By Jean Ponzi
Building Confidence, Kindly
If I direct myself (or you) to BE CONFIDENT! It’s about as useful as saying BE TALL!
Good luck making this declaration work, say scientists who explore our species’ brains. Turns out Confidence is not just a feeling, or even an intention. It’s a learned response. We can build or undermine it. Confidence takes maintenance; it can be reconstructed and repaired.
Neurobiologists who study this prize find that Confidence arise from multiple areas in our brains, a result of networked functions working together. Like the systems in a house. And – News Flash! – it’s not a fixed asset that a lucky few are born with. Confidence is learned patterns of thinking and behavior.
Hormones, those chemical messengers for our responses, work in the Confidence mechanism. A popular one is Dopamine, whose pleasure highs are triggered by True Love to shooting heroin to scrolling “likes.” Dopamine delivers for Confidence too.
I’m a confident person, generally. I’ve organized my life so Confidence is pretty easy to maintain. Kindness, on the other hand, is both a challenge and a practice for me. So when my Confidence needs butt heads with another’s, how would I think and behave? What might my work on Kindness nudge me to choose? Could Confidence be a win-win?
Over the past year I dealt with Confidence-building, literally, on a major home renovation project, working with a person I dearly know and love.
His skills, his experience would ensure this project’s success, but his physical ability and capacity have become limited. I have zero skills in this realm beyond hauling heavy stuff. My job was to unfailingly assist, in the tone and pace my partner set.
When a person physically works in a way he profoundly knows, with significantly changed physical capacity, what happens to Confidence? Discussion or processing feelings risks derailing the mental focus such a project needs. Supporting the work – not working it out – was what I had committed to.
And when a person works hard against hard limitations, their capacity for helper AttaGirl may be in short supply. This was the case for many months, on our intense project.
I had to remind myself (constantly and silently) that I am a confident, confident person – with Talking Through Stuff skills that benefit others. Skills NOT in use for this work.
Confidence was vital for project safety and progress. Maintaining Confidence to support us both was as much my job as physically moving materials and handing my partner tools in ways that kept his labor efficiently, safely workable – as he mentally managed and juggled a zillion job details.
There were days when I used my (limited) breaks to holler and curse and stomp around outdoors. Whatever it took to keep Confidence flowing, without impeding workflow. Sometimes I could process my feelings with friends. But the day-to-day, hour-by-hour Confidence-holding was up to me, to deliver with (unspoken) understanding and a zillion self-reminders to keep Kindness on the job.
Today, that project is complete, results are super-functional and handsome, and our personal partnership is intact. I’m grateful for experiencing building, together.
I got a Bonus Room from this deal. It houses learning how Confidence works with Kindness, in accord with our human limits.
Because we’re a species who learns Confidence, this force can be twisted with dominance and control, it can be battered and shattered. Much too much of that going on.
Turns out Kindness can be built into Confidence patterns. An everyday genuine output of Attagirl and Attaboy is one way to cultivate Confidence.
But for times when words get in the way, maintaining Kindness will quietly, skillfully assist in building Confidence that works for all.
Jean Ponzi is a longtime local voice for Earth, through her work for the EarthWays Center of Missouri Botanical Garden and her contributions to Community Radio in St. Louis – with new Green offerings coming soon.