📘 Part 3: Confidence

This episode's vocabulary

To fake it till you make it (phrase) - by imitating confidence, competence, and an optimistic mindset, a person can realize those qualities in their real life and achieve the results they seek.

Trite (adj.) - (of a remark or idea) lacking originality or freshness; dull on account of overuse.

Overconfident (adj.) - excessively confident.

To outshine (verb) - be much better than (someone) in a particular area.

Overbearing (adj.) - unpleasantly overpowering.

To undermine (verb) - lessen the effectiveness, power, or ability of, especially gradually or insidiously.

Self-belief (noun) - confidence in your own abilities.

To vary (verb) - differ in size, amount, degree, or nature from something else of the same general class.

To embody (verb) - to represent a quality or an idea exactly.

Extrinsic (adj.) - not part of the essential nature of someone or something; coming or operating from outside.

Intrinsic (adj.) - belonging naturally; essential.

To foster (verb) - encourage the development of (something, especially something desirable).

Questions and Answers

M: How can a person become more confident?

R: I mean, having a thorough knowledge of yourself and what you have to do is probably ideal, but sometimes that's not always possible, and you have to kind of fake it till you make it as they say. I know that sounds a bit trite, but we can't always do everything with the appropriate amount of preparation, and we have to learn as we go.

M: Are children of confident parents also confident?

R: It seems logical, doesn't it? I suppose they might even become overconfident or be outshone by their parents if they have particularly overbearing personalities. That's never fun to see.

M: Why do many people lack confidence these days?

R: Well, I can see how the world works might leave people feeling a bit out of their depth because it's increasingly complicated, or at least our awareness of how complicated it is seems to have developed a lot. I mean, very few people really understand how the advanced technology that keeps our society functioning actually works, and that could really undermine people's self-belief.

M: What can teachers do to help their students become more confident?

R: That is actually a very good question, since it's a very culturally and contextually sensitive thing. How confidence looks varies from place to place? I suppose, well, broadly, they'd have to identify what the markers of confidence are and look at ways to embody them, but that's quite broad, like I said.

M: Can teachers help their students become more confident by rewarding them?

R: Oh, God. I mean that actually might ruin their confidence by making them rely only on extrinsic sources of motivation, by making them rely only on extrinsic sources of motivation without developing intrinsic ones. If you only do things because of what other people expect from you, then you might never do anything for yourself.

M: What can teachers do to make studying more interesting?

R: Good question. Well, usually, motivation and education gets fostered best through good relationships and seeing progress from things that work well. It's like that for most things in life, you want to work with people that things work well with, or you want to work well with people you like, doing things that work well. And if it's not working well and you don't like them, then it's not likely to work out in the end, is it?