re trying to convince themselves as much as they are you.
Don’t believe me? Well…
So what does that reveal? Is killing your ego the right idea? Or is the right idea to chug your own Kool-Aid and pat yourself on your delusional back?
How Much Confidence is Too Much?
Well neither, of course. The “all extremes are stupid” rule of thumb remains undefeated when approaching your levels of confidence.
To have the Kanye self-confidence throughout your life is to be in a way, a fraud. It’s to be ill-prepared for what’s coming, because instead of preparing, you put all of your faith in your genius. It’s to set yourself up for disappointment because, after all, you–the person reading this–are not Kanye. You’re like, Greg or Bridgette or something.
On the other end of the spectrum, where you’re a beaten down, self-hating shell of a human, the end result is you’ll never actually do anything ever. You’ll never go for anything you want, or any person you want, or try to be less of a piece of garbage because you’ll never believe that you can. You’ll have a half-assed, low standard life, and will have very high odds of becoming that substitute teacher all of the kids throw shit at.
Plus you’ll just be, you know, sad.
As with everything, the solution probably lies somewhere in the middle with little spices from the extremes thrown in. Indeed, there is a balancing act of confidence that I think one must partake in to really hit that sweet spot where you’re not a deluded ass, but where you feel like you can do some things.
Let’s go through this step by step.
1) When to Add a Dash of Kanye
Our main issue with self-confidence is in trying to succeed at something for the first time. This can mean trying a new activity, or giving something you’ve generally failed at a go yet again. It can also mean trying a new version of something you’ve done. After all, every job interview is unique, every chat with a stranger you want to fuck at the bar is unique, every piece of art you fart out of your weird brain is unique. These are all their own first time battles, and as such, are often accompanied with compromised confidence.
You have no rational reason to believe in yourself in new situations. You’ve proven nothing. On your first day as a doctor, like, shit. You’ve never been a doctor before. How do you know you can do this? How do you really know you’re not going to drop a scalpel into a gallbladder, and prescribe Twizzlers to a Diabetic?
If you have failed at every single turn in your life—if every attempt at success ends with Doritos and filing for unemployment—fully believing that you’re going to kick life’s ass is irrational. I mean look at you! You have chocolate syrup on the back of your neck. How did that even happen?
How do you know you can achieve what you want to? How do you know if you’ll ever get anyone to like you? How do you know your request for a raise won’t end in you shitting your pants?
This moment right here, is where a dash of Kanye comes into play. This is where you, for a period of time, talk yourself up, focus exclusively on every minor success you’ve ever had, and force yourself to walk around like you’re the baddest motherfucker alive. Believe that your brain is made of genius and your dick is (or boobs are) made of magic.
This can be important. If you’re going to do anything worthwhile in life, you’ll have to temporarily be an idiot. You have to make some leap of faith that you can do or have the thing you want despite a startling lack of evidence.
So let go of doubts here. Walk in the room like you own the place, order someone to clean the bathrooms, fully believe that you’re an all-powerful genius for a split second, let it allow you to set an intention, and then move onto step two.
2) The Benefits of “Can” vs. “Will”
So when do you stop Kanye-ing? Do you? Or do you just go all the way in thinking you can god damn anything? Do you jump out of windows flapping your arms with nothing but a can-do attitude holding you up?
Well no, dummy. You’ll like, die and stuff.
So here is my key belief that I move forward with: You go into every endeavor believing not that you will succeed, but that you can. You believe not that everything will work out, but that you can work everything out. Failure is totally an option, but it’s usually worth trying anyway.
Then, before you actually take action, tune down the confidence for a second. Don’t invest your life savings into a butthole-flavored donut shop because “Ah, the best can happen!” Make sure that what you’re about to try isn’t completely stupid not by measuring your desire with fear, but by measuring your desire with rational thought, and evidence.
3) Develop Real Confidence with a Plan
So here’s what you need to have legitimate confidence—a clear plan that you can (and do) explain to others. Focus on becoming conscious of what you’re about to do, and being able to explain why it could work. Work out an entire plan, and explain why you can do each step, and why it could lead to success.
Now, your plan may very well suck. That’s okay. That’s not the important part. The important part is that it gives you a path forward that you can clearly see, and can feel confident in. This could mean a credible business plan, a plan for how you’re going to build your bed frame, or a planned out conversation for how you’re going to convince the girl at work that she’d like to talk to you for four seconds.
When your plan fails (and again, it probably will), your confidence will be shaken. This is when you re-Kanye, regroup, learn from your mistakes, and find a new plan that avoids the road blocks that kept you from success before.
Stay on this cycle with anything you want, and you can do way more than you expect.
4) Other Times to Raise and Lower Your Kanye Levels
Sometimes it’s a good idea to appear confident, or to appear not, even when it doesn’t reflect how you feel. Short term lying can sometimes be your best friend.
Job interviews and romantic pursuits require more appearance of confidence than you probably have. In both of these cases, an appearance of confidence is essential, so just go a little sub-yeezy here.
There are times when appearing to lack self-confidence is beneficial–like most other areas of life. It can make other low-confidence people feel more comfortable. Clear and apparent modesty can make others less intimidated with you. Confident people can be fucking annoying and self-involved. Humble people are often less so. Most of us would rather actually hang out with Bridgette than Kanye’s public persona.
So find your middle ground. You should never go full Kanye. It’s exhausting, unhealthy, and above all else, fraudulent. It will render you unstable, emotionally fragile, and possibly even trying to explain to the president why we should repeal slavery abolition.
But also don’t give up on the idea that you can do a lot of really cool shit. It’s our nature to be afraid of things that aren’t scary, and to doubt ourselves. That’s monkey brain horseshit, and it’s worth doing some brain-hacking to fix it.
So don’t be afraid to make real, clear plans about big things, and if you need to Kanye yourself up a little, then go for it. Tell others and most importantly yourself that you can do fucking anything, and that you are a God, if only to get yourself over the initial hump of action. Your friends will roll their eyes at you, and sometimes not want to be around you.
But if outside of that, you’re mostly just Greg, they’ll forgive you, and still love you.
And hopefully, if you Kanye the right amount, you can eventually love yourself.
