Perfectly Confident: How to Calibrate Your Decisions Wisely - Audiobook (Unabridged)

A surge of confidence can feel fantastic—offering a rush of energy, even a dazzling vision of the future. It can give us courage and perseverance in the face of adversity. However, if that confidence leads us to pursue impossible goals, it can be a waste of time, money, and energy. Popular lore—supported by a cottage industry of self-help books and motivational speakers—tells us the more confident we are, the better. But this way of thinking can get us into an enormous amount of trouble. Decades of research demonstrates that we often have an over-inflated sense of self. In fact, we are rarely as good as we believe. Perfectly Confident is the first book to bring the best psychological and economic studies to bear in order to explain exactly what confidence is, when it can be your friend, and when an excess of it can be your worst enemy. Confidence is indeed a useful tool, but only when you hold it right. Confidence is a form of personal prediction that takes into account both your feelings and the facts. You do have choices about how confident to be but choosing to be overconfident is rarely in your interest. Well-calibrated, adaptive confidence is what we should strive for. How optimistic should you be about an uncertain future? What justifies your confidence in something amorphous and subjective like your attractiveness or sense of humor? Don Moore answers these questions by exploring the ways confidence behaves in real life, how to avoid overconfidence and under-confidence and how one can maintain well-calibrated confidence. Read Less