📘 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?

Discussion

M: Hey! Thank you, Rory, for your confident answers! You sound really confident!

R: Good. Let's hope there's some confidence for vocabulary as well. Or some confidence-related vocabulary as well.

M: How can we paraphrase confident?

R: Oh, having self-belief, or having a strong self-belief.

M: Can I say assertive?

R: Um, well, that's a sign of being confident.

M: Yeah, assertive? Someone who is assertive behaves confidently. So you have to be more assertive. You have to be more confident.

R: Ideally.

M: And it's C-2 word, assertive. Band nine word.

R: Is it?

M: Yeah.

R: Wow. Okay. I wonder what the criteria for that were?

M: Oh, Cambridge English dictionary. What about self-assured, Rory? To be self-assured.

R: Well, that's associated with confidence, isn't it? But we shouldn't confuse these things for actual confidence, which is the feeling.

M: Yeah, it's the feeling of having confidence in your abilities. So I'm self-assured, I'm confident in my abilities. Also a C-2 word, band nine. Self-assured, dear listener.

R: That's true. And it's confidence in yourself as well.

M: Yeah, so we say people are confident in. I'm confident in myself. People should be confident in themselves. And also be confident about. So could you give us an example with about.

R: To feel confident about something? Oh, gosh, you could feel confident about your ability to do your job if you're good at your job.

M: Yeah, what about to be confident of something?

R: You could be confident of your chances of success in your exam.

M: Yeah. To have a thorough knowledge of yourself. So thorough meaning like a lot of knowledge.

R: Yeah, or complete knowledge.

M: Complete knowledge, thorough knowledge, detailed.

R: Maybe not 100% complete, but some kind of completeness, it's more complete than an incomplete.

M: Yeah, like a thorough search, like a complete, detailed search for some information. Or you have to fake it till you make it. So fake it till you make it, dear listener? So you kind of like you do it. Even if you are not confident, you pretend to be confident, to feel confident. Fake it till you make it, or fake it until you make it. So kind of like imitate confidence and optimism. Even if you are not optimistic, you're not confident, but you fake it, and then you feel more confident. Then you can say like it sounds...

R: Trite. If you use a phrase like fake it till you make it, which is a very well known quote, then you could say, I know that sounds trite, but it's probably true, or there is some truth to it. So the idea of trite is just commenting on how something is not very original or a bit dull, because people use it so much. And people do say, fake it till you make it quite often. So I suppose that could be quite boring for people to hear. But nonetheless, there is some truth to this.

M: Yeah, trite? It's negative, expressed too often to be interesting. I know it will sound trite, but love yourself.

R: You've got to fake it till you make it. Or love yourself, yes.

M: Yeah. And often we say it like I know it will sound trite, but you should stay positive, for example. I know it will sound trite, but and then you give like the sky is blue. People might become overconfident, which is a bit of a negative thing.

R: But if you're overconfident, that just means they're, well, there's too much competence.

M: And then there's this word outshine. So to outshine? To be much more skillful or successful than someone else, and here we can speak about children. So children might outshine their parents.

R: Or they might be outshone by their parents, which isn't ideal.

M: Yeah. If you say children might be outshone by their parents. So children's parents are more successful than children. If parents have overbearing personalities, what does it mean?

R: How best to describe this? They're just too much. They impose too much on other people, and they're difficult to resist or to contrast with, because it's just all-consuming.

M: Yeah, it's negative, overbearing, too confident, too determined to tell other people what to do. So imagine, like some parents, they control their children, they tell them what to do all the time, so they're overbearing. They care too much. Okay? So children can't breathe.

R: They cannot breathe free.

M: People may lack confidence. So they're not confident enough, and some people might feel out of their depth.

R: Yes, but that's just to do with not feeling very sure about what to do, which is another way of saying lack confidence.

M: For example?

R: Well, if someone asked me how you fixed a telephone or a smartphone these days, I would have no idea where to even begin, so I would feel completely out of my depth there.

M: So out of your depth, C-2, band nine idiom, not having the knowledge, experience or skills to deal with a particular subject or situation. For example, I was out of my depth in the advanced English class. My level was pre-intermediate, and I was in an advanced English class for some reason, so I was out of my depth. Could you give us another example?

R: Well, you might feel out of your depth if you work in one industry and you are asked to talk about something that you have no familiarity with at all, like asking someone who studies history how they feel about physics.

M: Could you use it in a sentence?

R: Yeah, I frequently feel out of my depth when people talk about sports, because I have no, I don't have any background knowledge of this, or I don't have much advanced background knowledge of it.

M: Yeah, and people lack confidence because they could feel out of the depth because the subject, some work is too complicated, and the lack of knowledge could undermine people's self-belief. So lack of knowledge could lower people's self-confidence, self-belief.

R: And if you undermine something, then you, well, negatively affect its ability to be effective. Now, we've talked about undermined before. That's C-2, isn't it?

M: Yeah, it's C-2, totally. To undermine, to make someone less confident, less powerful, or less likely to succeed. So for example, criticism undermines people's self-confidence, dear listener. Or just confidence. And a very good word to use, please write it down. So you can answer this question by saying that criticism very often undermines people's confidence. Yeah, band nine. Helping students to become more confident could be a sensitive thing. Well, it deals with psychology, you know? And like teachers are not psychologists, so... So what can they do?

R: Well, I don't know. Actually, it's funny, because I was delivering a presentation about this, because one of the criteria for success that was part of this presentation, was be confident. But what does confidence look like? That depends very much on where you are in the world and the kind of job you have and what you're doing. So it's probably good to rely on our old strategy of saying that is a very culturally and contextually sensitive thing, just meaning that that's really hard to talk about, but yeah, so think about this. How does, what does confidence look like, Maria? If someone asked you to describe a confident person, what would you say?

M: Tony Robbins.

R: Right, that's who the person is. But what is it about them that makes them confident.

M: Just he's the definition of confidence, Rory, come on. Have you seen him on stage? Have you seen him, you know, like when he speaks, he just like, he doesn't need to prove anything to anybody, like he knows he's good, he loves himself, he takes care of himself, he accepts himself as he is. So he... He's just confidence. He projects confidence.

R: See what I mean, though? How is... How is the confidence projected, though? There we go. What things do you see or hear?

M: Well, again, look at Tony Robbins. It's a number of a lot of things, what he says, what he doesn't say, how he stands, his kinesthetic behavior. Yeah? Kinesthetic behavior? Can I say that?

R: Right? Okay, so it's the movement then?

M: Okay. So it's how he speaks, how he moves, how, like his clothes, his facial expressions, his, you know, energy. It's like everything around him that we kind of process subconsciously and consciously. Okay? It's just like, different levels.

R: So with that in mind then, this is connected to movement, or more movement than normal.

M: Looks, movement and speech. No, it's a combination of factors. It's not just one thing, Rory. And I think it's universal. It's like, like everybody, you know. You take a person I know from Madagascar, you take a person from Europe, you show them Tony Robbins, and they say, like, is he a confident person or not? I think it's this like... Signs are universal. People know subconsciously like, okay, yes, this person is confident, this one is afraid.

R: But the thing is, you also have this idea of quiet confidence as well. So...

M: Yeah, but you feel it, right? Even, even if Tony Robbins doesn't say a word, if he's just standing there, he doesn't say anything, he doesn't move, Rory. You look at him and just like you look into his eyes and you just say, yes, this person is confident. He's amazing, he's charismatic, and he doesn't even do or move. You know? He doesn't do anything, he doesn't move.

R: But how confidence is expressed is different in different cultures. Some people express confidence through this kind of behaviour, but other people do not. Other people are quieter. They move, they might move, but they don't move a great deal. In other cultures, lots of hand gestures, or what's perceived as lots of hand gestures, is not associated with confidence. It's associated with a lack of understanding of what you are talking about. So how this looks really depends on where you are. I mean, here we're talking about an American coach and author, and how Americans express themselves is very different to how other cultures express themselves.

M: Yeah, yeah. Culture does play a role in this, and body movements vary from culture to culture, dear listener. So you can say that, yeah, it's culturally specific. It's contextually specific. And the way people express their confidence could vary from culture to culture, but you may disagree with us. Okay? I still think that some signs are universal for any culture.

R: I don't know. Like...

M: Okay, for example.

R: Yeah.

M: If a person moves very quickly, if a person is fussing around, so quick movements. Like universally, any quick movements and fussing around is considered as like fear, or a person is worried they are not confident. But if a person moves not slowly, but like at an okay pace, but without any fussing around, so this person is considered to be confident, and that's universal. Fast movements, abrupt movements, no confidence. If a person moves slowly, so they project confidence.

R: Well, again, if we go back to the idea of smiling, because the idea of smiling and confidence depends, again, a lot on where you are. But lots of cultures associate smiling, or excessive smiling, especially with people that you don't know to be a sign of stupidity or a lack of intelligence.

M: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I was talking about movements in general, like not smiling. But smiling, yeah, like smiling, excessive smiling is just weird everywhere. Also, like in the states, like excessive smiling would be like, why is this person smiling too much? Or maybe... Yeah, a question. Teachers can reward their students for them to become more confident. So reward them with praise, teachers can praise them.

R: Yes, but they should not only do this, because it could ruin their motivation. You have extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. And entire books have been written about this, so I'm going to really oversimplify it. Extrinsic sources of motivation are from without, so things like your teacher giving you praise or someone giving you money, whereas intrinsic motivation comes from within. You do it because you want to, not because someone else wants you to. It is possibly more complicated than that, but we do not have all day, so this is the definition we are going with.

M: Yeah, rewarding could undermine their confidence or could ruin their confidence. So to ruin people's confidence.

R: Please tell me extrinsic and intrinsic motivation is a band nine word.

M: Oh, yeah, definitely, band 15. What does it mean if something gets fostered?

R: It's just created and supported. So you foster people's motivation extrinsically or intrinsically, it depends.

M: And also we can say that motivation in education gets fostered best through good relationships. So teachers can make studying more interesting through having good relationships with their students, for example.

R: Yeah.

M: And if students see their progress, their studies become more interesting, usually.

R: I think so, anyway. Other opinions are available, but these were just the answers that were easiest or that came the most easily to me.

M: Right, dear listener, thank you very much for listening! We love you! We hug you! We are sending more confidence! Like waterfalls of confidence.

R: We are sending extrinsic and intrinsic motivation to you.

M: Yeah, if you have no idea who Tony Robbins is, please google him, a very interesting person and listen to some of his TED Talks. Yeah, he's...

R: Quite the man.

M: Yeah, he's the man, yeah, he's the man. Yep. Thank you very much! And we'll get back to you in our next episode. Okay? Bye!

R: Bye!

M: Bye-bye, bye-bye!

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