A Solution for School Shootings
We must teach our children to be the friend they want to have.
The Importance of Nurturing Real Confidence for Young Adults
Many people rely on accolades from others to build confidence and feel validated, so their days are spent doing what’s easy and expected. I believe this extrinsic form of confidence is fake and temporary because people are fickle, and easy work is not rewarding. Real and lasting confidence is instilled by accomplishing challenging work and through difficult times when things aren’t going well. It’s when we have to struggle to achieve a goal that builds true self-confidence.
However, I understand the mindset that bases self-value on other’s approval all to well. When I graduated high school, I was recognized for my athletic achievements, mainly baseball. I finished my senior season breaking the county record for homeruns and leading our team to the state tournament. The local newspaper coverage was substantial, and I received plenty of “atta boys” as I walked around town. This gave me a false sense of confidence that I would take with me to college, only I discovered was not real at all.
Showing up to practice with my new college ball team I soon realized I was surrounded by guys who were just as good and had achieved just as much as me in high school. If that wasn’t enough, some guys on the team were basically grown men that had been in college for five years. Suddenly, I no longer felt “confident”, but instead felt as though I didn’t even belong. I thought “How good would someone from Venezuela or Australia have to be to make it to GCSU on scholarship?” How in the world was I going to compete with these people? My confidence was no longer there to tell me everything was going be good and I was good enough to play with them. It was up to me to decide how good I was and wanted to be, something I never had to do before.
It’s when we have to struggle to achieve a goal that builds true self-confidence.
It was only at this point that I began to realize what true confidence was. Don’t get me wrong, it was years after this when I finally understood that true confidence comes from within, by building yourself up as well as deepening your faith in God, which is where we get our value. This lack of true confidence led to a lifetime of struggles that eventually led me to Greater Things. Finally understanding that talent was never the issue for me, but simply the confidence to accept my God given abilities and go develop them.
A lack of confidence creates fear. Humans react to fear in one of three ways. Fight, flight, or freeze. Freeze is the one that is most underdiscussed yet is the more likely outcome. Freeze is the lack of ability to go forward or backward, remaining where we are because we perceive it as safe. I see many young adults and teens stuck in this stage. The expectations society creates as to how large life is supposed to be, can be overwhelming. For a college graduate facing paying their own bills, finding a job, figuring out how where to live, and making enough money, often puts them into a state of “freeze”. This is one of the reasons many college graduates are taking jobs outside their field of study. They freeze when they realize their next steps are not planned for them, and its going to take extraordinary work to compete in the field they were planning to enter. Instinctively, they choose what is comfortable and accessible to fill the immediate need of security without risk.
A great way to begin developing true confidence is to change the way you talk to yourself. How can I expect to perform well and believe I can do great things if I continuously tell myself awful things that I wouldn’t even say to others. Beginning to speak things that build yourself up may sound strange, but you can’t put bad fuel in a car and expect it to win a race. Learning to talk to ourselves like a champion is a process. Habitual bad thoughts are not formed overnight and will take time to change. However, replacing each bad thought with a confidence-building thought is the groundwork to a greater level of real confidence!
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