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Confidence

My confidence is gossamer thin. My fear of failure very strong.

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  • Statest16Statest16 Citizen, Mentor

    Yea,me to

  • AmityAmity Administrator, Citizen

    I have a fear of failure when something is very important to me.

  • Something that's helped me in that regard is the realization that confidence is one of those things where "fake it 'til you make it" actually works. Acting confident even when not feeling confident actually helps you feel more confident over time.

  • HylianHylian Citizen, Mentor

    ^ What Wolfram said is true.

    I used to think that whole "faking confidence" thing wasn't real, or at least not feasible for me to do, but after trying it and getting better at faking it I don't really have to "fake it" that much anymore.

    There's still a lot of things I'm not confident in my ability to do properly, but now I'm more confident in my ability to try them out and do my best. :)

  • I have self-confidence and self-esteem coming out of my furry ears. 🐨
    I'm "full of it". 😎

    Others may mistake this for arrogance.
    Silly others. 🙃

  • SheldonSheldon Citizen
    edited November 2020

    @Wolfram said:
    Something that's helped me in that regard is the realization that confidence is one of those things where "fake it 'til you make it" actually works. Acting confident even when not feeling confident actually helps you feel more confident over time.

    Human psychology at work, yes.
    Even things like posture help.
    Jordan Peterson talked about the importance of serotonin, in his "Lobster Hierarchical Theory".

    BTW, Without a sense of confidence, one's mental mechanism doesn't work as effectively as it could.
    One could say, "confidence" is the "oil" which lubricates thought processes. 😎
    And I say that with confidence. 🐨

  • @Wolfram said:
    Something that's helped me in that regard is the realization that confidence is one of those things where "fake it 'til you make it" actually works. Acting confident even when not feeling confident actually helps you feel more confident over time.

    I agree with this. Single parenting reinforced my confidence in this regard because I had to act confident in situations where I was actually quite uncertain. Having to be appear confident for someone else's safety and security provided a great learning opportunity.

    My fear of failure is quite strong too @firemonkey. It's helped to try thinking of potential strategies (e.g., accommodations, work-arounds, or adaptations) for most of the things that intimidate me. They don't always work, but that's OK. We're all human and we all make mistakes. It's helpful to be gentle with your self-esteem and not to feel inferior to others because of perceived differences.

  • Prometheus81Prometheus81 Citizen, Member
    edited November 2020

    I think confidence is somewhat fetishized in today's world, mostly because our cultural idols are today rapacious businessmen, who work in a field where feigned confidence is of the essence, or at least believed to be. I think in reality, unless you've got millions of dollars to back it up, confidence without ability will almost always be caught out sooner or later. I'd much rather be able and underconfident than incapable and overconfident, the way people dubbed confident usually are.

  • SheldonSheldon Citizen
    edited November 2020

    @Isabella said:
    We're all human and we all make mistakes.

    Not all humans are fallible. 😎
    Some just pretend to make a mistake, here and there, so as not to make others feel uncomfortable. 🙃

  • @Prometheus81 said:
    I'd much rather be able and underconfident than incapable and overconfident, the way people dubbed confident usually are.

    To each his/her own, but as I mentioned, being confident amplifies one's abilities.
    Perhaps, you could say it creates a gestalt?
    That is simply how human psychology works, imo.
    This is coming from personal experience, btw.

    I also don't use money as a means of validating the actuality of the benefits of the "confidence mechanism".
    Even people that are fiscally incompetent can utilise other skills better if they have an innate confidence in that ability.

    "Overconfidence", is another beast, altogether.
    The "trick" is knowing the difference. 😎

  • SheldonSheldon Citizen
    edited November 2020

    BTW, I used to use the handle" Prometheus" 30 odd years ago. 🐨
    Nice choice. 😉

  • Prometheus81Prometheus81 Citizen, Member

    All I mean is that confidence has to be commensurate with ability, and can't be a substitute for it. You're right that it does improve performance when that ability is already there.

  • Overconfidence is foolish, but underconfidence could by itself keep you from finding out that your actual ability was not as bad as you believed.

  • One thing that helps for me is to play things down. The smaller the situation looks, the more confident I feel.

  • @Prometheus81 said:
    All I mean is that confidence has to be commensurate with ability, and can't be a substitute for it. You're right that it does improve performance when that ability is already there.

    Agreed.
    Dunning–Kruger effect. 😎

  • Prometheus81Prometheus81 Citizen, Member
    edited November 2020

    I think that the actual proportion of the population that suffers with underconfidence is much lower than people think. I recently read Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now (which EVERYBODY should read), in which he explains, among many other things, that while inbuilt cognitive biases lead us to be unrealistically pessimistic about the world, they also make us unrealistically optimistic about ourselves.

    The Dunning-Kruger effect is pretty much universal, to use Sheldon's term, and it extends to things other than intelligence. A recent poll showed that a majority of university students believed they were going to become millionaires.

  • Majority of university students are young and stupid? Shocker.

  • Prometheus81Prometheus81 Citizen, Member

    Aside from the rhetorical point you're making, which is undoubtedly a reasonable one, it definitely is shocking that a majority of young university students could both be so blindly optimistic and secondly have such poor numerical reasoning skills. After all, these are allegedly the most intellectually capable members of their generation, so the fact quoted does not indicate good things for the future, nor about the state of primary or secondary education.

  • @Wolfram said:
    Majority of university students are young and stupid? Shocker.

    Young and dumb, jawohl. 😎

  • HylianHylian Citizen, Mentor

    @Prometheus81 said:
    All I mean is that confidence has to be commensurate with ability, and can't be a substitute for it. You're right that it does improve performance when that ability is already there.

    Are you perhaps conflating confidence with arrogance?

  • Prometheus81Prometheus81 Citizen, Member
    edited November 2020

    @Hylian said:

    @Prometheus81 said:
    All I mean is that confidence has to be commensurate with ability, and can't be a substitute for it. You're right that it does improve performance when that ability is already there.

    Are you perhaps conflating confidence with arrogance?

    No. Confidence is a good thing by definition, but what people think is confidence is usually something more like cockiness (not exactly arrogance).

  • I was confident when younger because my parents told me I was a genius. As I got older and found I'm really only skilled at a smaller number of things, I've lost a lot of confidence. I especially lack it in areas where I've been repeatedly criticized by others, such as social skills.

  • Prometheus81Prometheus81 Citizen, Member
    edited November 2020

    @ting1984 said:
    I was confident when younger because my parents told me I was a genius. As I got older and found I'm really only skilled at a smaller number of things, I've lost a lot of confidence. I especially lack it in areas where I've been repeatedly criticized by others, such as social skills.

    My experience to date has been very similar. Though I never very much cared for social skills, and if anything take pride in the fact that I don't have them, since they're only useful for small-minded things like gossip.

  • @Prometheus81 said:

    @ting1984 said:
    I was confident when younger because my parents told me I was a genius. As I got older and found I'm really only skilled at a smaller number of things, I've lost a lot of confidence. I especially lack it in areas where I've been repeatedly criticized by others, such as social skills.

    My experience to date has been very similar. Though I never very much cared for social skills, and if anything take pride in the fact that I don't have them, since they're only useful for small-minded things like gossip.

    My mom never cared much for social skills, either (my dad, by contrast, is on the extreme end of extroversion). Hers were good enough, though, that she was able to succeed in the working world, and was able to maintain friendships -- at least when she wanted to (she ultimately chose to be a hermit when we moved to Tennessee when I was a young girl, but she had a close friend in Minnesota when I was very little; I used to play with their kids then).

    My social skills are such that I cannot read many cues, frequently misinterpret people's intentions, get angry easily when I think someone is being unfair, and have done things out of frustration that have cost me jobs, burned bridges, and basically made me friendless and largely unemployable at this point.

    I prefer to just interact with those who know me well now. So that would be husband, dad, and sister. I also do some minor socializing at church, but people there barely know me, and churches are seldom places of open conflict, so I can remain baseline there more easily.

  • Prometheus81Prometheus81 Citizen, Member

    @ting1984 said:

    @Prometheus81 said:

    @ting1984 said:
    I was confident when younger because my parents told me I was a genius. As I got older and found I'm really only skilled at a smaller number of things, I've lost a lot of confidence. I especially lack it in areas where I've been repeatedly criticized by others, such as social skills.

    My experience to date has been very similar. Though I never very much cared for social skills, and if anything take pride in the fact that I don't have them, since they're only useful for small-minded things like gossip.

    My mom never cared much for social skills, either (my dad, by contrast, is on the extreme end of extroversion). Hers were good enough, though, that she was able to succeed in the working world, and was able to maintain friendships -- at least when she wanted to (she ultimately chose to be a hermit when we moved to Tennessee when I was a young girl, but she had a close friend in Minnesota when I was very little; I used to play with their kids then).

    My social skills are such that I cannot read many cues, frequently misinterpret people's intentions, get angry easily when I think someone is being unfair, and have done things out of frustration that have cost me jobs, burned bridges, and basically made me friendless and largely unemployable at this point.

    I prefer to just interact with those who know me well now. So that would be husband, dad, and sister. I also do some minor socializing at church, but people there barely know me, and churches are seldom places of open conflict, so I can remain baseline there more easily.

    Your experience is interesting. Both my parents have always been weirdoes (not to imply that yours are) and had little regard for convention. Somehow they also managed to get ahead.

    No matter how few friends you have, if you have at least one then you have more than me. I quite like being around people at a distance, but I've never really wanted friends. I'd like to get married one day, but I'm afraid you're ahead of me there too.

    I always found church a standoffish place where people weren't massively friendly at all. I can't remember any other congregant ever taking a any interest in me or trying to say hello, and the clergy were even worse. I'm glad your experience has been better.

  • @Prometheus81 said:

    @ting1984 said:

    @Prometheus81 said:

    @ting1984 said:
    I was confident when younger because my parents told me I was a genius. As I got older and found I'm really only skilled at a smaller number of things, I've lost a lot of confidence. I especially lack it in areas where I've been repeatedly criticized by others, such as social skills.

    My experience to date has been very similar. Though I never very much cared for social skills, and if anything take pride in the fact that I don't have them, since they're only useful for small-minded things like gossip.

    My mom never cared much for social skills, either (my dad, by contrast, is on the extreme end of extroversion). Hers were good enough, though, that she was able to succeed in the working world, and was able to maintain friendships -- at least when she wanted to (she ultimately chose to be a hermit when we moved to Tennessee when I was a young girl, but she had a close friend in Minnesota when I was very little; I used to play with their kids then).

    My social skills are such that I cannot read many cues, frequently misinterpret people's intentions, get angry easily when I think someone is being unfair, and have done things out of frustration that have cost me jobs, burned bridges, and basically made me friendless and largely unemployable at this point.

    I prefer to just interact with those who know me well now. So that would be husband, dad, and sister. I also do some minor socializing at church, but people there barely know me, and churches are seldom places of open conflict, so I can remain baseline there more easily.

    Your experience is interesting. Both my parents have always been weirdoes (not to imply that yours are) and had little regard for convention. Somehow they also managed to get ahead.

    No matter how few friends you have, if you have at least one then you have more than me. I quite like being around people at a distance, but I've never really wanted friends. I'd like to get married one day, but I'm afraid you're ahead of me there too.

    I always found church a standoffish place where people weren't massively friendly at all. I can't remember any other congregant ever taking a any interest in me or trying to say hello, and the clergy were even worse. I'm glad your experience has been better.

    My parents also were/are both very unconventional (even though my dad is extremely sociable), and so I grew up in the strangest bubble. Yet, I was unaware I was in such a bubble until I hit my twenties, became more socially aware, and learned that many of the beliefs and traits they have were highly idiosyncratic to themselves. Their interpretations of the Bible, and their views of God, especially, were much less conservative and orthodox than I (or even they) ever realized. I've been in a few churches now since my late twenties, and when I bring up some of the things I was taught (or not taught) to church leaders, pastors, etc., they frequently have to gently correct and inform me of the more traditional and accepted views/behaviors.

    I don't have any friends, and haven't since around the time I got married and moved in with husband in 2016. There was one lady I went to graduate school with, attended the same church (at the time), who attended my wedding and was bridesmaid -- but after the wedding, and especially after I removed my Facebook account earlier this year, we don't have contact anymore. It's the same with anyone else I may have known from my college years. And since I didn't make any friends after the move/marriage, either, there's been no new friends to take those places.

    The churches I've been to, I'd characterize as somewhere between friendly and standoffish. They will say hello, they will take some interest -- but the more people become aware of the strange manner in which I was raised, the kind of atypical person I am, the less comfortable they are. Since most conservative churches are filled with elderly people who are only really aware of their own traditions and beliefs, they often don't know what to do with any sort of novelty or deviation from their own paths. This is one thing that frustrates me the most about how I was raised -- I cannot fit into any conservative churches all that well. My parents were never big churchgoers themselves, although they always insisted they were conservative. It's been a major point of confusion for me -- but I definitely don't fit in with more liberal and secular crowds, either, so I just have to accept awkwardness with the conservatives.

  • Prometheus81Prometheus81 Citizen, Member
    edited November 2020

    My parents were complete non-believers and my interest in Christianity was self-directed, going back to my early childhood. The only Church I cared for was the Catholic one, since the others compromise too much. I suppose that makes me "conservative", but as someone with a background in physics, I never really took any of the God stuff seriously as an adult anyway; my interest was by then only cultural and moral, and given the way I was treated, even that has lost its appeal to me.

    It's funny that the conservative services mainly attract old people in your experience, since in the Catholic church it's quite the opposite; most young people (rightly) cringe at their middle-aged parents' enthusiasm for attending guitar Mass in jeans and t-shirts, and prefer a traditional, Latin one with an organ.

    I'm doubtful whether Facebook friends are of any value at all. I've always been of the opinion that it's quite impossible to have an online friend, and those who tell themselves otherwise are just trying to make themselves feel better. One cannot "know" another person over the internet. Personally, I've not had Facebook since 2012, and can hardly see how anyone would volunteer to give their private information to a man like Mark Zuckerberg, who is on record as calling those who trust him "dumb f*cks" (my asterisk):

    https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zuckerberg-called-people-who-handed-over-their-data-dumb-f/

  • I've read that young people attend service less frequently than elders, but for those who do, they prefer more traditional liturgy vs. the casual contemporary style that Boomers and Old Gen X brought into many branches of Protestantism.

    I mentioned my friend was someone I both knew from graduate school, church, and someone I connected with online through Facebook; I knew her both in person and through the Internet. But after I moved, and after she was bridesmaid at my wedding, we could really only connect online anymore, and we lost that as well when I deleted Facebook.

  • Prometheus81Prometheus81 Citizen, Member

    Can't you contact her over the telephone? Or e-mail her? Or visit her house? Write to her even... 💀

  • Funny thing is, I don't think I ever got her phone number, or email, or home address. But those would be good ideas if I had them. :)

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