I Think I Can.!?

Confidence, self-doubt, and everywhere in between.

Hi Zan, Hi Pa

Volume #62

April 10th, 2026

HI, PA: One thing I’ve noticed about reaching my late twenties is that I feel a lot more confident in almost every area of life. Which has me thinking about confidence—how we get it, how we use it, and what happens when it’s lacking… I’ll start here: in general would you say you’re a confident person? Why?

HI, ZAN: It’s a good subject for discussion because it touches on so many aspects of life.

In general, I think I’m a very un-confident person (Non-confident? Inconfident? Lacking in confidence?) I tend to imagine the worst in too many situations, including my own chances of doing something well….even when it’s something I’ve done well a thousand times in the past. I still do certain things pretty well; I know that. It’s just that I don’t approach them with confidence that I will do them well, or do them well again. Painful to admit, and there are exceptions (writing, public speaking, dealing with physical troubles, being kind—I feel confident about those things). But generally speaking, I give myself a vote of no-confidence in too many arenas. I’m glad I didn’t pass that on to you!

ZAN: Interesting, because you’ve always seemed confident to me! If it makes you feel better (or boosts your confidence as a parent at least), I have a theory that one main source of confidence is how your parents spoke to you as a child… Much of my self-esteem was built during those early years when you and Mom encouraged me, supported me, forgave my mistakes, and told me I was a good person, and I hear your voices in my head to this day when I’m worried about my ability to do something!

PA: Nothing, and I mean nothing, could make me happier than reading that. The messages a child receives, in the early years especially, resonate forever.

Your question and choice of subject has prompted me to think about this in a fresh way. I realized only very recently that I’m the product of two traumas. My dad’s first wife and child died in childbirth, and I know that marked him for life, and I’m sure some of that anticipation of disaster found its way into my bloodstream. And my mom had her closest sibling and closest friend die at age 22, and then had some horrible medical things happen to herself. Maybe those sad events played a role in my mental infrastructure.

It’s not that I walk around thinking: watch me mess this up! I don’t. It’s just that I’m all too aware of what can go wrong in, say, a carpentry project, a street confrontation, a sporting event, or life in general. Those terrible things haven’t ever come to pass—I never built a deck that collapsed, or had the crap beaten out of me, or made a key ninth-inning error, or suffered a great trauma—but, in spite of many positive outcomes, I seem continuously aware that negative things could happen. I envy people who don’t have those hovering black birds in their thoughts.

Have you known anyone personally who suffers from overconfidence?