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

The Myth of Confidence - 1

The four most common words heard in Geniekids when parents walk in are, “My child lacks confidence.” “Oh really?” a voice inside me says, “Maybe he is not interested in this but more interested in something else or maybe whatever you are asking is not his strength, or maybe he is right now thinking about something else or maybe just like me he likes to be with himself or maybe he doesn’t like being pushed (who does?) or maybe ……..

Or maybe we do not really understand confidence. If I do not want to go on a stage in a fancy dress and say some dialogues, do I lack confidence? If I do not want to go to a group of children and say to them, “I too want to play” do I lack confidence?

There is this one thing that we all as parents need to understand and this would do mighty good to our children (as well as to our parenting anxiety) and that is:
SELF confidence is one thing and SOCIAL confidence is another. Just because I do not have social confidence does not mean I do not have self confidence.

Social confidence is an ability to interact, assert and confront others. Self confidence is the belief that I have the ability to do something well. Which means social confidence is a subset of self confidence. So mere lack of social confidence does not mean I lack self confidence too. Many a great scientist, doctors, engineers, sport persons etc had high self confidence while having a not-too-high social confidence. Look around and you will find many examples of people who do not have high social confidence but are extremely successful in their life, in their profession or field. Count me as one such example J

When Howard Gardner in his Theory of Multiple Intelligence talked about Interpersonal as one of the many intelligences that “some” of us naturally have (and some do not) – he made this distinction between self and social confidence even clearer. He postulated that one could be musically confident, or visually confident, or analytically confident or verbally confident or intrapersonally confident and so on.

In fact he went ahead and concluded – and did a great service to humanity by doing so – that
*~ if I am confident in any “one way”, that is more than enough for me to be successful in life.
*~ Or to extend this further, high self confidence through my strong and innate intelligence will lead me to be confident in other intelligences too.
*~ What goes into building a strong foundation of self confidence are honing of my natural abilities, my innate potential, my strong intelligences.

so what do you think - pl leave your comments

Ratnesh Mathur.

Is it necessary to punish children?

Common answers parents give are:

“If you don’t punish they will get away with anything.”

“If you don’t punish how will they ever learn what is right and what is wrong”

“I think it is the most effective learning tool.”

And this is the big one

“I punish because this is the only language he understands.”

For a moment switch roles. Remember your own childhood when you were punished – by your parents, teacher etc. How did you feel? What were your thoughts? Pause here to reminisce.

Most of my own memories of punishment are either of rebellion, of hatred, of unfairness, of angst, or of extreme shame, of unworthiness, of inferiority, of guilt or of self-pity. I do not remember any positive feelings. In fact I even remember thinking – next time I will not get caught.

As physiologist Dr Albert Bendura says: Punishment can control misbehavior, but by itself will not teach desirable behaviour or even reduce the desire to misbehave.

But you might still say, “That’s all right, but we do need punishment, don’t we? We need a final method of control, don’t we? WE need a last resort? Don’t some acts have to be punished?

Three thoughts:

1. In a caring relationship, there is NO place for punishment.

2. The problem with last resort thought is that the last resort comes too soon, even before we have tried other more effective methods.

3. What will happen if there was no last resort – will you look for more alternates – then why not do that now!

4. Punishment is often completely unrelated to the behaviour. A slap is not related to behaviour of purposefully spitting mouthful of food.

As Eric Jensen puts it, “Children need to know that they are still good people; it's their behaviour that is unacceptable. Children need to know what the boundaries are - a definite framework for acceptable behaviour.”

But all this has to be done giving due dignity and respect to the child.
First we need to believe that misbehaviour is not a necessity to punish, but an opportunity to learn.

We need to realize that it is the misbehaving child that needs our love most!

May we personally invite all parents and teachers to a workshop on "DISCIPLINING and ALTERNATIVES to punishments" this Saturday, 1st April 2006 - 2:30-5:30pm. Do tell about this invaluable - full of strategies and very popular workshop to all your friends too!

By Ratnesh & Aditi Mathur

The Myth of Gandhiji's 3-Monkeys

Two monks came across a swollen river that they had to cross. A young damsel, who had hurt herself, was waiting for some help to cross the same river. The elder monk carried her on his back crossed the river, and dropped her off at the other bank.
As the two monks continued their journey, the younger one’s mind was at unrest, “How could my senior do such a blasphemous act – touch a girl!”. After a long time, when the young monk could not contain himself any further, he finally asked the senior monk, “You touched that girl, how could you break our sacred vow”.
The elder monk remarked quietly, “I left that girl at the river, you are still carrying her!

We as parents are quite sensitized to Gandhiji’s mantra of “See no evil, hear no evil and say no evil”. We get worried when our children are exposed to violence on TV, or immoral behaviour in real life or when they use inappropriate language.
Hence we go about shielding our children. Check out how will you react if your child is around and
* A violent scene is on the TV
* Somebody uses foul language
* Some children of your child’s age are bulling a smaller child
* An indecently exposed photograph is there in the magazine
* You speak angrily and rudely to another person.

While I am not suggesting that we expose our children to inappropriate stuff, I want you to realize that the trouble with building a shield around a child is that sooner or later the child invariably does get exposed. Then what? The trouble is that children cannot help but “see and hear evil”.

The problem is not what Gandhiji propagated (he was a master communicator and had to simplify things for the masses). The trouble is in our literal interpretation of the same.

We are what our thoughts are. Hence, a much better proposition, as the senior monk exhibited, would be to THINK NO EVIL. A much better proposition would be to build the shield instead of around the child – INSIDE the child.

Instead of sterilizing them from all kinds of germs, make their immune system stronger.
Instead of teaching them what is right and wrong, a much better proposition would be to teach them how to decide what is right or wrong. Instead of giving them wisdom, help them discover wisdom. Instead of giving them our thoughts, encourage them to build their own thoughts and perspectives.

Somehow we believe that it is parent’s responsibility to preach, sermonize and moralize our children minds. We believe that if we do not brain wash somebody or something else would. But to us, the key to the whole process of character building is not education, but EMPOWERMENT.

While I am not going to give solutions here, as I first want to hear your views, I leave you to ponder over this with profound words of Osho Shree Rajneesh,

“I say over and over again that if you want your children to know the truth you must give them the chance to think creatively. Stop conditioning them with beliefs; allow them to understand things for themselves. Creativity will become their capacity for life; creativity will become their wisdom. That capacity and that wisdom will lead them to the uncharted sea of truth"

By Ratnesh Mathur
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The Myth of Quality Time

Perspectives on Parenting - The Myth of Quality Time
Once in Animal Kingdom, the animals met to complain about the humans. The cow said, “They take away my milk!” The sheep cribbed about her wool being taken. The hen was upset that her eggs are taken by humans. The horse complained about humans taking all his energy. But the snail was smiling, “I have something they need, but don’t seem to care about, TIME!”

If you are planning to give a gift to your child, consider TIME. A gift they would cherish most. If you want your child successful, the real investment is not money, not more classes, not more gadgets, not computer, not the best school, not less TV but MORE TIME. Quality Time!
While quality time is most used catch phrase, its possibly the most misunderstood. Here we represent the seven myths of quality time. Realising what quality time is NOT will possibly lead us to discover WHAT IT IS. Read on:

MYTH #1: (The working parent’s myth) Its not how much but how you spend the time.
Raising children is not about instant magic. Sporadic solutions give sporadic results. Leaving it on grand parent or caretaker cannot replace the need to child to be with you. You can give birth the test tube way, but you can’t raise children through a test tube. Specially parents of zero to five years olds - consider part time, working from home or anything that increases your time with the child.

MYTH #2: (The non working mother’s myth) I spend enough time with my child.
Only Quantity does not mean quality. Non working mothers say, “I choose not to work so that I can spend time with my children”. You are missing the point if you are counting quality time in terms of hours. While presence is important it is of not much use if it the child is still being raised by instructions, commands, interference and too much dependence (on you). Check out how you spend the time!

MYTH #3: I take good care of my child.
Taking care of physical needs is hardly quality time. Any efficient adult can cook, take of necessities, get homework done, take child to park or swimming or cricket classes (while you sit outside). Its not about physical needs, its about mental and emotional needs. In fact its not even about fulfilling mental and emotional needs. It’s about understanding these needs and then empowering the child to fulfill them. So if your daughter had fight with a friend, its about not offering her advise or solutions but, being empathetically with her till she finds a solution on her own.

MYTH #4 Quality time means spending time for the child.
The key word here is ‘FOR’ the child. While when we say we use the term “with the child”, most of us actually spend time “for the child”. How many times do you really play with them as you are another child: totally into the activity, playing with full josh, fighting, laughing, completely inhibited – enjoying it as much as the child. The moment we play for the child, we play act and that is not real play - its act. What is not genuine is not quality. Are you 100% present with the child?

MYTH #5: Time I spend teaching my child is quality time.
Quality time is not about improving the child. It is definitely not about improving your child’s grades. Most of us are poor teachers. This is simply because we operate from an adult point of view. While we detested dictations as children, we give the same dictation to our children with the authority of a commandant. No wonder most teaching (and homework) situations are tension filled – for both. Quality time – nay! Count the time you learned something from the child as quality time.

MYTH #6: Even if I spend little less time he will anyhow have a successful life (didn't I?).

Somewhere we are forgetting that the first 15 years of life are also PART OF LIFE. So that extra meeting, that extra target at work, and that extra doing up the house is leaving your child with LESS childhood, with less then optimum 15 important years of life. We worry what the child will be tomorrow, we forget that he is somebody today!

MYTH #7: The weekend myth – what I lose during week, I make up over weekend.
Do you also catch up on sleep, exercise, relationships over the weekend! Its like saying "eat junk food during the week, over the weekend we will eat healthy". Unfortunately children don’t develop on such doses. Weekends based parenting either gets loaded with guilt ridden materialistic bribes (I will take you out for pizza) or many a times gets effected by guests, functions, house chores…. Its daily meaningful doses of sunshine that children will blossom in.

And finally we at Geniekids believe that Quality time itself is a myth: A child told his mother who came late from work - "You have taught me how to make a living, but you have not taught me how to make a life! We say, its not about quality time - is about quality life. If we are running behind the clock we will never be able to catch it. Its all about, through consciousness and understanding, filling our child's life with joy.

By Ratnesh Mathur
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One of Geniekids most intensive workshops has been on Quality Time and we got rave reviews like "this was the best workshop in my life"; "A life-opener" etc. Inviting corporates, groups of parents, schools to contact us to explore this most meaningful workshop we have for all parents!
Geniekids will be holding the same again on 29th April 06.
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Alternatives to Rewards and Punishments

Few days back I visited an office and started complaining to the girl at the front desk about the bills that I had not received, about which I had reminded her number of times. At that moment, her boss came, and I redirected my complaining to him. He immediately assured me that the bills will be sent by evening and informed me that it was he who had delayed them.

Satisfied, I stepped out of the office, saw my loose shoe laces and started tying them, when I over heard the girl crying inside. The boss asked, “Why are you crying?” The girl sobbed, “You knew I had forgotten to inform you about the bills, still you told him….”. The boss said, “Its only sometimes you forget things, consider this to be a reward for all the times you have remembered”.

Ladies and gentleman, this is one boss who understands rewards and punishment better than many of us. This is one guy who knows what works, what’s motivating and what’s inspiring for us human beings.

Parents, the next time you bait your child with a reward or threaten with a punishment, remind yourself of this incident. Remind yourself that although rewards and punishment seem to work in the short run – they are still controls. That while controls may make YOU FEEL powerful – parenting is perhaps more about empowerment and inspiration.

Eric Jensen defines rewards as something that caused the child to change his or her behaviour in the hope of getting it (and you can extend it to punishment when a child did that to avoid getting it). So reward is anything that is predictable (I know in advance that I will get it IF….) and has a (market) value – a star, a chocolate, toy etc.

However, if it is predictable but has no market value – a smile, a hug, a compliment - than it is an acknowledgement, a recognition.
If it has market value but is spontaneous or unrelated to the behaviour or the task – a surprise chocolate, a small “I feel like giving this to you” gift - then it’s a GIFT or a celebration.

In both the cases above, the reward is still intrinsic to the child. As Eric Jensen says, “The brain does have its own built-in reward system. It’s not only unique to each individual, but it also habituates to new levels. It makes extrinsic rewards unequal from the start”.

Do you think that rewards are required because we are often short of time? I think that, over a period of time, I actually start saving time, when I operate not from control (there by avoiding power struggles) but from giving the child understanding, the real reason for doing something.

No wonder in the last six years of working with more than two thousand children in GenieKids from ages 2 to 15, we have never used any rewards whatsoever. It is because we believe that rewards and punishments alienate the child, put anxiety, and make them operate from low-risk behaviour - thereby impairing creativity and higher order thinking. Rewards also rob children off opportunities to be responsible, independent and self motivated – which children naturally are!

Here is what we recommend – Operate from the paradigm that IF I need to give – it should not be both predictable and have market value.

1. So substitute material rewards with praise and encouragement (and keep that genuine). A smile, a hug, a public approval, a lovely label and a specific compliment works wonders.

2. If you want to, give material ‘gifts’ spontaneously. If possible do not explicitly connect it to the behaviour. Say something harmless, like "I feel great, so here are chocolates for everybody”.

3. Eschew rewards by working on the real reason for the child to behave in a certain way. Asking them for the reasons, pointing out the consequences, giving them choices and even control may not sound attractive in short term, but are more fundamental, permanent and empowering in their effect. So rather than “if you brush now only then you will get toffee tomorrow,” ask, “Why do you think we should brush”? By focusing on the task we also ensure that rewards do not demean the task itself.

4. Finally, instead of rewards, see if you would like to use some of these: Challenge (I think you can make this room look like a masterpiece); Novelty (lets hum and brush); Choices (would you like to talk softly now or finish work and then talk); Empathy (I agree sometimes its tough to finish one’s glass of milk”); Feelings (How would you feel once you finish this); Positive feedback (Its impressive how you are putting in hard work into your swimming); Hope (At this rate you will soon finish this); Positive beliefs (You are a champ or a fast learner); Role Modeling and ‘I’ language (I am going to do my work neatly); an finally Inspiration like the boss above, who I would like to work under!

So is disciplining about putting a carrot in front of the pony or about giving the leash itself to the horse?
Think about it.

By Ratnesh Mathur
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