The Myth of Confidence - part 3

This article is a sequel to earlier two articles Myth of confidence -1 & 2
It is important that you read the previous two before you read the third part.
(see below)

In the first part we talked about the difference between self confidence and social confidence and how we often confuse one with another.
In the second part we talked about that "self belief" is far more important - specially because it is the starting point of building self confidence.

In this third part we question why, in spite of having self confidence, we "fail" sometimes. Is there something more fundamental, something that needs to be taken care irrespective of high or low confidence?

The scene is football world cup finals. The two teams are tied even after the extra time and the winner will now be decided on the basis of penalty shootout. Now in such a scenario - why is that one player hits the perfect penalty while the other just fails. Remember, each of these are world class players and have possibly practiced and shot penalties a thousand times. There is no dearth of ability. Beyond luck - is there something else that shakes the confidence of a player and he misses?

Let me take another scenario, lets say there is an emergency, say a fire - now all of us adults know what we need to do. Again ability is not the issue! Then why some of us panic or get frozen in our place - while others act appropriately. Before the panic situation - each one of us were equally confident of handling a fire. But when the emergency button went off - we reacted differently.

What is now obvious is that in both the above scenarios emotions are the underlying factor - the successful managed the emotions or the stress better while the unsuccessful let the pressure play on them. Which means its not just enough to develop my ability, to develop my confidence, for the best of the confidence can go down the drain, if we are not emotionally mature enough to handle it.

Now we have either experienced this ourselves or we have seen people with the best of abilities give in to emotions rather then being able to manage or regulate them. So if I were to prepare myself logically - I plan and set everything right. But one emotional stimuli, and my thinking goes haywire and my decision become impulsive, my behaviour turns counterproductive - all this while I was cool and confident about it when I started of!

The conclusion - having the ability to manage emotions is more fundamental and it directly effects our confidence. And surprisingly this ability to manage our emotions does not come by repetitive experience. So while my confidence increases on a task by repetitive exposure, learning to manage emotions is a completely different ball game which some of us never learn in a life time. No wonder some of us continue to be short tempered, or escapist or undependable or hurtful all our lives.

Hence, to me its very important that we "teach" our children to manage their emotions, to be emotionally intelligent. To me that is the base on which the child will operate through confidence.

I remember an incident that happened to an excellent speaker, whom I had high regard for. In one of his presentations, somebody made an unreasonable remark which enraged the speaker and it let to an altercation which made the matters worse and the whole event went for a toss. For that one emotional event, he let the whole gathering and his reputation suffer. All he needed was to manage the emotionally disturbing remark better - and ensured that it did not effect his confidence.

So an important aspect of education and child development is the training to manage our emotions and to bring the kind of stability required to be able to make more effective and successful decisions in life. How do we do that? Remember Emotional development starts with self awareness which leads to self regulation. While we write about each of these in future articles ~

Do join us in this Saturday's (9-sep) parenting workshop where we will together explore Emotional intelligence, self awareness, and self regulation and how do we start the child's journey in developing them. We promise this experiential workshop will lead you to practical strategies that you can use on a day to day basis to enhance your child's emotional development. (Details of the workshop and fee below)

Do email us also, your views about confidence, emotional intelligence and the above set of thoughts.
Do forward this article to friends who would benefit from the insights.

with regards,
Ratnesh & Aditi Mathur

The Myth of Confidence - Part 2

This article is a sequel to Myth of confidence -1 (see below)
It is important that you read the previous one before you read the second part.

Many of us tend to believe that to be able to do something, to be able to accomplish and achieve, we need to have high self confidence.

Just few week back Geniekids decided to make some films on parenting and we decided to shoot 'how children work". Four of our facilitators were supposed to conduct a session, in front of the lights and cameras, with children.

Now we all know that it takes quite a bit of courage to be in front of the camera. Couple of our facilitators were extremely nervous and not confident of doing a session in front of the camera. So much so, that on the day of the shoot, one of the facilitator asked me in the morning, "can I back out? Is there some way I not do this?"

What finally happened was that in spite of being not at all confident, they went ahead and did it and actually did quite a good job of it. Not only they did it well, but just after doing it they also became, suddenly, very confident of doing a session in front of the camera.

So what happened to our belief that we need confidence, as a prerequisite to be able to do something well? I guess, not only the above example, but if we all look into our past, we will find examples of when we went ahead and accomplished something in spite of being not at all confident about it.

So is confidence not necessary to be able to do something or do it well?

I am not trying to say that confidence will not help. If I have confidence, than it is much easier for me to do something - no doubt about that. But confidence is not a pre-condition. I can be not confident and still go ahead and do it - and thats how sometimes we operate.

Which means there much be something else that must be helping us in doing things which we are nervous or not confident about. So what is this something that helps us take this leap of courage? Where does this "let me try" come from?

To me this comes from self belief.
A belief that if I try I might just succeed. A belief, if present, will make us go ahead and attempt and if absent, will make us find excuses not to try!

Which means that this self belief is far bigger than self confidence. Or rather, self confidence is coming out of being able to do something, which came out of self belief. Obviously the more I do, and meet success, the more confident I get. But the starting point, the initial push came from self belief. Just an example here - infants have little self confidence that they will be able to walk. In fact they meet with more failures than successes, while trying to do so. But, they have a huge self belief that drives them, a conviction that they can do it.

So self confidence becomes more of a function of my abilities and my recent experience with exercising these abilities. For example, the newspaper wrote after Indian cricket team lost first few matches against west-Indies, that "Indian team is low on confidence". No nobody really doubts the capability set of the team (just like I had no doubt about the ability of my facilitators to take session in front of the camera).

So what made confidence low? Is confidence constant or wavering? What is then more permanent? What could make the team still win in spite of having low confidence? Should I focus on building confidence or something else?

Somewhere the self belief makes all the difference. What I am trying to say is "My being able to do or not do things is not a function of confidence but a function of omnipresent, more permanent and more pervasive self belief.

One more important aspect here - sometimes we do not have the confidence, but somebody pushes us, somebody who inspires us, somebody who believes in us. Indirectly somebody instills or builds that self belief in us.

Does that mean that our most important role as parents is to instill that self belief in our child?
A belief that says, "success or failure, just go ahead and do what you want to do". Which means in some ways, specially as a child, I start believing in myself, when others around me start believing in me.

Are we too much behind confidence building? Do we actually show the belief in the child rather than just pushing the child. So instead of egging the child by something like "go - go - go - do - it". Can we not turn to the child and, from deep inside us, tell the child genuinely - "yes, you can do it, I am sure you can do it, I believe you can do it.

So self confidence becomes more of a self generative process: Out of my self belief - I do it - Since I am able to do it - I feel more confident and since I feel more confident - I do it better next time and I get more confident and so on. So the seed of self belief was all important.

But what happens when, based on my self belief, I go ahead and try and FAIL! Obviously my confidence would be even lower - or in negative. Which means to try again, I need more of self belief. How do I get that?

More on this later.

Aditi & Ratnesh