Self Doubt, Self Confidence

No headache today and it’s my birthday. Woohoo. Got dinner tonight with 2 friends at their place. Did the usual yesterday, saw the guys, went to the park, amazing lunch outside. They even sell Ice Cream for dogs. Such luxurious times we live in, in the rich world. It cost £2.50.

I just watched Elon Musk in bed on the All In Podcast that I follow, and I find how relaxed and confident he is so fascinating. And he seems to be immune to all the attention and potential stress and maintains his ability to think clearly. And also the other presenters.

They are all billionaires. Money and power…. does it give that sort of confidence? Did they have the confidence to start with…..hmmm. I think I will do a quick background check on them. I’d bet on them not coming from poor uneducated backgrounds, quite the opposite I’d guess. And what would that say about potential fulfilling? I’ll report back at the end of this blog entry.

Talking of confidence I was watching Dave Lee Roth last night at marvelling in his unbridled free flowing confidence back in the 80s. It’s a joy to watch just from that perspective, a celebration of self belief.

I’m such a contrast to me personally, that’s what I really notice. Self enquiry, self questioning and self doubt is so strong and very frequent. I question myself constantly. Why did I say that, what was the motive? And there’s guilt at this level to deal with. Wow, well this is the opposite pretty much of self confidence. They are not dissecting their identities, or identifying and calling themselves out on their every motive. They are doing to opposite, to move away from all sense of helplessness and I’m moving towards facing that. Such different life paths.

This one I’m on is literally a suicide mission for the self. I’m dismantling the ‘I’ here. And why? To see what is left! And with a strong suspicion that all that is good and beautiful and true is what is core. So getting under the layers of false sense of ‘me’ to get to the real ‘me’ which turns out to be pretty much not even vapour. What a strange thing to do with an existence. As we hurtle through space in bodies walking about the surface of a planet. It’s all mighty bizarre!

Okay here’s the low down on the family background of these super confident successful guys. I think it shows that they all came from success.

David Sacks – father was an endocrinologist, grandfather started a factory in the 20s.

Chamath Palihapitiya – his father was a Diplomat in the High Commission of Sri Lanka.

Jason Calacanis – father owned a bar which he started working in at 14.

David Friedburg – father was a filmmaker

And Elon had a businessman father. I do wonder if he has maybe dissolved his ego or is some way towards that. He seems to have some transcendent quality about him.

I hold confidence up high as a high value quality. If we all just had a bit more confidence in ourselves what would we could accomplish, what potential we could bring out in ourselves and share.

And yet I personally subscribe to a path of near surgical self examination and constant self doubt (and guilt since I’m still identified with the ‘I’ most of the time). I think I’m putting all my chips on the possibility of completely transcending the ‘self’ and experiencing the confidence that comes automatically from that. Let the process continue. What can be burned, will be burned….