The past, the present and the Future

How do you perceive the ( your) future? How do you operate ( for lack of a better word) in the present? What has been your experience in the past? These are three fundamental questions you can ask yourself and indeed others in almost any field they operate in or in any field of life really.

Related are the concepts of assuredness, confidence,  desire/ambition and optimism/ pessimism.

How you perceive the future is often a function of your present,  along with a natural inclination towards the whole spectrum of optimism and pessimism. And to some extent the learnings from your experiences in the past. How do you operate in the present is a function of both how you visualize your future ( which gives rise to the spectrum of ambition and desire) and the experiences of the past ( How do you assess yourself,  How self asssured are you,  How confident are you etc) 

To put it another way,  assuredness and confidence is about an assessment of what you are,  desire/ambition is about what you want to be and optimism/ pessimism is about your assessment of your chances of reaching what you want to be

The difference between confidence and assuredness is one of external and internal orientation.  Confidence is your assessment of what you are relative to others, assuredness is just about what feel about yourself internally.

...........................

When I was much younger ( let us call this phase 1),  and by that i mean half my current age or lesser,  I was way more self assured,  probably confident in a limited spectrum. I was decidedly less desirous/ ambitious except in a very short term way. I was ofcourse optimistic. 

It is/was a weird combination, in that people are usually more ambitious when they are very young.  Many are also less self assured ( which isn't a bad thing when you are younger actually), though maybe my self assuredness can be explained simply by ignorance (generlized Dunning Kruger effect ?) and lack of exposure?

As I moved from there into my maybe early to mid 20s ( call this phase 2), I became more desirious/ ambitious although probably in a limited spectrum of things initially , and then maybe a little more broad based. I think i was still self assured and i guess i was also super optimistic.  

What about confidence? Confidence like i said, is largely how you think about and place yourself relative to others. In that sense it is very domain specific thing and also a function of "results" ( you are more confident when you are successful etc). But what about broad based measures of confidence?  I would say I have always been an "underconfident" person , even in times when I have been "very assured", except probably at times of super ignorance. ( Well, this is definitely not a great thing to say in public!- people can ignore almost everything but underconfidence is something that literally nobody likes!). The difference in confidence and assuredness probably needs a separate post in itself, so let's park that for another day.

Moving back to the timeline-- as I moved from the early and mid 20s to the late 20s ( phase 3), I was probably a little less self assured and paradoxically a bit more confident at the same time. And as I moved into the early 30s ( phase 4), the spectrum of desire/ ambition had narrowed again. Except this time,  it was being desirous only in the super long run ( sort of the opposite of the late teens early 20s mindset when it was in the super short run).

And narrowed in the sense of being desirous only on certain domains of life, and on others you just blank out your mind and  pretend not to think about it!

 And the optimism had also sort of become "domain specific" ( optimism like confidence is also after all tempered by reality,  no matter your natural inclinations!)

This was quite a long phase, because after all, tomorrow never dies and so does optimism especially if you frame it over a super long timeframe

And what about the late 30s/ early 40s ( phase5), that is now? I would say the cycle of ambition and desire is back to the low levels of phase 1. Except one suspects the low levels of ambition and desire in phase 1  was a function of too little exposure to the world, and that in phase 5 is because of too much exposure to it ! ( ok I am exaggerating !)

I am probably the least optimistic ( to be clear i am still an optimist) I have ever been although that natural inclination to incorrigible optimism never dies.

I am self assured in the limited sense of knowing myself the best I have ever ( and well come on, you  would expect that when you are 40) , but less self assured in the sense of having "answers" to problems , big and small, to the questions plaguing the world, and myself. 

To summarize ,

Phase 1 ( late teens, early 20s):  Limited desires,  high self assurance, high optimism

Phase 2( early to mid 20s): Higher and broader ambitions and desires,  higher self assurance, super high optimism

Phase 3(mid/ late 20s): Similar to 2 but with a lower self assurance and a higher level of confidence

Phase 4 ( early mid 30s): Narrower more specific ambitions/ desires, lower self assurance, high level of long term optimism

Phase 5:  Lower magnitude, not just breadth of desires, reasonably high self assurance, mixed optimism. 

............

Which one of this was good? The right attitude to have? As with many things in life,  there are no correct answers,  no one size fit all answers.  You would think that the combination ( close to phase 2) of high self assurance, high confidence,  super good optimism and high level of desire,  ambition is probably a good thing but is it? Not if you didn't utilize it well and not if you didn't know the world enough. 

Then there's a question of what attitude is good for what age. High self assuredness , with low spectrum of desire and ambition is a bad combo when you are young , even though it may not be that bad maybe, sometime much later in life. "Long term optimism" (as in phase 4), is a better thing to have when you are  , say in early 20s than your 30s. 

All said, among these 5, i would take the phase 3 version,  which had a somewhat reasonable mix of moderate self assurance,  a decent level of confidence,  good optimism and a broad yet realistic level of desire and ambition. Strangely or not so strangely enough,  it was the shortest phase :)  ( ages 25 to 28 maybe?)

And as for the current phase , I feel I could just do with a bit more desire. You know,  that something to look forward to ....