Confidence is overrated
flittering outside my comfort zone
If you get extremely nervous in introductions, presentations, and having eyes on you in a group setting, I hope this Gentle Musings helps to re-contextualize those moments in a generative way. Below, I share about a concept that has helped me stop waiting to live my life.
To listen to this Gentle Musings, click here. 💿
This concept is called creative gumption. It’s both an Animating and Organizing Principle, meaning that it guides my decisions and has a distinct embodied quality to it. Regarding Dew, the creative research studio where Gentle Musings exists in large part because of my commitment to creative gumption.
To learn more about Animating & Organizing Principles, there’s more here:
🧡 Animating & Organizing Principles are a core concept of Pivoting Toward Wholeness, a six week course all about orienting toward what matters most through small, creative choices.
Group introductions meant forgetting how to inhale. Presentations meant trying to curb hyperventilation. The other day, I introduced myself and my work and felt my diaphragm crumple. It was the first time in a while, I think because of how I slept the night before.
My breathing used to crumple like foil—it’d get stuck there. Now, it’s fabric. I credit the foil-to-fabric transition in large part to a perspective switch, which began with a question and ended with a reorientation of my approach. This was years ago and it hasn’t steered me wrong since. The question was this:
What if confidence was overrated?
I tried the confidence thing until I had no more tries left inside of me. Trying to “be confident” was like trying to get rid of fear… I couldn’t crack the code. The more I tried to come off as confident, the more there was an inner split and a rejection of my inner experience.
So I accepted that for whatever reason, trying to be confident was a fool’s errand for now. When I tried to feel or ‘achieve’ confidence, it looked like a lot of fixing, performing, and reaching for a mirage. It looked like trying to manage the moment—and how I came off—instead of being present with whatever a given moment is serving.
But I was still left with a debilitating fear of sharing who I am in group settings, especially when it was remotely related to public speaking or taking up space in new spaces.
Knowing that this is one of the most shared fears was normalizing, but the physical reaction my body always seemed out of proportion to how other people’s nerves presented in the moment (which isn’t to say mine were higher—we all show our internal experiences to different degrees). In those moments, it wasn’t comforting when I was looking for an exit or way to press pause on life.
Disillusioned by the pursuit of confidence, I was left with a little void of what now? The answer I found was in a commitment to creative gumption. What came to mind was a memory from a few years earlier—we’re going about 10 years back now from today:
It was August, I was a nanny, and it was camp pick-up time. One of the crafts that day was to decorate a hat with a word that represented themselves. The little girl I care for strolled out of camp wearing a hat with the words GUMPTION.
That moment always left an impression on me. When I gave up on confidence, not only in speaking up but also in actually doing what I wanted to try to do in this life, I decided that I wanted to be someone unabashedly filled up on gumption. No more vague waiting or preparing, I started to crave meeting myself outside of my comfort zone in a new way.
(Because I put the word creative in front of everything, the term creative gumption stuck. It was the theme of the first Gentle Musings episode years ago)
So what am I pointing toward with this term creative gumption?
The definition of gumption is spirited initiative and resourcefulness.
Creative gumption is spirited initiative and resourcefulness using the lens of creativity. This includes making things, expressing yourself in a way where your inner experience matches what comes out—embodied authenticity—and how you move through the day. Here’s how I think of it:
Creative gumption is a feeling and a choice. It’s what we cultivate when we practice boldness, honor our multifaceted selves, and choose to integrate fear instead of outpacing it or trying to solve our way out of it.
It is an active commitment to expanding joyful expression—in your own life and in the lives of others—through intentionally embracing discomfort as a zone of practice.
Creative gumption is a sibling to resilience and courage, but I imagine it as a gold movement of energy. It’s grit that feels generative… audacity that feels doable and maybe even a bit mischievous.
It says: I reject the lie that safety is found in perfection.
Back to introductions in a group-setting: creative gumption softens the inner crumpling that comes with nerves. Like any helpful framework, it unshames and encourages generative thinking. Remembering creative gumption as both an Animating and Organizing Principle dares me to be willing to be seen in my vulnerability.
It makes it so that insecurity doesn’t become a shortcut to self-recrimination. It’s a reminder that exploring outside of my comfort zone gets to be uncomfortable and enjoyable.
I am a fiery, wobbly, curious, assured, insecure, masterful, novice, and generous practitioner of creative gumption, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Your creative gumption is important and needed.
If this landed for you, please do give it a heart, comment below, and share with a friend who might appreciate this Gentle Musings.
Creative gumption is ones of the ways that I practice pivoting toward wholeness. Making the gentle, kind, next smallest choice is pivoting toward wholeness in a nutshell.
Creating a personal lexicon is part of my creative practice. It’s an act of inner-referenced living and a way to make sense of experience.
Below is a piece on playful reverence, another term in my personal lexicon. Playful reverence is like when creative gumption meets devotion:
