Flex that muscle

Building up your courage

Welcome, aspiring polyglot! I was recently talking to someone about courage. We essentially agreed that courage is a muscle that must be flexed in order to remain active. This makes sense when thinking about it, but from a purely linguistic standpoint it is even more obvious. Even short bursts of courage when speaking a new language go a long way in building confidence for the long term. Most people’s biggest challenge when taking on something as complex as a new language is starting with absolutely no confidence.

Courage in language learning

Courage and confidence are inextricably linked. Building small wins into your system will ensure that you are consistently building confidence which is what you will call upon when the time for courage is upon you. In the abstract, speaking to someone does not sound like something that requires confidence. However, it is different when you look at it for what it truly is rather than the reductio ad absurdum we all tend to write it off as.

At it’s core, when you are speaking to someone in a new language you are choosing to put you months of knowledge up against years or decades worth of knowledge. Of course it is going to be intimidating. It is almost certain that what you have built up inside your head is also far worse than anything you will actually experience. The courage is not required for the conversation as a whole, it is required for the beginning because without that you will never get to see what waits for you on the other side.

By and large people are generous and gracious, especially with people who are actively putting forth an effort to be part of their language and culture. Uncertainty is worse than knowing one way or the other and without trying you will find that more and more of your time is spent thinking about all of the possibilities which will be overwhelming.

Eventually you are going to be confronted by a situation in which you need to recover from a loss. Without some wins under your belt that is going to be far more challenging. That is why I am so insistent on stacking wins early and often throughout the language learning process. Something most people fail to consider at first, however, is that when you are trying to build on nothing, you are going to need a little bit of delusion to get you through it.

Delusional confidence

In sales, delusional confidence is a common attribute. The idea being that over time and through both losses and victories, that delusional confidence will grow into true confidence that has been earned. For our intents and purposes, we will view it and use it in the same way. Your job is not to be confident every time you speak to someone in your new language. It is to convince yourself that you can until it is true. Fake it until you make it, as they say.

Over time this will get easier because much of your faux confidence will grow into true confidence that you can then go on to use to continue the cycle. Confidence, like momentum, is greatly powered by momentum. The more you build the more you will be able to build in the future. This makes cycling delusional confidence well worthwhile.

All of this is becomes clear the moment you experience the carry over for the first time. Yes, it is crucial to build confidence for your language acquisition. However, building that confidence will have positive externalities within your life. You will notice that you are more confident in general, not merely when you are working with a new language. It is it the same with improving your competencies in any area. The more you do it, the more you will enjoy the effect across all domains.

Unintended consequences

As you begin to feel the lasting effects of building up your confidence during your language acquisition, try to take advantage of other opportunities for confidence growth. You will notice over time that the more confidence you have built up through stacking wins, the less losses seem to matter. This does, of course, mean you have a cure to low confidence when a loss does hit you harder than any others have. Simply stack more wins.

Whether you are doing this with respect to languages or not, you should be focused on getting more wins into your day to day life. As you do this you can begin to channel that feeling of confidence into more and more disciplines where you can continue to build more confidence, while taking some Ls. Developing your own positive feedback loop will have long lasting consequences in both your life and your education as you take control of it.

An unspoken advantage of this and something that is often overlooked is that courage is contagious. As people around you watch you grow and step into your own, they will feel the confidence to do the same. For this reason alone, it is well worth making the effort to surround yourself with people who are also working on development constantly.

A rising tide raises all ships, yes, but the inverse is also true. Share your confidence with the world and, when you are feeling weak, find someone who can share some of their confidence with you through proximity. Don’t forget to be that light for someone else when you get the chance. We all know how difficult and intimidating learning a new language can be. Try remember how fulfilling it is, too.

Conclusion

Delusional confidence is something for which I have always had a penchant. It took me several years to understand that much of the reason I like it is that it does not remain delusional indefinitely, especially if one is putting in the work to realize it. If you have ever done something “crazy”, that no one else can imagine doing themselves, then you already have an idea of what it means to move with delusional confidence. What has been done once can be done again.

There is, however, a reason that I call it delusional and that is because it is. What exactly do you have to be confident about? Perhaps nothing. But if you speak to someone in your target language, suddenly you have something. A significant portion of people would say it is “crazy” or that they “can’t imagine” speaking to someone in a new language. That means, if you do, you are willing to do something most people are terrified to do.

Is there truly a better way to build confidence than by being one of the few willing to take the risk?

It won’t be easy, but you can do difficult things and be great. So get your delusional confidence on display, do some difficult things, and become great. I am rooting for you.

Requests

If you have anything you would like covered you can reach out to me on ​X​, ​Instagram​, or at odin@secondlanguagestrategies.com.

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