The Confidence Project Takeaway 1: Identify Your Areas of Focus

Hello dear readers! How have you been? Has the idea of the project sunk in yet? Not really? Well, don’t worry. Here is a quick recap of what this project’s all about.

Remember these?

1. When they said that confidence was something that you either have or you didn’t, they were not telling you the whole truth. Confidence can actually be built through experience.
2. There are varying definitions of confidence and the project wants to focus on the definition that confidence is a certainty that one has about his/her abilities.
3. Our role is to initiate small steps that we believe will guide you towards attaining or developing your self-confidence. Specifically, I (thegaillery.blogspot.com), Joan (thejoanabuan.wordpress.com) and Jay (abinofthoughts.wordpress.com) will be taking turns in hosting a post in our respective blogs which features a takeaway and a challenge. Don’t forget to follow us on our social media channels so that you won’t be missing out on our posts and prizes!
4. A little disclaimer as well: we’re not psychologists and experts in the field of self-confidence but we’re chemical engineers: that said, we base our posts on scientific papers.

Are y’all ready? If so, let’s move onward to the takeaway that we have for you today.

Have you heard about general and specific self-confidence?

Oney and Oksuzoglu-Guven (2015) in their work entitled “Confidence: a critical review of literature and an alternative perspective for general and specific self-confidence” stated that with the varying definitions of self-confidence, there needs to be a separation between its general and specific domains. They further said that when confidence is used in a specific context, the context forms part of the definition of confidence.

Stajkovic (2006) has suggested that self-confidence in one’s ability is further distinguished into general and specific. Lampert and Rosenberg (1975) further suggested that specific self-confidence is a person’s self-stated confidence in abilities in a specific context at a given point of time, whereas general self-confidence is defined as the self-stated confidence irrespective of any specific context.

In other words, specific self-confidence emerges in relation to a particular behavior while general self-confidence is formed as a result of an overall evaluation of all behaviors, actions, thoughts and abilities we engage in. Shavelson, Burstein and Keesling (1977) stated that general self-confidence reflects an aggregate of various “specific self-confidences” which in turn, according to Bell (1967) and Chen, Gully and Eden (2001), is based on evaluations from many specific situations.

Here is a table that further illustrates the differences between the two:

Why do we need to distinguish between the two?

A lot of scholars have established the relationship between these two concepts. The reason why we emphasized their differences is to further illustrate that what you’ve been told (that confidence is something that we either have or we don't) is not the whole truth. We now know that general self-confidence is based on an overall assessment of our experiences in the past while specific self-confidence can be updated after each new experience. From my understanding, we have greater control over our specific self-confidence over our general self-confidence. This is where deliberate practice comes in. If we can learn to maximize the control that we have over our experiences, we can build our specific self-confidence in the areas that truly matter to us. Perhaps, along the way, we can subconsciously work on our general confidence too. According to Matthews, Deary, and Whiteman (2003) the successes in a number of different specific areas are likely to increase our general self-confidence.

So, are you guys ready for the challenge?

This one’s going to be easy. We have established that in order to develop specific self-confidence, we need relevant practice. The first step is to determine the areas that you’d want to be more confident in.

After determining the areas that you wish to become more confident in, list down actions that you can do to help build an accurate view of your skills. It helps to make these steps as small and actionable as possible, in order for you to do them frequently. You can also devote a set amount of time for practice.

For example, I have determined that one of the areas that I want to become more confident in is writing. I build an accurate view of my skills by writing in my journal everyday, creating posts on my blog and documenting the significant things that I learned from every writing job that I do.

In order for you to keep track of your progress: have systems. Systems help you do things frequently and more effectively. It also helps to have a progress tracker to remind you of your little achievements and perhaps, your stumps.

I reward myself for every major achievement that I make. When I posted on my main blog about my board exam journey, people were reaching out to me to say that they like my style of writing. I got myself a drink for having done that article and for creating content that some people regarded as great. To keep track of my progress, I use the Habitica app to keep me motivated to do my writing everyday. If you want to learn more about this app, you can read Habitica: How It Works. I also have a secret Instagram account where I post the writings that I've done along with my realizations about my skills.

Please be reminded that the confidence that we are talking about here is the accurate view of yourself. After this project, we envision you to say things like you mean them.

I can now confidently say that based on my experience, I can write at most three blogposts per month.

How do I join?

Just follow these steps and post your entries on my Facebook timeline.

1. Set the title to "The Confidence Project Entry 1: Identifying My Area/s of Focus"
2. In your post, tell us your reason for joining this initiative.
3. List down at least one area that you'd want to be more confident in along with at most three activities that you can do to build an accurate view of your skills.
4. Use the hashtag #confidenceproject.
5. Paste the link of your entries in the comments section of my post on FB so we can easily find you.
6. You can share this post to let others know about this challenge too.

You can post your entries until January 31, 2018 and the winner/s will be announced in a blogpost that I'll be posting on the first week of February. The winner will be receiving a cute CBTL planner and two runners-up will be getting goodies from us. Best of luck to all of you!

 

Looking forward to your entries,
Gail