Myth of confidence -7 

One of the trainee in our Train the Trainer program told me that she lacks confidence. I asked, "Who says so"?
Little befuddled by the question, she replied plainly "I".
I clarified, "So its the 'I', who lacks confidence, that is telling you that you lack confidence? Still befuddled she replied, "Yes."
I asked further, "So what does 'I', who is confident, tells you?" Now completely befuddled, she asked "What do you mean, 'I that is confident'?
To clarify, I asked, "Is there something - anything at all - in your life that you have done and can still do confidently"?
She said "Yes"
"So there is part of you that is confident and part of you that lacks confident.
"Hmmm..."
"Your problem is that you listen to the later part too much"
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A man went to a poultry shop and asked, "Do you have chicken?"
The shopkeeper replied, "It depends"
"What do you mean it depends ... on what?"
"Whether you want to eat it or feed it?" replied the shopkeeper.
"Obviously, eat it"
"In which case first go through that door and feed the chicken", directed the shopkeeper.
"And what if I wanted to feed the chicken in the first place?"
"Either ways, First we feed, then we eat", clarified the shopkeeper.
"But how will I ensure that the chicken I feed, is the chicken I eat?
"Oh! thats no worry here, since everybody who eats, also feeds!"

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Four conclusions from above:
1. Before you can reap confidence, you need to sow confidence.
2. It doesn't matter in which way (which field) we sow confidence, till we keep sowing confidence.
3. If we have confidence in one way (one field), we can transfer that to another way (field).
4. Because of three above, we actually never lack confidence, we might just be looking in the wrong place!

So to us, its a myth that 'some children (or even some of us) lack confidence'.

Lets then look at the insights in more detail, so that they result into strategies:

Children at an early age need exposure to many different kind of activities - so that 'some' of these exposures will sow confidence. Just as, since nature knows that few will succeed and few will perish, nature simply produces more. Similarly we need to not worry about fields in which the child is able and the fields in which the child is unable. We could rather just expose the child to as many fields as possible.

If my child can't jump confidently, I will ask her to twist, or draw, dribble, paint, sing, dance, cook, serve, arrange, throw, catch, search, .....
As many seeds I can sow, I shall; soon I am assured of a decent crop!
Once I have a decent crop - then the law of pollination starts acting. As child gets confident in one field, the other fields automatically gets a rub off.

Further we help and train the child to transfer these positive pollinations to areas which need them. This is called modeling.
A child was very quiet - she would hardly speak to anybody. We noticed that she was really observant and hence her drawings used to be very detailed. We started positively affirming her drawing abilities and asked her to tell us "what all has she drawn". Note, our interest here in her drawing was genuine. She started excitedly talking about her drawings and soon she opened up and started talking and communicating verbally.
Another child was extremely interested in football and cricket but in parents' words "hates writing." On a daily basis we asked him to teach the rest of us, about football and cricket - using written charts. His interest in writing soared, as his ability to write.

A lot of us act as if confidence should be there in my child genetically. In fact we demand confidence. We push our child, much against their wishes, till we get a reluctant participant who is even less confident.
Its time we started to realize that small, meaningful, diverse confident building experiences are much better for the child. Its time we started feeding before eating! Deposit before withdrawing. Sowing before reaping.

By Ratnesh & Aditi Mathur
For www.geniekids.com

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