Bullshit Confidence Is the Difference Between Success and Failure

I have never been a confident person.

There have been moments when I brushed up against it. Once I was playing a game of pickup softball with some other comics. On my way up to hit I ironically gestured to two friends on the opposing team to Watch This. Then on the first pitch I smoked the ball to the end of the field and took off running. It was an in-the-park home run and as I rounded home I looked at my two friends and my ironic jockiness and solidified into sincerity. I felt like a champion. I might as well have crossed home plate buck naked, gleaming in the sunlight like an ancient Athenian.

The high of this brief escape into slugger land wore off after a day spent flexing and swaggering like I owned a banana boat and I returned to my regular existence as a meek, ferret-like individual who watches confident people with envy as they engage in confident people behaviour like laughing heartily and slapping each other on the back, grinding freely with abandon on the dance floor or walking a dog without a leash.

What does confidence feel like? Does it feel like being strong? Is it actually just being dumb?

A few years ago I was talking to a friend about it and his suggestion was to just be more confident as if it was like a knob I could turn on my personality. Maybe for some it is that easy. Like if your dad went to see all the plays you were in as a kid or you are an Australian tourist, it's that easy. But for me believing in myself is like believing in aliens. It depends on making a bunch of connections between disparate, unrelated facts and it collapses in the face of contrary evidence. And at least to believe in aliens means there are a ton of shows on Netflix to watch, while for believing in myself there's only that Tony Robbins documentary.

This summer I crashed headfirst into this personal deficit. I was fortunate enough to be selected to perform on a television taping at the Just For Laughs festival. When I was first informed, I felt great like I was that buck naked Athenian again. But as the month before the festival winded to a close, all the familiar feelings of insecurity, doubt began to nibble away at the edges of my excitement. I didn't feel funny, I felt like a fraud. I grabbed at and searched for some confidence and belief in myself but it evaded me.

I turned to the only strategy I have ever had for feeling cool and awesome: booze. Ah booze, where would I be without my constant riding companion in social situations? That sweet liquid has been the high chair for my esteem, propping me up in situations where my instinct was to slide into a boneless puddle on the floor. Every sip of beer like returning to my corner of the ring during a boxing match, the suds massaging my shoulders and telling me that I'm funny and likeable and that the way I dance is avant-garde and will eventually be the norm.

The problem with relying on booze for your esteem is it's fools gold. You're not any cooler or smarter or more talented, you are just drunk (though you are legitimately louder, that is not an illusion). And meanwhile, while the hops embolden your opinions and sense of rhythm, it also emboldens those pernicious voices of doubt. I always forget how easily alcohol goes from telling me that I rock and am hilarious to I suck and should kill myself.

This reality became clearer as I approached the show. My strategy of treating believing in myself like bowling and hoping that the right number of beer would do the trick was failing. If confidence is a muscle, mine was a withered old man's thigh muscle.

I had a warm up show the night before my taping. Hot crowd. Famous comics. I'm very nervous. Everyone is killing on the show, then I get up and bomb. The kind of set where the faces of the audiences are a mixture of uncomfortable concern and terror, like when will this young man stop holding us hostage with his fears. Afterwards a rep from the festival tells me my jokes were fine but I didn't look like I was having fun up there, I didn't smile even once. That I was nervous.

I walk back to the hotel with a friend. I'm a wreck. She is being very nice and telling me all the appropriate things, compliments, reasons why the set didn't go well. It's all ineffective as had the previous month of my supportive friends telling me supportive things. When it's really locked in, my self loathing is impervious to your praise and compliments, an endless pit that your kind words fall into without leaving a trace. The only thing that soothes are tales of others' misfortune. My friend Matt tells me that he bombed his warm up show so bad they gave him two more, both of which he bombed as well. That helps. His woes the sweet balm my decrepit soul needs.

The next day I wake up determined to enjoy myself, to have fun and enjoy the moment. I'm going full inspirational poster. I call my mom, text friends, try to soak in all the love that I can like the dried out plants on my patio when it rains. My mood is better. To celebrate Montreal, I eat a savoury crepe which I discover is the worst type of food in the world and should be the only thing white supremacist's are allowed to eat but still I'm feeling good. The comment about me not smiling lingers, and I talk to my friend DJ who has been through all this before and he reminds me of his advice to force yourself to smile onstage. I take the advice and amp it up. Soon I'm walking around Montreal with this huge plastered fake grin on my face, forcing a smile at every stranger I interact. I feel crazy, I look insane but maybe this is what being a happy, adjusted person is, looking insane.

Showtime. I think it's working, I feel grateful, happy, nervous. I piss about twenty five times in an hour but they're strong, assured pisses. I'm backstage waiting to go on, the comic before is crushing it. That's good. I'll ride that energy into infamy. The backstage manager puts her hand in front of me and says she'll tell me when to go. The host flubs my intro but that should be fine.

Backstage manager says into her headpiece, "Tell me when we are a go."

Nothing happens. Haha, totally fine.

"Are we a go?"

Still nothing. Holy fuck, what the fuck is happening. I'd puke on myself right now but that's what God wants to happen and I'm not going to give that cruel bastard what he wants, not today.

She asks more intensely, "Are we a go?"

I'm on fire. This is hell. I demand that a swarm of wasps sting me until I am nothing but puss.

Finally, it's a go and I head out onstage. I have not forgotten my lesson of the day. This is the most important smile of my damn life. Molars, incisors, all teeth must be on display. At first the audience is wary which makes sense but I'm feeling good, I'm smiling and, holy shit, I'm having fun. The set ends and it goes…well. Not amazing, not transcendent, I watched other people do that and would be a psychopath if I thought that's what I did. But I feel victorious, I did well, I didn't freak out and I believed in myself. (Did I just type 'I believed in myself'? Gross, Jordan.)

Three months on now and am happy to report that I have not forgotten what the feeling felt like. I figured out how to believe in myself, if only a little bit. I figured out how to carve a little hole in my heart for that buck naked Athenian to permanently reside. I would not describe myself as confident yet but I've grown a beard and started wearing tank-tops so this might be the closest I am going to get.

Follow Jordan Foisy on Twitter.