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The second installment in the Getting Confidence series.  This series is my attempt to help you learn things about confidence I’ve discovered.  View the series intro here.

When I worked in retail, a kid, probably 18, came in the store wearing some flashy “gangsta” clothes.  There’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself.  But what he did while in it made him look ridiculous.

He came up to me and said, “Wow it sure is hot out there.”  The store had no windows and I had been there since opening.  “Is it?”  “Yeah,” he said, “feel my arm.”  That was kind of weird, but trusting and sometimes unthinking as I am I reached out.  He quickly drew back his arm, looked worried and said, “wo, wo, wo, not while there’s people around.”  He then grinned to his friends, turned, and walked away.

I caught on pretty quick that he was setting me up to make it look like I was attracted to him.  Wow buddy.  You really got me.  Last time someone pulled that on me, I think I was thirteen.

A couple days later I was listening to the radio where the host called up a local business and asked if he left any “updawg” there.  The helpful lady on the other end tried to assure him he didn’t, and they didn’t have anything in the lost and found.  He kept persisting and she remained patient.  Finally he asked her, “Do you even know what updawg is?”  She said she didn’t, so he asked her if she was going to ask him what it is.  “What is it?”  “What is what?”  “What’s updawg?”  The host shouted back, “Nothing! What’s up with you dawg?”  With that he hung up, and I’m pretty sure he thought he was the man.  I, on the other hand, wasn’t convinced.

Neither of these guys had confidence.  Why?  Because they had to act like they did.   Well, that might not be entirely fair.  They were confident they could trick people.  They were confident their friends would appreciate rehashing jokes they learned in their pre-teen years.  They must have been confident they wouldn’t get into any trouble, because I doubt they would have done it if there was any backlash.

This series will not go over the confidence of manipulating others, how to have confidence in front of your friends, (like the kid dressed up like a gangster not because he liked the look primarily, but because he thought others would like him more as an imitation one) or even how to convince others you are confident.  The point is, if you know you are confident, others will know.

That’s what is behind the series name.  Instead of the more common phrase “gaining confidence,” this is, “getting confidence.”  Because by the end, you won’t be trying to prove to others you gained confidence, but you will be able to say to yourself you get it, or rather, “Yea, I got it.”

Welcome to FRG’s newest blog mini-series!  Over the next few weeks, I’m going to post several blog articles on a Gospel topic that receives maybe a little less than adequate attention in Sunday school.  But it’s a big deal in our quest to obtaining salvation, and surviving in the world in general.  The topic, as the title suggests, is confidence and getting it.  Here’s the series intro; a little about why I am writing this:

When I stepped on the Middle School scene, I remember someone talking about me; describing me as shy.  I found that absurd.  I wasn’t shy, I just never wanted to talk to anyone new.  To me, there was a difference.  Making new friends meant making commitments.  That meant work.  In other words, being outgoing was a chore.

As I got a little older I saw the non-member friends I had drift farther and farther away from me.  They were going down one road, and I another.  I heard rumors of parties, alcohol, and things worse.  Well that ended that.  I had no desire to be around that kind of environment and stood looking only inward on my already established group of friends.  Again, to me it was not a matter of being shy, but being wise.

As time wore on I met a girl, not a member of the Church, who asked me out on a date.  All that I knew about her was that she wasn’t the shining beacon of moral purity.  As gracefully as an awkward teenager could, I turned her down and she gave up.  When I got to high school, I met other girls attracted to my personality that I did not want to date — despite themselves making it painfully obvious that they were available.  Again, their good intentions were questionable, and I didn’t want to go on a date with someone I had to convince to keep moral (granted a couple dates could have been safe, but I wasn’t excited about confrontation).

What I know now about these events was I probably did the right thing for the wrong reason.  The right thing was not putting myself in a dangerous position with these girls.  I won’t go into the details in a small blog post, but looking back, I made the right choice.  I know that.  What I did wrong was that I made those decisions based on fear (it turns out, shy was a pretty good descriptor).  I was afraid of confrontation.  I was afraid that I may be too weak when it really mattered.   And I guess I found my standards a little embarrassing, because I was afraid of getting into an embarrassing situation.

Fear, however, is not one of the Gospel virtues.  If we are going to fulfill our commitment to be the “light of the world” (Matthew 5:16) we have to be confident in ourselves.  Confident that we’ll make good choices; confident that we know what are the right choices.   Timid lights, after all, don’t get seen.  Confidence takes courage, but it takes a lot of other qualities as well — humility, love, patience, wisdom (all of which will be covered in this series), etc.

When I think of the great people in the scriptures — Moroni, Deborah (she’s in the Old Testament), Ammon, and Teancum — I think of how confident they were knowing that they were doing the right thing and how that made them who they were.  I’m not them, but I’ve definitely learned a few things since my awkward teenage years with a cracking voice, acne, and yes, shy personality.  In this series, I’m going to share what I’ve learned with you.

Recently I stumbled across an old article in the Daily Herald. It announced the then upcoming 2009 issue of the Men on Mission calendar. For those who don’t know, several buff looking returned missionaries modeled for a calendar, mostly shirtless, but all looking like missionaries.

The calendar caused a lot of controversy because of its connection with its’ creator’s excommunication.  Those who support it say that it is causing a lot of awareness among non-members who get to see that missionaries are not simply robots, but individuals who aren’t afraid to interact with the world.  Furthermore, A sizable chunk of the proceeds goes to charities selected by the models.

Assuming you haven’t heard of this before, are you surprised? The only thing that surprises me is that I wasn’t called to model (that was a joke, and anyone who knows me knows I would float away with a heavy gust of wind).   I will admit that some good has come from this.  Giving to charity is good.  I’m even sure the calendar has opened some people’s eyes to the realization that the Church isn’t filled with lifeless drones, which is good, except that it has opened other people’s eyes even wider with perhaps less pious intentions.

My question however is what do you think?  What’s wrong with this picture?  Why don’t we want to support these kinds of things?

I love my job.  I work in clothing retail where I help people decide what to buy and be friendly to everyone.  They pay me to do that!  When I first started there, I was surrounded by great employees who had worked there from months to years and they all wanted me to succeed.

One task that scared me when I first started was refolding the dress shirts.  The store folds the ones on display expertly.  I was genuinely afraid of trying to figure out how to do my share of refolding shirts customers try on.  Josh, one of the employees,  told me early on to, “Just follow the creases, that’s what I do.”  In other words, the shirts had visible, deep creases, and all I needed to do was refold along them to get the shirt looking as good as it was supposed to.  That didn’t stop me from the occasional mess up, but Josh kept repeating the same words, “Just fold along the creases, that’s what I do.”

When a new employee came on I overheard Josh telling him, “I just fold along the creases.”  I went up to Josh and sarcastically said, “that’s just your life motto isn’t it?”  He said, “yeah,” we laughed about it and kept going.

I’m not about to write a book on it, but if there is a pattern to folding a shirt based on creases, there is a pattern to life based on this wisdom.

I learned from a very young age that I had not had a significant life problem that someone else didn’t already have.  Someone else made the creases.  I can tread my own way, or I can follow their way (in some cases actually, know what not to do) and bring order, harmony, balance to a chaotic heap.

If I ever get in trouble following a false crease at the store, I definitely get in trouble following someone’s poor insights.  If Fred (my imaginary friend) does something amazing, nearly dies, turns to me and says, “That was awesome, I’m doing it again,” I’m going to say Fred hasn’t learned his lesson, and I probably won’t take too much from it.

My parents, on the other hand, aren’t up to date on a lot of technology, music, youth culture, etc., but they do know how relationships work, what’s a strong one, when one is going to fail, and how to recover from a failed one.   They know about spiritual rollercoasters; they know about staying motivated.  They’re not the only ones, but they’ve made some of the deepest creases in life.

If there is a deeper message in Josh’s message, it is this: You aren’t facing something someone else hasn’t gone through, and chances are, there’s someone close that can help.