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After seeing the authors of "The Confidence Code" on the Colbert Report, I was compelled to go over to their website and take their confidence quiz
It said I had low confidence. And then I make a joke about how no one was surprised -- but really, it's a weird quiz and I'm not at all sure it's measuring what it's purporting to measure.
Some of the questions -- they ask me to evaluate the probability of a manned Mars mission before 2025, and ask how sure I am of my answer; they ask me to estimate the temperature in Fairbanks in August -- are questions where you get dinged for having skepticism and humility. I would rather have skepticism and humility than confidence.
It also asks you whether you have strong opinions, and whether you think it's a good thing to have strong opinions. And I do have very strong opinions about a lot of things! But am also mindful of the Buddhist idea that a strong attachment to one's own opinions can be a problem in the way that all strong attachments can be.
And then it asks you to evaluate statements like "I see myself as anxious and easily upset," and "I see myself as calm and emotionally stable."
Well, hey, I have an anxiety disorder. I actually am anxious and easily upset. I am somewhat less anxious and easily upset than I was for a long time; but it makes more of a difference, I think, that I see myself as an anxious person who has the self-care tools to deal with anxiety. (And sometimes doesn't, and that's not the end of the world.)
This is relevant to my interests in the sense that I am looking at jobs right now, and I am trying to remind myself that I shouldn't be afraid to apply for jobs I'm only 3/4 qualified for and confidently assert that I can figure out the rest, but it comes back to how I learned to write as a person with not a lot of self-confidence. How I had to learn to tell myself that I didn't have to believe I was going to write something great, and I didn't have to pretend to believe it. I just had to treat the work in front of me as a job that needed somebody to do it, however badly, and nobody else was going to do it but me.
And contemporary American culture does reward confidence, does value people who really believe they're awesome or can act like they do, and it's worth talking about how this systematically disadvantages groups of people who are raised to believe that they shouldn't talk about how awesome they are. But I do bristle at this notion that we just need tips and tricks to play this capitalist game a little better.
I don't need to think I'm awesome. I need to feel that I am valued whether or not I'm awesome.
It said I had low confidence. And then I make a joke about how no one was surprised -- but really, it's a weird quiz and I'm not at all sure it's measuring what it's purporting to measure.
Some of the questions -- they ask me to evaluate the probability of a manned Mars mission before 2025, and ask how sure I am of my answer; they ask me to estimate the temperature in Fairbanks in August -- are questions where you get dinged for having skepticism and humility. I would rather have skepticism and humility than confidence.
It also asks you whether you have strong opinions, and whether you think it's a good thing to have strong opinions. And I do have very strong opinions about a lot of things! But am also mindful of the Buddhist idea that a strong attachment to one's own opinions can be a problem in the way that all strong attachments can be.
And then it asks you to evaluate statements like "I see myself as anxious and easily upset," and "I see myself as calm and emotionally stable."
Well, hey, I have an anxiety disorder. I actually am anxious and easily upset. I am somewhat less anxious and easily upset than I was for a long time; but it makes more of a difference, I think, that I see myself as an anxious person who has the self-care tools to deal with anxiety. (And sometimes doesn't, and that's not the end of the world.)
This is relevant to my interests in the sense that I am looking at jobs right now, and I am trying to remind myself that I shouldn't be afraid to apply for jobs I'm only 3/4 qualified for and confidently assert that I can figure out the rest, but it comes back to how I learned to write as a person with not a lot of self-confidence. How I had to learn to tell myself that I didn't have to believe I was going to write something great, and I didn't have to pretend to believe it. I just had to treat the work in front of me as a job that needed somebody to do it, however badly, and nobody else was going to do it but me.
And contemporary American culture does reward confidence, does value people who really believe they're awesome or can act like they do, and it's worth talking about how this systematically disadvantages groups of people who are raised to believe that they shouldn't talk about how awesome they are. But I do bristle at this notion that we just need tips and tricks to play this capitalist game a little better.
I don't need to think I'm awesome. I need to feel that I am valued whether or not I'm awesome.