http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/op...questions.html

This is an interesting piece out of the NY Times on confidence and the different ways it presents itself (or doesn't) in women and men. The author asks some thought-provoking questions. I thought some of you might find it interesting. I'd love to hear your responses to his questions.

My take on self-confidence is that it typically isn't so simple as having it or not having it. In my own life I have been confident in my academic pursuits, an engaged and outspoken student, and a public performer. On the other hand, I have very little confidence in my physical abilities, I shirk from most social interaction outside the classroom, and I constantly feel inadequate in appearance.
"I guess I’m asking how to marry self-criticism and self-assertion, a blend our society is inarticulate about. I guess I’m wondering, as we make this blend, whether most of us need more of the stereotypically female trait of self-doubt or the stereotypically male trait of self-promotion..."
What do you think? How do you perceive your own confidence?
How has it changed over the years? <(40+ set I'd really love to hear from you on this one)
Do you feel such confidence is a necessary requisite to successful long-term weight loss? Or is it something achieved through the process?

[hears pin drop] lol

LOL I picked up that pin

Well I'm in my fifties... and I think that self confidence is a great tool to use in losing weight. I think that liking yourself (which I feel is self confidence) gives you the strength to want to get to be a healthier (prettier for some people I am in the healthier mind frame) person. If you were sad and unhappy its hard to maintain a change to your life that requires strength and determination if you were not sure of yourself. I kinda learned that lesson in the last few years. I have gotten to the point too, where what other people think about my appearance (tho I do like people to think I am a nice person) isn't important anymore..... maybe its because I am also past child bearing age (went thru Menopause more than 7 years ago and have no children) and that could also affect my feelings.... But our lives are still a learning process.... lessons and wisdom gathering.... . I do have to admit tho... I am more confident in my work than my personal skills.... tho getting much better!

To answer your question, "is self confidence the first requisite to great undertakings?"

the answer is sort of....I just read "the defining decade" by Meg Jay (which I HIGHLY RECOMMEND) anyway she cites a lot of research that makes the point that self confidence comes from accomplishing things (not the other way around). As you see yourself handle larger and larger tasks and make it though the rough patches you believe more and more in your ability to do it. It's not something you inherently have, you have to earn it so to speak.

I'm 45, have a technical/chem engineering job, no kids due to choice.

I've certainly found that at work i'm a lot more confident than i used to be, because i'm an expert in my field (or i should be, having been in it 20+ years!!). I would find it very difficult to be confident without the technical back-up though, so i think this change in confidence is due to ability rather than a change in myself.

I don't really feel qualified to say whether you need self confidence to succeed in dieting or not, because although i've not always been confident to speak out (and i'm naturally introverted), i've always been self-secure and never really cared much about other peoples opinion of me.

I would guess therefore that it is important to feel confident in your own abilities in order to believe you can achieve something (eg lose weight), and i know i'm lucky in that i've never thought that i couldn't achieve anything if i put my mind to it (i'm self secure but not socially motivated!).

I feel that i could definitely have got 'further' if i was more assertive etc - BUT, i have no desire to get 'further' if that means managing people (don't have any desire to persuade anyone to follow my thinking), or even if it means earning more money (happy with what i've got).

So a more meaningful opinion on this would be from someone with more complex behavioural influences than me (someone who cares what others think of them, or someone who has had self-insecurity).

Interesting topic though - thanks for starting Lecompts

I think we get wrapped up in self confidence as a general term that encapsulates our entire being, when most of the time, it's confidence in certain aspects of life. Like you said, you're confident in academics yet not confident in appearance.

Unfortunately, in the U.S. so much emphasis is put on appearance, that when someone is not confident in their appearance, they have a tendency to think that about their entire life and label themselves as such.

People are usually not just born with self confidence, but gain it from experience, so there is hope. For example, I wasn't necessarily a great presentation giver, but after 6+ years of school and numerous ones in front of various classes, I'm extremely comfortable in front of a crowd now.

If there's something you're not confident in, the best thing to do to increase it is to force yourself to do it - over and over again, at least in my opinion.

If confidence in appearance is the challenge, I think it is helpful to force yourself to make the effort to do your hair, makeup, dress cleanly and get out there in public. Force yourself into roles you wouldn't normally do - volunteer to lead a group in something or similar things. Joining groups such as toastmasters (a public speaking group) can also help with your confidence in appearance I would think.

In regards to your question on weight loss, I don't think any of us start out confident with our ability to lose weight. As we start to actually lose it, and gain more experience on what it takes, we become more and more confident until it's really second nature.

If you have the time, you may also be interested in reading Sheryl Sandberg's book "Lean In" or checking out the accompanying website. If you're unaware, she's an executive over at Facebook whose book is about how women generally lack the confidence or assertiveness to succeed at the top levels of business.

Whether you agree with her or not, it's a pretty interesting discussion.

Thanks for picking up my pin wannaskipandlaugh! " I have gotten to the point too, where what other people think about my appearance (tho I do like people to think I am a nice person) isn't important anymore....." This has been my frame of mind a lot recently, or, the frame of mind I've been trying to get to, through self reflection and posts like these. I care about being perceived as kind and compassionate, but less and less so about people judging my appearance. I'm tired of letting fear of judgement keep me from doing really simple things that others enjoy. I can't say I'm a wholly confident person at this point, but I want to be, and I'm practicing. I "fake it", and put out my most self-assured posture and tone...kind of in Vex's line of thought that developing confidence takes practice.

Lean In is definitely on my to do list...can't wait to read it! And now The Defining Decade as well, it sounds really interesting, Thank you! I do feel like the twenties have been trivialized as The Defining Decade seems to suggest. When I head to the library on weekends and see more students belligerently drunk than I do studying, I get concerned. Haha! I know partying when your younger is very common, but I wonder if many kids get swept up in destructive behaviors with the thought, "****, I'm young, this is what my twenties are for!", and never resurface as the successful adult they once imagined becoming.

"If there's something you're not confident in, the best thing to do to increase it is to force yourself to do it - over and over again, at least in my opinion."
I see a lot of truth in that. Makes me think of the troubles many people have with math. They create a mental barrier rather than delving into repeat exposure. Rather than working problems again and again, which is what it takes most people, they give up thinking they lack some required natural ability. Deciding you just don't want to do it is one thing, but I think many people alter their career path based on what math classes they would have to take, and that is unfortunate!

ange82much- Firstly, let me say I have great admiration for women in engineering. STEM courses at my school are dominated (population wise) by males, and it is a bit intimidating for me at times. I don't know how reflective that is of the chemical engineering field today, but I hope to see more women in my field once I'm in the workforce. I have to push myself outside my comfort zone in these classes, I constantly ask questions about things everybody else (seems) to understand. Could you bottle some of that self-assurance and sell it to me?
"I feel that i could definitely have got 'further' if i was more assertive etc - BUT, i have no desire to get 'further' if that means managing people (don't have any desire to persuade anyone to follow my thinking), or even if it means earning more money (happy with what i've got)."
I really like this line of thought. If your happy and secure with where you are at, why change for more money/glory/whatever?

By the way, Vex, every time I see the no salad cat I literally laugh out loud. Her/his expression gets me every time!

...btw Scarlett, just ordered The Defining Decade. Thank you for bringing this book to my attention, can't wait to read it!

well, i did geology and physics as a joint honours degree, but then landed a job in chemistry and now i'm applying chemicals on minesites around the world (= looking at mixing turbulence, pipeline configurations, rheology, viscosity and stuff like that) so i'm calling myself an engineer when i'm not really!

Great to hear you're in a scientific field yourself! I just fell in to it and am in a total niche now but i love it. As i said though - i'm only self assured because i know my subject. I'm not good at all bluffing and winging on something outside my knowledge! I'd say being female has been an advantage for me - it is less normal to be female in this field for sure, and people think you're good before you even do anything for that reason. Plus it's easy to get help everywhere!

Thought provoking read! The article as well as the thread itself. I haven't got much of anything to contribute, just wanted to say I've had my eye on The Defining Decade but wasn't sure I wanted to bother with it. Let me know how you like it!

I struggle with this a LOT. I'm a software developer at a good company and generally happy with it. Provided I don't get laid off, I should retire well.

But yet there's this constant nagging feeling like there should be more to life than sitting in a cubicle farm. It's not glory or more money that particularly interest me, but I'd really like to make a difference in the world...somehow.


Google Grumpy Cat. You will not be disappointed.

ange82much- I love that you got your degrees in one area, then were able to work in a variety of fields. Sounds like an interesting mix of chemistry, geology, and engineering! I'm in an honors program as well. Majoring in microbiology with a minor in chemistry. I'm always curious about what people go off to do with their degrees, it's exciting that they can take you is a myriad of different directions. I sort of happened upon science as well, but I'm glad I did so!

Will do thinkfit!

Vex- I was indeed not disappointed, although my neighbors probably think I'm insane! I love the caricature of him that says Le Misérable, like the musical. He looks on the outside what every cat feels like on the inside...well, my cats anyway!
"But yet there's this constant nagging feeling like there should be more to life than sitting in a cubicle farm. It's not glory or more money that particularly interest me, but I'd really like to make a difference in the world...somehow."
Although I'm not sitting in a cubicle at this juncture, I often feel like this as well. For me, it stems from a place of, am I helping? I feel if I am not doing something to make someone elses load lighter, I have no purpose, I feel egomaniacal, selfish. My mom made special effort to expose my sisters and I growing up to how the majority of the worlds billions live. Poor fishing villages in SE Asia, inner city slums, the homeless peppering the streets of Paris. Witnessing the contrast between these peoples lives and our life at home reduced the appeal of western materialism, instilling a deep guilty awareness of our over-consumption, of my over-consumption. Here we are lusting over thousand dollar handbags while there are people all over the world picking through mountains of our refuse for scraps of clothing. I know I have to seek a balance of helping others and providing for myself and my family, bit I feel that drive to want to make a difference in my own way too.
For what it's worth, although I've never met you, you have made a difference in my life, when I posted in the depression forum some time ago you asked, "The question is how much are YOU going to let it affect YOU?", and this question really brought it to my attention that I was caught up in my own history, and me, myself, and I had chosen to let the jerks of the world hold my focus and hijack my happiness...but it also brought to light the simple liberating fact that I could choose not to focus on them. I feel that that post and the responses I received were paradigm shifting for me.
Sometimes it feels like the small act of kindness or material sacrifice isn't "enough" when shadowed by the seemingly mounting crises of the world, but
it just isn't so. I'm clinging to the hope these small acts have a beautiful cumulative effect, because now I'm seeing them at work in my own life.
Shalom!

I totally understand that need to be doing something helpful with my life...When I was growing up, I always told my mom that I would never take a job that required me to "dress up" and that I wanted to wear jeans to work every day. My mom always tried to correct me, coming from her perspective in the 1950s where women wore skirts and worked as secretaries. (Oddly enough, she still had that perspective after going to college herself and working as a pathologist-something in a lab before marrying dad.)

I've always had quite a bit of confidence in myself and my abilities, even as a young child. We were homeschooled and by third grade, I was left to essentially teach myself as mom worked with my younger sister's schooling. So I taught myself...By 8th grade, going to public school, I found that I was years ahead of what public school 8th graders were learning. I was doing 10th grade work or higher at age 13. All that helped instill a sense that I could do whatever I set my mind to.

And I set my mind on writing...I wanted to be a journalist and I did. Before I was out of college, I already had a fulltime job at a newspaper. I worked there for 8 years and I was the youngest person in the entire news chain employed! I could hold my own with the seasoned journalists. I felt like people needed knowledge and that I could be helpful in my work that way. Especially in a small town filled with rumors, it was important to me to bring the facts out in the newspaper work.

Now I've moved on to working with students and I've spent about 9 years doing that. I found that I was naturally good at that also. Anyhow, I do think that experience comes first before confidence and I've read some on how to instill confidence in young children - by giving them those experiences to build self-esteem and confidence.

There are some areas that I'm not confident in, like weight loss or appearance but to me that's not intrinsic to ME as a person. I know that I CAN DO what I set out to achieve, regardless of the number on the scale or whether I put on make up that morning.