How to Restore Confidence

One thing that I think we can all agree on right now is that many people in this country lack a certain confidence in the “overall economy.”

But what exactly is that thing called confidence, and can we restore it before its time; or before a certain cycle has run its course? This seems to be the burning question of the moment. And underlying this urgency to restore this confidence, this subjective something that supposedly has been snatched away from us seemingly overnight, is the reality that we are facing and how we are going to cope with it. In a sense, this is the second and in some ways more interesting question.

First things first: Confidence is one of those things like sex appeal, that not everyone has, and even when you have it, it is not guaranteed to last forever….lol. But what determines whether an individual, or an economy for that matter has a certain confidence? There are no easy answers. With individuals, confidence is often displayed by the smallest of intangible factors: How a person walks or moves, whether they are eager or reluctant to make eye contact, whether they actually listen to what another person is saying, how they respond under pressure or when cherished things are taken away. This last factor I think is most telling and it is something that, given the circumstances of today, we all might want to spend some time thinking about. How are each of us dealing with the reality we now face? Of course, everyone’s daily life is quite different so the responses will vary tremendously.

When it comes to confidence in the economy, it is admittedly hard to hold on to previous notions of confidence when it seems that every day, another of America’s institutions, whether banks or the auto industry is on the verge of collapse. There are definitely some strong signals out there and changes in the wind, but how can we really interpret what it means? Should we automatically lose confidence when these institutions are under siege, or is it just possible that what we are living through is a fundamental shift and reordering in line with how the world will operate in the future? Something to think about boys and girls, that is for sure.

I will leave you with a great Zen saying I came across about ten years ago at a time when my personal “economy” was undergoing some seismic changes: “Be your own confidence.”