Confidence Workshop
On Monday 19th of March I attended a two-hour workshop on self-confidence, given by Mani from the Coventry Employability Team for Media. The workshop taught me that self-confidence is a state of mind and to achieve optimal self-confidence I need to train myself to view things in a positive mind-set.
Self-confidence can be split into three types: low confidence, over-confidence and optimal confidence. Low confidence means that an individual will govern their behaviour based on other people’s opinions, they will only stay in their comfort zone and their decisions are based on a fear of failure. Low self-confidence is noticeable through bad posture, not making eye contact, having poor time management, feeling unprepared, being unhappy about yourself and criticising others. I feel like this description fitted me when I first came to university and was nervous that I was not as good as everyone else. However now this does not really fit me, as I trust my own opinions and like to push myself and take risks to learn new skills and have new experiences and I am confident in my abilities.
An over confident individual is someone who has a superiority complex, and will overestimate their capacity to perform, believing no one can do it better than them, which makes them difficult to work with in a team. I feel that this is a description that has never fitted me, I am aware of other people’s skills and understand the importance of teamwork. However, I have on occasion found myself doing other people’s work, not due to my belief that I will do it better, but due to the other person’s low self-confidence and their fear of not being able to do it. I should probably try and encourage them to do the work themselves so that they have the opportunity to build their own self-confidence.
Thirdly is everyone’s aim to achieve, optimal self-confidence. This is doing what you believe is right no matter what others say, making clear decisions, and moving on from past choices. People with optimal self-confidence make eye contact, hold their heads up, express opinions, smile, have strong handshakes, are well dressed, and can speak fluently. I feel this now fits me best, as I am confident in the decisions that I make and see past choices as experiences I can learn and improve upon. I understand that it is okay to make mistakes as long as I learn from them.
Self-confidence is belief in: oneself, one’s abilities, and one’s judgement. In the workshop we discussed these in depth and did an exercise of introducing ourselves to someone we did not know, which I was very happy with as this is something I do regularly at university. Next Mani gave suggestions of ways to improve our self-confidence. These included: planning and preparation, learning and training, having positive thoughts, talking to others and following their lead, experience, being assertive, and avoiding arrogance. Out of the list I will continue to try and gain more knowledge and experience in my industry to increase my confidence about my abilities. I had never considered asking someone to be a role model or mentor for me, who is working in my future industry, but I think this would be a good way to help me gain the knowledge I want and give me someone to relate to. As a group following the talk, we have thought up some strategies to improve our self-confidence. For example, dress as we would like to be perceived, speak in an assertive manner, act and speak more positively, do something that scares us every day, write a journal to reflect on our confidence and how we could improve it, set small goals to try and increase our confidence and do regular exercise as this makes people feel good.
The workshop was really great and has shown me where my self-confidence currently is and steps I can take to improve it. I am excited to start putting these things into practice to hopefully gain optimal confidence by the time I graduate from university and I am preparing to enter the working environment.