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Life Skills: Confidence Raises Self Esteem

When you think of confidence what people, words or images come to your mind?  I see a person with a smile who is working on something that they know they do very well.   I have watched my wife working in the kitchen preparing a meal, with what seems to be a thousand things happening at the same time and in the end the meal is perfect and served together.  She does it with an easy concentration and with confidence of the outcome.

When you are confident you have a special energy about yourself, you are not easily distracted from the task at hand and if an obstacle does come up, you deal with it without being flustered by the challenge.  Since we cannot be confident in everything that we have to do in a day sometimes we have to put on the face of confidence, we must have the “I Can, I Will” attitude.  How do we accomplish that?

We start with our physical self first.  Our body will stand straight and tall, look others in the eyes and walk in a manner that looks like we know where we are going and that we will not be stopped, with a strong assertive voice. Continue reading “Life Skills: Confidence Raises Self Esteem”

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Life Skill: Confidence- The Definition

Each month we define and discuss a word of character development and life skill with all of our students.

This month the word is Confidence and will be defined this way.

Young students: Confidence means: I believe in me!

Older students: Confidence means: Complete trust in ourselves or others.

Here are the worksheets for our students:

Confidence TT project confidence 5- 6 project confidence 7-12 project Confidence Teen Adult project

If you would like to see how we will deal with this subject with our students please follow our discussions here during the month of March or come in and TRY A CLASS.

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Parents and Teacher Can Correct the Bully Problem in School and at Home

Setting ourselves up for success both as parents and a teachers requires first that we recognized the A,B, C’s of both the good and bad behaviors that we want to either change or continue.  Lets look at what that means:

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Self Control: Apologizing

We don’t always get it right.  We do mess up.  We say things we want to take back and do things that are not safe or fair and they do hurt others.  We may make a big mess of things at times.  Benjamin Franklin said, “Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”  Have you found yourself sometimes wishing you didn’t say something or do something due to momentary lack of self control?  Of course – all of us have.

Just recently in a meeting of about 60 people I called out unnecessarily the faults of a group of individuals.  I thought I was doing it in a kind yet reminding sort of way, only to realize as it came out of my mouth that it did not come out the way I wanted it to.  It took me  months to overcome that slip, to regain the confidence of the group.  These things happen, but the question is what can and should we do?

Saying “I am sorry”, is so powerful when done in a sincere manner.  When we say those words we are taking the responsibility for the words or actions that we took.  Whether the act was by accident or a bad choice we must first take the responsibility and then make amends.  To apologize can take a great deal of courage and self control.  It could be that what we said was not wrong it just may have been “the wrong thing at the tempting moment”, and we may be embarrassed by our action.  We may be scared too.  If we are a small child and we know we have done something that hurt someone or that is not in line with our family rules / principles, we may be scared and it will take a lot to admit we are wrong and work on making things better.

I might suggest that how we do this is just as important as doing it.  Whether we are kids or adults, looking the other person/s in the eye and admitting our mistake and then asking how we can make things better takes a great deal of strength – but in the end our ability to do so and to listen to the feelings of others will have a great impact on the relationship of all parties.  Teaching our children how to do this by role playing and by example is key to this aspect of self control.

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Achieving confidence

We are not always going to feel confident. We are not always going to be sure that we can reach the goals we have set for ourselves and then when we have a set back we need to recheck our attitude again to be sure we are not talking to ourselves in that grumpy voice, saying something like – You can’t do this.
It may be a test, meeting new people, a new sport, or something that we have failed at before that challenges our confidence. It is at that time that we may need to talk to a friend or adult just to be sure we are thinking in the correct manner. It is highly unlikely that a friend or adult is going to tell us, “just give up – you can’t do that.” Just like we would be thee for them they will be there for us. Our job is not to give up and to look for ways to adjust and achieve our goals.

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Confidence

Young students
Confidence means: “I believe in myself!”
Older students, teens, adults:
Confidence means trusting ourselves and knowing that we can do it.