A Singaporean lady who sought my help was fifty-two years old, smart, intelligent, good looking and simply but impeccably dressed. Her demeanor was modest, polite and firm. She answered questions thoughtfully, sometimes pausing a few seconds to marshall her thoughts into a coherent response. She wasn’t “warm” but her functional, commercial approach was easy and engaging. Seemingly a model manager, she presented efficiently, coolly, ‘on the ball’. Why wasn’t she getting job offers in her sphere of cybersecurity that grew every second and became more important every minute?
She gave me the reason. “I don’t know what I want,” she said, four times during our chat. Marriage, perhaps? No, not that. Social work to help the needy? She claimed to be business ambitious. She wanted to succeed, but at what was a mystery. Finding a purpose in life is step one towards a personal strategy. She had no purpose. Two hours after we parted she WhatsApped me. “Purpose is why I need you,” she said. Four weeks later she told me I had restored her self-confidence. I corrected her. She had restored her own self-confidence.
What is the self-confidence she was talking about and how was it restored?
You start life with little knowledge and lots of self-confidence – watch a baby trying to walk. Acquiring data should, in theory, increase your self-confidence. In practice it does the opposite because you realise how little you know. This is a critical stage of your education, often missed by parents. If encouraged to experiment, to make decisions, to learn from mistakes, you will grow a self-confidence that isn’t either arrogant or self-demeaning. The pompous phrase “internalizing feelings of inadequacy” is AI’s offering to explain poor self-confidence. I prefer “screwing your own image”.
Contrary to many quick-fix solutions for restoring self-confidence, I am suspicious of too many kind words, especially if they are not true. Every human has enough about them to merit some approval now and then and telling people they are what they aren’t can be dangerous. The best advisors I have had in life have been kindly straightforward.
That’s how I’d describe what I learnt of Mother Teresa. An undoubted saint she stood up for the poorest of the poor even when opposition was authority to whose obedience she was sworn. ‘Pragmatic Pliancy’ may not be a phrase we mumble every day. It would be a fine one to guide our self-confidence back onto the rails. Personal responsibility is the root of confidence.
Purpose is, of course, more than a shopping list for the grocery store. Short-term, it is pure tactics. The Purpose I am talking about is strategy – broadly what you want to achieve in life on earth. Money provision for those for whom you are responsible and for old age is part of it. That’s the survival bit. The Achievement Purpose you want in life goes beyond it and develops along the way. We should have our life purpose at the head of all the decisions we make. We don’t always have to be heading for them. We always need to see them.
Do these things and our interest in others and in life itself will reactivate our critical self-confidence, because self-confidence isn’t how you feel about yourself.
It’s about how you behave towards other people.
Good morning
John Bittleston
Your comments are always welcome, noted and taken very much into consideration.
Please send them to [email protected]. Thank you.
20 April 2026
