Confidence Stench

Confidence has a smell, and no, it’s not an actual aroma as this is not some body wash for men advertisement, but rather it has a certain palpability to it that lingers on people.

I personally have a confidence stench.

I make phenomenal, glaring eye contact when the situation calls for it.

I enter rooms with a half smile half smirk like I know something everyone else doesn’t.

Is this true? Maybe, maybe not but if you say anything with enough conviction and confidence it sounds true. And say it often enough and you will believe it too. Hell, I have told enough stories filled with partial truths and entertaining self aggrandizing fibs that my friends can retell them the same way. You know why? My confidence stench.

The way I look at achieving things and getting different things is different from one of those lame-o visualization exercises where you see yourself achieving “FILL IN PARTICULAR GOAL”. It’s more of, “There are billions of people in the world. Vast percentages are inept morons. I am not an inept moron, ergo; I can do what I want.”

If I want to randomly pack up my car and move directly across the country to a city I have never even visited, where I don’t know hardly anyone, have no job lined up, and no place to live, I will do it. And I will do it knowing that I will get an awesome job, get a place to live, and make as many friends as I want. Confidence stench.

And I know that if I were to move back to Chicago and try and make a career switch, even it was in some stupid industry like car rental, that I would be the youngest manager in the downtown market within ten months. Confidence stench.

Were I to randomly wake up one day, and decide in the midst of a job recession that I wanted to quit my job, with nothing on the horizon and bills to pay, that I would have no problem finding a new job where I got paid more and worked less. Confidence stench.

When meeting people, interviewing for jobs, or bartering at your favorite flea market, it is of the utmost importance, you have to let your stench be made present. Without it, that’s the sort of shit that gets people mugged and attacked by Rottweiler’s and paying exorbitant prices for a second hand wooden tennis racket.

130% of job interviews are decided on three factors, and I know this because I have hired now 8 people in my brief professional tenure:

1) A firm enough handshake by a person making direct eye contact with sound posture.

2) A person who is ready and willing to talk about the subject about which they have the best knowledge and confidence, themselves.

3) A person who projects the attitude, “You’d be fucked up in the mind to not pick me.”

I have always gone forth from any interview, personal interaction, or flea market purchase thinking about what a great impression/second hand wooden tennis racket purchase I have made. And whatever decision others make, I find it to be like the opposite of the classic breakup mantra, “It’s not you, it’s me.” Instead it’s a whole lot of, “It’s not me, it’s you, you fucking idiots. But oh well, it’s not on me. I’m gonna be alright, it’s you I’m worried about, what with your awful decision making skills and ugly sweaters.” There are times, albeit rare, when you must defer to others and mask your stench. I have not discovered such a situation, but I am sure they exist.

The confidence stench is unique to the individual. Everyone has a particular way of showing how they are the best. The key thing is you are always prepared for everyone else to smell your stench and recognize it.