Is it reasonable to have a sense of delusional confidence in your abilities, or would you rather build confidence by performing well in the past?

Look at what you are doing now. Using a computer, eating lunch, sitting at a table, etc… Everything you are doing right now you did successfully. The day you took your first steps you took a gamble and succeeded. Every day since then you mastered something. You just don’t realize at the time.

I take on jobs and assignments even though I have no idea how to solve them when asked. I just know I can figure it out if I spend the time, resources, and brain power. Is that high confidence in myself considered delusional? Maybe. But it sure works for me.

Just go for it. You’ll figure it out.

Folks do take note of someones past but what a person does in the “here and now” is also crucial. Self confidence is a choice.

It seems that both options display an unhealthy idealism. Maybe it’s just the wording, and you don’t mean it to be as absolute as it comes across.

I’m pretty pessimistic. When asked about the glass, my response is generally “I don’t have enough information. If it’s a beer mug, it’s not full enough. If it’s a brandy snifter, someone over-poured.” So, I have little confidence in anything I do. I’m usually ridiculously proud of something immediately after doing it, and then spend the rest of my life picking it apart. Makes it incredibly hard to stick with anything. I’m all gung-ho for about a week, and then the inner voice starts her bitching.

It helps to be confident and a bit arrogant, at least for me, but it helps even more to have done something well in the past.