Confident to the bone

I’ve been watching Bones Season 2 on DVD. As well as really enjoying the general drama of it, I love the confidence the characters have. The other scientists are known as “squints” but they know that the work they do is important so don’t care.

“Bones” herself is Dr Temperence Brennan, a forensic anthropologist. The nicknames seem to help the FBI guy handle his scientific ignorance better. And he’s completely confident in his FBI skills so doesn’t have an inferiority complex about it all.

At one point, Tempe’s boyfriend wants her to drop everything to sail around with him on his impulse buy sailboat. There is shock and horror all around when she declines. Why would she want to give up sailing off into the sunset to study bones? (Maybe it's because she likes to bring peace to the families of victims when she’s trained her whole life to develop such expertise!) Luckily, she has enough confidence in herself to know that her work is there.

Another character who doesn’t give into peer pressure is Angela. She’s part artist, part scientist and often feels add odds with all the death they’re dealing with. But rather than conform to majority rule and harden herself, she instead tells the rest of the team that they need to develop more “whimsy.”

Is there a situation in your life where you might be paying too much attention to someone else’s opinions? At work? In a relationship? About a new hairstyle or outfit?

How would it feel to be certain that what you’re doing in that situation is worthwhile? That you don’t need anyone else’s approval? That you know deep in your bones that you’re doing the right thing for you right now?

Does this experiment make you more confident about your decision? It might even make you feel better about someone else’s perspective (if you have to try really hard to fake confidence, you may realise that it’s not the best decision for you right now).

Take the time to get a sense of what feeling confident to the bone would be like.

Learn to trust yourself more and more each day by checking in with yourself about all sorts of things and your confidence will soar.

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