BUILDING CONFIDENCE: My experience

 Lack of confidence is today's most common weakness in many young people even if they are very bright and exceptionally talented.

Let us look at it closely.

All human beings are born with total confidence. A very young child fearlessly puts his hand in fire or laughingly catches a snake with bare hands. Then, out of concern, adults introduce fear in him in advance. We over do it and soon the kid hesitates to do anything without someone’s approval. This is the beginning of confidence erosion. Animals don’t do this. They learn by trial and error. No great harm came to them.

Soon the concern of the adults for the child becomes an obsession called 'discipline' and a series of 'DO’s' and 'DONTs' are told to the kid to strictly follow. The kid who does not follow the discipline meets with punishments verbally or even physically. Many parents think that physical punishment may be bad but scolding is fine. I vehemently disagree.

A slap pains for the moment but does not last long while a nasty scolding stays in memory and keeps on paining for a long time, even for a lifetime depending on the sensitivity and tenderness of the kid. Adults do not realise this because the injury is invisible. The child cannot retaliate and often has nobody to share his hurt feelings. They stay inside and rot.

We often make things worse by not pointing to the fault but blaming the person and generalising it. Suppose the child drops the glass of milk. Of course it is never deliberate. Instead of saying 'you dropped the precious milk, you must be more careful, remember'; most of us say 'you are so clumsy, you have no brains, you never do anything right'.

Someone wisely said: "If you constantly debate your child, he will not hate you, he will hate himself."

A child after growing up with such negative reinforcements, even most talented, still thinks:

'I cannot do'

'I am a loser'

'I never do anything right'

'No one really likes me'

'I am sure I will not do this well enough'

'I am a sucker. I slog and do all the dirty work but that one takes all the credit'

 'My friend is a genius though younger to me but i am a total shit'

So, how do we address it?

1) First of all, avoid saying such negative comments to yourself. Stop contact with anybody who says as above since that may drag you more entrenched in to the 'lack of confidence pit'. Sympathising with such people will not help them. On the contrary, it makes their condition worse by being seen as an approval and attention getting.

If your overconfidence makes others feel rotten, let them; but your lack of confidence will make you feel rotten, with a "Oh, why didn’t' I try?" feeling. Do not let it happen. Not trying is worse than failure because fate can be blamed for failure but you cannot escape the blame for not trying. It keeps nagging you.

2) Make criticism positive

Many people are upset by negative comments but at the same time they also distrust the positive comments. Some negative comments could be constructive criticism. A criticism is called constructive if it motivates you to build on it and it is not condemning. If I say there is dirt on your face, you should not feel depressed sulking "I am shit". On the contrary, you should feel happy that I am concerned and that I want to see your face blemish less. If I pass a judgment, generalised and personalised, saying 'you are always   dirty' that is destructive.

  

3) Be aware of the relation between the work you do and your self confidence.

Self confidence comes from competence in your work.

Competence in work comes from doing the work repeatedly with passion.

Doing the work with passion comes from your love for what you are doing. Thus, doing the work you love is important for self confidence.

The problem is that many young people do not know what they love. They dabble in many things. They do not know the difference between infatuation and love. You need             honest self-reflection to identify your real love.

 

4) Your childhood experiences play a significant role in shaping you. Let them make you strong than scare you to flee.

As a kid of 4, have you ever felt like an orphan with a sudden loss of father and a voiceless illiterate widow mother?

Can you imagine a kid daily hungry for lunch but pressing the feet stumps of a leper teacher?

Have you ever been beaten and humiliated by two bully boys who threw you in mud, sat            on top and spat on your face; just because you did the homework as the teacher instructed and they didn't ?.

That was me, in my primary school.

I was also an introvert and introverts who are silent are not liked by noisy others. It threatens them.

How much broken should I be? Yet I never told my mother but cried alone in the fields. What then gave me the confidence to carry on?

My mother's blind, innocent (even ignorant) trust in me that her son would be a gem, no matter what the world says, he will take care of himself and others. How can I ever break her trust?

The most important thing to note is that I never doubted her trust. I never thought she was saying so to please me. If she thinks I am a gem, I am.

As simple as that. Just one persons trust in me is enough. I don’t have to care for others.

 

5) Jump into the lake even if you do not know swimming as long as there is at least one person watching you. Let me narrate another experience.

In 1970 when I completed my studies at NID, I was taken as faculty.

The executive director Mrs.Sarabai summoned me to her office and asked me point blank whether I would be able to handle if a major responsibility was offered to me as Chairman of NID Extension Programmes nationwide?

I was stunned. I was young, raw, just starting my career and it was very challenging responsibility. I didn’t even know what was meant by extension. No institution, including NID had done any extension programmes earlier. Nobody had any idea what shape it may take. If I fail, that would be the end of my career.

I was asked to answer instantly. Madam was very tough and apprehensive of me. You see, I made a bad impression because i never had studied in a convent and my English was atrocious. I did not ask myself whether I was capable; I asked myself why they            chose me.

I took a deep breath and looked around and found the trusting face of my teacher Kumar            Vyas. That’s all. The rest is history.

If Kumar Vyas trusts that I could do it, I could do it.

 

6) Focus is important in building confidence.

Lack of confidence is the result of your constant judgment on yourself whether you can             do it or cannot do it, whether you win or lose, whether you will be praised or laughed at. If you concentrate totally (remember the Arjuna shooting the bird's eye) on the target, immersed in it, your mind has no space to think about anything else and your confidence          automatically will increase. An immersive mind has no space to fear failure.

 

7) Judgment should not become a habit.

Unfortunately the media is brainwashing us all the time to do so. Resist it.  Judging yourself is the worst for confidence.

Self-judgment is different from self-analysis. Make a list of your strengths and weaknesses. That is analysis. You can take action accordingly.

You are good at jumping and not so good at football, is analysis. You will decide to improve on jumping. It builds confidence.

Your jumping is below the normal mark or far below some guy in school is judgment. It ruins confidence.

How do you know you are good at something if you don’t judge? This is what the             brainwash has done to us.

Suppose you love cooking and forget yourself in the joy of cooking, you know you are good at it. You taste the dish yourself to know for a feedback to improve. Feedback is not judgment. You don’t need others to praise or rate it. If salt is little less; just add it. That is all. No big deal.

Being crazy for approval of others or your own is a mark of big insecurity in us.

Awards are never a true indication of your worth anyway.

The world's biggest award is the Nobel Prize. The man who sacrificed his whole life to win freedom for millions of people, Mahatma Gandhi, never got it. Nehru got the Nobel peace prize. A girl from Pakistan, Malala, got it. So, never go by how others judge you nor judge yourself. A phrase says that 'those who judge will never understand and those who understand will never judge'. Be the understanding one. Keep on with what you      enjoy doing.

 

8) Know your real strengths and weaknesses by reflecting on your past.

 Wherever you did well, those are your strengths, build on them. Wherever you did not do well, those are your weaknesses, be aware of them. But never feel bad about them. Suppose you can’t write with left hand, do you feel bad? You simply use right hand. Mozart may not know how to paint but that does not dent his genius for music a bit.

 

9) Lastly, Keep the logic aside and let the subconscious mind operate. One can then achieve the impossible. Our conscious mind is imprisoned by logic.

Mohammad Ali kept logic aside and claimed "I am the greatest”. He became one. Of course you not only have to really believe but work for it.

In my childhood, in Andhra Pradesh, there was a great wrestler called Kodi Ramamurty Naidu. He was once tricked and fed poison by a rival king.

As soon as Naidu came to know about it, he swore to himself “God help me, I will digest this poison and it will cause no harm to me" and started   doing gymnastics. Miraculously, the poison did not affect him. This was recorded in history.

Psychologists and scientists of the world today say it as 'placebo effect'. I was too young             then to know what it was.