Total Read Time: 4 mins.

Fun-O-Meter: 6/10 Giggles

Meaningfulness: 10/10 Aha! Moments

Confidence is built at the roots.  You cannot fake confidence, as it is a way of mind rather than a way to act.  Acting confident can only get a person so far before he is found out.  It shows in your subtle body movements, facial expressions, and tone of voice.  It is not something that needs to be taught, as it is our natural state.  Rather, adults must be taught to strip away the insecurities and ego we have been working on in our minds for so long.  Children don’t need to do that, we do.  Often during this blog, I am teaching lessons of confidence to you more than to your child, as parents are the ones that need most of the training.  Confidence is demonstrated to your children by your interactions with them and others in your daily life. If you twitch, cower, or look away while speaking to someone you feel uncomfortable around, so will they.  If you have closed off body language in front of an old enemy, so will they become closed off in front of certain people.  You must be their best example.

So what is confidence?  To me, it’s just a “cool” word for being happy – but I feel like there’s more than meets the eye than just that.  Talking about happiness can get sticky, because that talk leads into discussions about the meaning of life and, “Why are we here?” and other topics that people feel strongly about.  I don’t want to mess with any of that, so I’m going to try to keep it simple.

To put it plainly, you are truly happy when you are detached from any type of “value judgment” upon yourself or anyone else. It is when you don’t need any external factors filling in some void in your life to make yourself happy.  But isn’t that what human beings do?  Our minds love slapping labels on things and putting them into some type or order, it puts our brains at ease to know we are all organized nicely into a category.  We feel unsettled when we can not easily identify or quantify something.  That’s how our minds work, they are problem solvers, that’s their job.

However, I feel something can be found most beautiful when it is stripped of its category and just observed for what it is.  Categorizing is used solely for communication anyway.  It’s easier to communicate to you Mozart’s fifth symphony on a piece of paper, neatly laid out and transcribed, rather than to try to explain how you feel when you hear it.  Problem is, we use our brains too much and for the wrong reasons.  As I said, it is meant to solve problems and to communicate things more easily, and should not be used when considering another person or yourself.

I don’t feel people should be judged on a value bar, measured by putting someone above or below yourself and everyone else you know.  That’s where insecurity comes in, and that’s also where hatred can come in.  They are a product of putting people on a scale of goodness, “Is this person rotten, or is she fresh, shiny, and new?  Rotten you say?  Okay, then throw her out.”

Some people feel sad because they do not fit the “social consensus” of what is valuable:  “God messed up when making me, I was the defect that he let slide by.  I don’t have a job, nobody likes me, I’m fat, I have no talents, and I’m not funny.  I’m just no good.”  This is why I feel that the more I judge another person, the more I judge myself.  What I mean by this is if you are putting somebody somewhere on the “value scale”, you are saying that there is such a scale in the first place, which obligates yourself to be on this scale as well. It seems like everyone is either trying to get to the top of this scale, convince themselves that they are already at the top, or spend all their time wishing they were there.

Here is what I propose:  ditch the scale.  You are not better or worse than anybody else, and no one is better or worse than you.  Having a huge mansion with tons of money doesn’t make you a better or worse person, and how big your bust to your belly is doesn’t prove your basic value in life. You’re no better than the homeless person that crawls the streets pushing a stolen shopping cart around begging for money, or the drug dealer who has a life sentence in your state’s penitentiary, you’re just different.

Instead of thinking about people in terms of better or worse, I like to view people all at the same value, and at the basic level, just human beings.  Once detached from the roles or identities that you view people, you can see them for who they really are, and they become closer to you.  Care for everyone, regardless of who they are, if they seem rude to you, if they smell like an old chicken sandwich, or even if you feel they don’t deserve it.  Because the more you care for others, the more you care for yourself.

So why I am talking about this to you, when it’s your kids who need the life lessons?  Remember the second Austin Powers movie, “The Spy Who Shagged Me”?  Remember Mini-Me, the two foot, eight inch miniature clone of Dr. Evil?  He couldn’t speak as eloquently, was a bit more mischievous, but he dressed and acted exactly like Dr. Evil did.  Think of your kids as your very own “Mini-Me”.  They pick up everything that you say and do.  They notice how you speak to your spouse, they sense a negative vibe between you two even if you are masking it with “nice talk”.  They see how you talk to people in public and talk to you friends, they notice your stress and the way you view the world.  And as your offspring, they have an unavoidable and innate propensity to look to you as a guide for survival.  They will mimic you, speak how you speak, use similar body language, and feel how you feel.  You are their #1 handbook on survival.  Do you see how important it is that you are leading a healthy life for your children to lead healthy lives?  In order for you to be the teacher, you need to first practice what you preach.

“Children are not immature adults.  Adults are atrophied children.”

Keith Johnstone – “Impro”