On Confidence: Two Sides of a Coin?

On Confidence: Two Sides of a Coin?

This week's writing prompt “Confidence and Self-esteem” is a loaded one. Perhaps I should do two posts with it. I'd like to start with confidence.

I think confidence is in two forms. When I served my country, there was this lady that was asked to teach English remedials alongside me. I was skeptical. I was of the opinion that the students were too far gone for us to be able to remediate their communication skills. This lady, let's call her DA, told me not to worry, we'll see results.

“Corper Tayo,” she said in her usual solid, calm voice. “We can do this if we put our mind to it. That's all that's needed.”

“But I've never taught English before now,” I complained, “How am I going to teach a 14 year old to say ‘the teacher will beat me’ instead of ‘the teacher she's beat me’?”

DA told me that she'd helped people who were worse and that if we collaborated, we'll get the job done. Now, that is confidence!

Corper me Tayo

Confidence is self-assurance. It is faith in oneself that all things being equal one will not be far from the expected outcome.

Very often, there's a thin line between being confident in one's abilities and being proudful. I think the difference is in the intention. The negative side of confidence is pride, and so if your self-assurance is to show how you're better
than others, or worse still to make people around you feel like they're not enough, then it is pride rather than confidence.

Need I mention that by the end of our remedial term, DA’s students were far better than mine? I was skeptical. She was confident! And that made the difference.

Shot this on a hot Sunday afternoon

The other form of confidence is the feeling of belief, faith or reliance on someone other than oneself.

Back in the university, a course mate once got an F in a course. Everyone around him advised him to challenge the result (ask for his script to be re-marked). Rather than go through the official channel, I accompanied this guy met the lecturer one evening in the office and asked to know what he didn't do right as that will help him to study when he retakes the course the following semester.

The lecturer looked for his script and started reading. For a few minutes, the lecturer looked flustered. He flipped open his laptop computer and fired it up. He checked for something, the result I guess. And looked up at my friend, ghastly. He asked if my friend prayed, because on paper, he scored the highest, how it turned to F on the result portal was something he didn't understand.

Now, everybody was confident in my friend's ability to pass the course, not one person thought he truly failed. It is why they advised him to challenge the result. It was the wisdom of a few of us that made him go through a more polite route.

Giving all exceptional people their flowers. I shot it.

Confidence in others is a good thing. It keeps them on their toes to continue to do well, but sometimes it may be a bad thing. As humans, we sometimes need to take a break. This however becomes almost impossible for people who have the respect of other people. They press on when they need to take a break in order not to break people's trust and confidence in them. In most cases, they end up breaking down (body and mental). The solution to this, I think, is to always remind people to take a break when the need arises. Remind them that they are human, after all.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about self-esteem.