“Sir, where are you coming from?” said the officer is a vaguely familiar firm officer voice.
“The W (hotel/club).” I responded, in more smug tone than I should have given.
“Sir can you pull to the side please.”
I turned into a parking lot and waited for the next available cop to come up to my window.
As I sat in my car wondering if I actually would get to use a breathalyzer, I saw two cops handcuff a skinny Asian man. Not surprisingly, he looked quite anxious at his present situation. At that moment, I realized that I wasn’t worried at all—I was confident. At that moment, I had complete certainty that I would get out of this situation unscathed—I had never been more certain and more confident of anything in my life. If I had the opportunity to bet all my worldly belongings and knowledge on my successful DUI checkpoint passing, I would have.
Eventually a cute female cop came up to my window.
“Good evening constable, how are you?” I said even before she could ask for my “license and registration.”
Apparently, her lexicon did not include “constable” and she ignored my question.
“License and registration. Sir, where are you coming from?”
“The W” I said.
“How much have you had to drink?” she asked.
“None at all.” I said as I looked her straight in the eye. She looked back at me and I stared at her. She began asking me other questions and I guess my sober confidence came through. I wonder if anyone could ever fake this level of confidence—even me.
“Have a nice night,” she said. And off I went.
I tried to think of a time when I was more confident or when my confidence was even close to this high. I thought that I was confident because I was certain, but realized certainly alone does not make confidence. I’ve been certain I had money in my bank account when I went to the ATM, but that certainly did not fuel my confidence.
I soon realized that my confidence was based upon both my certainty of the situation and the risk associated with the situation. DUI is realistically the worst thing that can happen. Yes, I could die from something else, but in terms of messing up my life, a DUI is really high on that scale. I’d probably lose my job. Also, because of my job my DUI would probably get into the newspaper. And my family would kick my ass. Big risk was there.
Thus, confidence requires both risk and certainly. Big risk and big certainty mean high confidence. Remove the risk and confidence disappears. Increase the risk, but keep certainty the same and confidence goes down.
After realizing how confidence worked, I thought: how can I create that same ridiculously high level of confidence without the same risk-certainty constraints?
I’ve thought about confidence being a house and the risk-certainty being the foundation. Lift the house off its foundation and channel in into my core and take it with me. Yes, I really don’t have the answer.
All I know is that I’ve been at a state of utter and complete 100% confidence and that’s a feeling everyone should experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment