A few days ago I saw the following question flash across my Twitter feed, “What makes you confident?”. It has lingered in my brain since I saw it and tonight, I realized what makes me confident: trust.

Not too long ago, the artistic director of my chorale and I were having a discussion on this behemoth of a project we have undertaken without any knowledge of how it will turn out. For my portion of the project, she pretty much turned me loose, not even viewing the final draft before we released it to phase 2. She expects a lot, which I admire greatly about her, so the fact that she didn’t want to see what I had done really made me nervous. What if it wasn’t good enough? What if I missed something? What if it . . . What if. . .?

I said, half joking, that she was crazy enough to trust me.
She responded, all serious, with several reasons why she trusts me (one of which being that I am stubborn, which I don’t agree with, but I digress).
Her high level of expectation married to her high level of trust gives me confidence.

When people trust you (or you trust others), your soul can rest. In rest, there is liberty. There is liberty to succeed, liberty to fail, liberty to be vulnerable, liberty to learn, and liberty to be yourself.

So, what makes you confident?