"Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed"
About this Quote
Gracian is prescribing a kind of psychological judo: treat the small stuff with the alertness you usually reserve for crises, and meet real crises with the calm you usually waste on trivia. It’s advice that sounds paradoxical because it’s aimed at a paradox in human nature: our confidence is most unreliable at the exact moments we think we can trust it.
As a Baroque-era philosopher and courtly operator, Gracian wrote for a world where status, favor, and survival could hinge on a single misstep. “Easy tasks” weren’t actually easy if they were performed in public, under scrutiny, or inside rigid hierarchies. The subtext is political as much as personal: vigilance is a social skill. If you get sloppy when the stakes feel low, you invite humiliation, rivals, or bad luck to do what they do best. Confidence “falling asleep” is a moral hazard; complacency is not just laziness, it’s exposure.
The second half flips the danger. Big challenges can trigger theatrical panic, the kind that makes people overcorrect, freeze, or self-sabotage. Gracian’s remedy is to rehearse ease: act as if difficulty is manageable so your mind doesn’t turn the task into a monster. It’s not “positive thinking”; it’s calibrated performance. You discipline your posture toward problems so fear doesn’t seize the steering wheel.
What makes the line work is its symmetry: two errors, two antidotes, one goal. Mastery is less about raw confidence than about keeping it awake when it wants to nap and steady when it wants to bolt.
As a Baroque-era philosopher and courtly operator, Gracian wrote for a world where status, favor, and survival could hinge on a single misstep. “Easy tasks” weren’t actually easy if they were performed in public, under scrutiny, or inside rigid hierarchies. The subtext is political as much as personal: vigilance is a social skill. If you get sloppy when the stakes feel low, you invite humiliation, rivals, or bad luck to do what they do best. Confidence “falling asleep” is a moral hazard; complacency is not just laziness, it’s exposure.
The second half flips the danger. Big challenges can trigger theatrical panic, the kind that makes people overcorrect, freeze, or self-sabotage. Gracian’s remedy is to rehearse ease: act as if difficulty is manageable so your mind doesn’t turn the task into a monster. It’s not “positive thinking”; it’s calibrated performance. You discipline your posture toward problems so fear doesn’t seize the steering wheel.
What makes the line work is its symmetry: two errors, two antidotes, one goal. Mastery is less about raw confidence than about keeping it awake when it wants to nap and steady when it wants to bolt.
Quote Details
| Topic | Confidence |
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