“Confidence, confidence, confidence. I want to have the confidence to speak and present my idea,” I said to myself — children’s talk.
“Fake it until you make it” used to be the best tactic to earn confidence because you try, then improve, and try, then improve until you make it. However, when? When do you know you made it?
Children are often doubtful about what they are capable of, and we encourage them to fake it for a kick-starter. But faking it for too long might be very harmful in the long run. Due to “faking it,” it is too easy to be rewarded.
While faking can easily be rewarded, students often use it as a shortcut to enlarge their self-image rather than earn their confidence in their fulfillment. It makes students lazy and cunning when encountering difficulty.
But faking positive emotions for the long term – what sociologists call “emotional labor” – can eventually do more harm than good. Faking it when you know that you haven’t prepared or don’t know what you’re talking about might not boost your boast as much as it will amp up your anxiety. So, consider the tradeoff. - JEFFREY DAVIS Read Article
Earn it! We should teach children that earnest confidence is earned not faked.
In this internet era, they are going to be the fastest way to acquire the immediate result - for the short run. Thus, the teaching became even more important to tell children slow is not always bad.
According to Confidence: Make It, Don't Fake It at Productive Flourishing, the way to EARN confidence is as simple as these five steps:
Step 1 – Get strong field knowledge
Before starting something new or something you are not confident with, ask people about it, walk around it, watch some video about it, drink about it, and just do something about it. Think about it: Just as you wet your body before jumping into a cool swimming pool or you warm up before intense exercise, the more “preparation,” the easier the task. The easier the task, the higher the confidence that you will do better.
Warning: Set a timeframe to get to that arena. Otherwise you might never start doing it; you will never be “fully ready” for it anyway.
Step 2 – Write
I like to draw and write and connect people and events. Writing is upper-level thinking. It always has been. Writing helps you to rethink what is in your mind and organize thoughts in front of you so you can read your “rethinking” in order to rethink again.
Opinion: Writing is such a key to the success of my work. You may be able to skip step one because of the urgency, yet you always write before you do.
Step 3 – Test
You are working to have confidence in a new field. You feel unfamiliar with the materials. That is all ok. You may still have the chance to test your thought and action plan in the real world, you just have to state it clearly and be honest with your “newbies.”
Opinion: Confidence depends on the degree of control you have when facing the uncomfortable.
Step 4 – Wonder
Once you have done one round of steps one to three, you have wet your feet. Look and feel your cold feet and dip your legs into the cold water. I am sure you have become at least two to three times more confident, yet you are still wobbly. You wonder and simply repeat the process.
LOVE! I love the part of wonder, because you are halfway confident while doing something new, better than almost 30% of the people who have never done anything.
Step 5 – Earn
I see every wonder of my new venture as a travel point I make on my credit card. Earning full confidence is just a matter of time.
Keep wondering until you earn your confidence.
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Michael is an independent college counselor, counseling 8th- through 12th-grade and California Community College students. He assists students to identify strengths and weaknesses, design education paths, teach study skills, plan class selection and extra-curriculum, prepare for SAT/ACT, and college admission. Michael earned a bachelor's degree in Neuroscience from UC Berkeley and a master's degree in Psychology from Pepperdine University.