Do you Lack Confidence

Do you Lack confidence?

When I did my second degree at University I wrote a dissertation on the nature of confidence.  We are in a changed society now fifty years on (!) but we still have many people in all spheres of life that lack confidence.  

At that time I firmly believed (and still do) that schools are a waste of time and money.   I understand that there is a need for schooling in the learning of writing and numbers, but beyond that most of the curriculum is irrelevant, particularly in secondary education.   It was Ivan Illich that wrote a book (called ‘DeSchooling Society’) in 1950 where he propounded the view that young people will learn what interests them when they are ready. 

The orientation in current day education is toward training people toward a career, and thus a concentration of available learning to that end.    The result is that the majority of young people are ‘trained’ in a certain direction that is not appropriate for their natural inclinations and thus they suffer low confidence (and other negative emotions) because of their inability to conform, or a lack of interest in the subject being offered.   It was beautifully expressed by Stephen Fry recently when he said  
“…if you train a tree along a wall by pinning it to that wall it will serve as an excellent decoration.   However, that is all it is good for or ever will be.   Meanwhile a tree that is allowed to grow naturally has so many other uses. “

I have never ever been good at, or interested in, taking part in sport (well I took up dingy sailing briefly) so it was a nightmare my being obliged to, (say for example) run around a hockey field.  It was very late in my educational career that by chance it was discovered that I was good at art and crafts.  Only when I won prizes for my artwork did I begin to even start to believe in myself. 

 How many of you can look back to your younger years and observe the direction in which you went that was (with the best of intent) inappropriate for your inclinations?   How many would have benefitted much more by pursuing different interests that you had at the time?   How many have realised just where your joy is now?

Ivan Illich maintained that young people should have centres of excellence that they could go to in order to pursue interests.  They didn’t exist then, but they do now – it is called The Internet.

To counter low confidence the first thing to do is to look at your life, your interests, and in particular your successes, and to recognise what it was that gave you pleasure that resulted in you achieving (at whatever level) what you considered to be ‘success’. For most of my readers who are serial crafters llike I am you are a success in everthing you do (I made my first outfit for myself when I was 8 – I look back on it with embarrassment but it was a success at the time)

(Keep in mind that success is subjective.  A young relative was a Country champion in Karate so she was acknowledged as successful.  But was she? She suffered panic attacks and illness because of the pressure from all sides!  For me that was not success.  She is now in a chosen career in computing and exceptionally ‘successful’ – and content!)  

That you have succeeded (or started to succeed) in what you wanted to pursue and can thus choose to learn more and, in your eyes, be even more successful, is, for me, the basis of learning to be confident.  

That you get acknowledgement from others that matter to you is great (though not the false list of declarations of encouragement on social media!) but knowing in yourself that you are achieving successfully is all you need!