By Nadia Muthoni
What is confidence and why is it such a great deal to every motivational speakers’ perspective? What does it take to be confident and why are we not confident as a society or individuals?
Oxford dictionary defines confidence as the feeling that you can trust, believe in, and be sure about the abilities or good qualities of someone or something. The perfect and natural example would be a baby old enough to mumble a few words but still naive and oblivious to the world to go about what babies do while being babies.
Our adorable little humans understand very little to perceive the details embroidered in our reality ranging from self-awareness to human interactions. However, they are very quick at picking and absorbing information which they later get to pull from the archives subconsciously as adults. In short we can say that, confidence is built or damaged at an early stage in life. This is not in any way to imply that, it cannot be acquired or lost later on. Simply put “Samaki mkunje angali mbichi”.
Confidence is something you are born with that gets lost along the way. So what happens between acquiring and losing it? You become self-aware, start forming insecurities and habits that lead to your confidence diminishing. As human beings we love to be affirmed and complemented for it generally makes us feel good about ourselves.
In the brain dopamine, we have the hormone and neurotransmitter that’s responsible for the reward system along with learning, memory and pleasurable sensation. Serotonin helps regulate our moods associated with learning ability and memory. By understanding how our brains and hormones work, we get a better approach to the reward system along the lines of addiction.
A parent’s method of disciplining is of great concern. It’s easy to ignore the small efforts children put in as they continue to learn and even easier to scold and condemn them when they make blunders. This can begin to affect their psychology if the frequency of recurrence is alarming. A parent who scolds their children contributes in bringing out their weaknesses. The child begins to focus on the feeling of unworthiness and can easily loose value for themselves at this point. They become shy and afraid to speak up, mostly withdrawing and keeping everything to themselves or at least, their confidants.
Meanwhile, a different child is raised in the complete opposite environment where they are affirmed, complemented and corrected in a manner that helps them understand things. This child grows up to appreciate their own value and position themselves as very outspoken individuals who go about whatever they do confidently, regardless of whether or not they are experts in the particular field.
This is seen in the way they express themselves, behave and appear in public. Thanks to this strong attributes, they have an advantage of getting people to trust or believe in them. When you listen to music, it first sounds nice before you get to realize the lyrics were loose and not so deep. This is because the musician is able to convince you by the way they present their content just from articulation and their tone of voice.
When you watch America’s Got Talent, you can almost guess when the judge is going to give a pass, even when the performer didn’t have the best voice. Their confidence creates an emotion. It is the aura people read off us when they meet us that counts. Confident people are able to bring out their personalities without caring about who is around, what they will think and the consequences associated. It comes with a “don’t care” touch and disregard of achievements and titles, disrespect not considered!
For adults with confidence issues, it can be acquired through positive reinforcement from people you interact with, but mostly yourself. One has to understand what situations make them uncomfortable and cost them their confidence, then increase the frequency of interaction with the situation to build familiarity and improve their approach. This can be achieved through training their mind to think positively and have a tunnel vision ignoring all other factors such as; the “what ifs ” that make us shaky when we present ourselves. Appreciate when things work your way, but also learn to embrace criticism.
