The Confidence Project

Hello dear readers! It's Gail once again. I'm about to share with all of you a project that I've been working on with my closest friends, Jay (of A Bin of Thoughts) and Joan (of Joan Writes). We envision this project to become the first stone casted that will set ripples of change in our readers' lives.

What's New?

We have been taught that confidence is something that we either have or we don't. But that's not completely true. Through years of internalizing and months of learning, we found out that confidence can be built. Is it through some sort of intense training? A boot camp of sorts? Probably. It could also be strengthened through frequent and deliberate practice. But isn't that common sense though? Yes, it is. And this project reminds you of that, in case you forget.

Throughout the journey, you will come across inevitable pitfalls. One of which may be thinking that there is something inherently wrong with you. This can lead to self-sabotage. We want to make it clear that this project isn't about proving this wrong. As a matter of fact, I personally believe that there is something wrong with everybody. We are flawed, broken and we have problems. Life is all about making peace with our inherent brokenness and moving forward from there. Moving forward, in this project's context, is to start doing things that matter to you.

We recognize the role that confidence plays in this undertaking. "What if I'm not good at it?", "What if I fail?", "I had this really bad experience one time, I'm not going to do it anymore." Allow yourself to suck the first time, because nobody knew how to read when they first came to be. We learned to read because we practiced. In this case, the process of building confidence is a cycle. You need confidence to start, as you practice and build your skills, you build confidence in the process.

Why are we doing this?

We're not psychologists but we're lovers of the crafts of writing and blogging. We are chemical engineers by profession who wish to have outlets for our creative expression. We also wish to reach a wider audience. At the very least, we'd also like to help ourselves to become more confident individuals.

So how will this project go?

This project will span for a year, with the three of us being with you every step of the way. We will be taking turns in hosting the takeaways every month, make sure to follow all three of us on our social media (Gail's, Jay's and Joan's) so that you guys can stay updated. Each month will feature a takeaway and a challenge. The takeaways are the key features of confidence that we've learned from scientific studies and our own experiences. Challenges are action items that are designed to apply the takeaways. We aim to ultimately guide you into having a more accurate view of your capacities which will translate to greater self-confidence or greater will to put in work to get better.

In essence,

What are our objectives?

Our objectives are as follows:

1. Effective - we will make sure that, as much as possible, our advice is backed up by Science. It is our responsibility to cross check our references.
2. On Schedule - we will also be posting the main takeaway on the first week of each month (except for this month's takeaway which will be posted tomorrow). We will also be posting on the 4th Sunday of the month the winner/s of the challenge for that takeaway.
3. Interactive - we will be interacting with our readers and supporters by promptly answering their questions, comments and suggestions. The challengers will be interacting with us in our blogs, posting their answers in the comments section of our blogs. We will be preparing exciting prizes to lucky winner/s!

How will we approach this?

We will be working our way from the core to the bigger outer circle. For the first quarter of the year, our posts will be centered on the self. For the second quarter, we will be extending our confidence to our inner circle which includes the family, close friends, acquaintances we interact with on a daily basis. For the third quarter, we will be moving towards our small groups like our blogging community, choir, dance troupe, etc. For the final stretch, we will be applying confidence to initiate or participate in activities that will benefit the community.

What are our references?

Scholars have a lot of lens through which they view confidence in. Some look at confidence as judgment (Berger, 1992; Barbalet, 1998), as conviction and/or certainty (Vealey, 1986; Krishnan & Smith, 1998; Petty, Brinol & Tormala, 2002; Siegrist, Gutscher & Earle, 2005; Stajkovic, 2006), as evaluation (Rostenstreich, 1972; Smith 2005; Brewer, Sampaio & Barlow, 2005; Stankov, Crawford, Lee & Paek, 2009), as belief (Earle, 2009) and others see it as a feeling, opinion and/or expression (Koehler, 1991; Guennif, 2002; Compte & Postlewaite, 2004). In accordance to our set objectives, we will be treating confidence in the light of it being a conviction and/or certainty. Generally, it regards self-confidence as being based on past experiences and that it can be updated over time. Specifically, we will be adapting the following definitions:

Defining Confidence

Confidence: a critical review of the literature and an alternative perspective for general and specific self-confidence by Oney and Gizem (2015)

This article is our main reference. This includes a lot of literature pertaining to confidence. The article presents the varied definitions of confidence, its characteristics, how confidence differs from other similar constructs. It also talks about the evolutionary theory and general and specific confidence. It gives proposals for a new conceptualization of self-confidence in the end as well.

How To Be Confident, School of Life 

As with this video, the first step is to always make peace with who you are - all the good, bad and crazy parts of us. Determine the place where you want to go and realize that you are going to get there if you start from where you are. This video says that in our pursuit of confidence, our perception of our dignities may cause us to hate the crazy and foolish part of ourselves. The key here is to accept that we are all idiots. No one is spared.

A Breakdown of Conor McGregor's Confidence, Charisma on Command

As with this video, we would want to emphasize that in confidence, there is no need to shout. Confidence is saying things like you mean them. Draw strength from the things that you can control. Confidence is all about relevant experience. This video highlights the importance of relevant experience, focus on things that we have control over and visualization. This video actually started my interest in the topic. Up until now, Conor McGregor is still someone whose confidence I aspire to achieve. I'm not referring to his trash talking confidence though. I'm talking about his ability to just say things like he means them.

So, what do you say?

I want to make the world a little better of a place than when I first came to be. You can say that this is my way of achieving this. I am so glad that I have friends who have similar aspirations too. I hope you guys can come on board with us in our journey to confidence.

Hoping that you'll join us,
Gail

I first posted this here.