Author: Moira Devlin

How important is confidence?

Making our career dreams come true requires buckets of charismatic confidence.

Anything affecting the fragility of our self-concept can damage our confidence. So let’s begin by stating what confidence is and review some examples of how we can misunderstand confidence.

What is Confidence?

Confidence comes down to being satisfied with ourselves, with our own knowledge, intelligence, abilities and skills – not much then! Of course, this means if we are confident, then we are free from doubt. We manage our positive and negative life experiences to protect our confidence. We remain rest-assured in our capabilities.

This understanding of confidence explains why some people never seem to be confident. It also explains why some people seem to always be confident, even if they place limitations on themselves.

The “wise someone” will be always be confident because that “wise someone” will be sure of themselves in a situation. 

They will know and master themselves well enough to never stray into a position, where they are not sure of their abilities to navigate the situation. Thus, they minimise the risk of their confidence being attacked.

Nurturing Confidence

Nothing kills confidence as much as a poor self-image. If we don’t like ourselves, how can we be confident in our own abilities and skills?

Failing hurts our confidence, but sometimes it’s for the best. Though no one likes to see their plans go sour or their hard work go to waste. Sometimes mistakes happen. 

The next time things don’t work out the way we want them to, we should not feel humiliated, instead we should feel humbled. Be grateful for the learning experience and we keep going.

With confidence, you have won before you have started. 

(Marcus Garvey) 1

Our expectations of others can influence our confidence. If we come from a supportive family, we might be very confident in both our own abilities and confident in our family’s tendency to help us out of tough spots. Our supportive family will give us encouragement to deal with life’s knocks. Being more confident comes from our support network, be it family, friends, or work colleagues. 

We get the chance to build confidence in others too, which can come full circle as we get positive feedback or see a person succeed, which reflects well on us.

Overconfidence

Of course, there is such a thing as overconfidence. Because confidence has to do with perception. The overconfident person is not likely to admit, or rather to know, they are overconfident. They may, of course, recognise in retrospect that they acted in a way that exhibited overconfidence.

Overconfidence can lead someone to make mistakes because they overestimate their ability to handle a situation or operate under certain constraints. We all have witnessed some examples of this.

Overconfidence is a one time lapse in judgement occurring because someone believes because they succeeded in one thing, then it means they may keep up their overconfident attitude until they fail at something. Even when they fail they may blame others instead of reassessing their abilities and skills.

Blind Confidence

People who talk about “blind confidence” are not talking about confidence, so much as they are talking about arrogance. We build confidence on trial and error and knowing how we will think and behave in a set of circumstances. Blind confidence means feeling that we can handle any situation without question.

This kind of confidence is common in children, because for a child everything is new. Without this kind of false confidence, we would not be able to develop real confidence as a child growing-up.

Once we have reached adulthood, we should have an understanding of our knowledge and abilities. Trusting decisions to “blind confidence” is just acting or performing something with no control or preparation.

Toxic People

The people around us have a tremendous impact on our confidence. If we don’t have the support of a caring family and friends, then this can have detrimental effects on our confidence. Toxic people like to put us down and insult us. It can hurt our confidence. Sometimes it can be subtle put downs or “drip feed” of insults.

Change your thoughts and you change your world.

(Norman Vincent Peale) 2

Sometimes, the best thing to do is to remove these toxic people from our lives. Other times, however, knowing why they treat us this way can help us help them.Some people put other people down because they are insecure and belittling others makes them feel more important. 

These insecurities make it difficult for them to feel valued. So giving some praise and encouragement goes a long way to making them feel more secure. So they don’t feel the need to put down others to lift them up. 

Although there is the option to play nice, this does not always work though, and it does not always have to. If someone is putting us down, our first responsibility is to ourselves and our own physical and psychological safety. If cutting out a toxic person is the only way to protect our mental and emotional health, then it is right to do so.

As many circumstances can affect our confidence, then checking in with ourselves daily to review our confidence is vital to stop any runaway emotional trains, which can demolish or damage that precious charismatic confidence.

References:

1 Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) Jamaican Political activist, author,  journalist, entrepreneur

2 Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) American minister, author

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What is Creative Growth?

Creative imagination is more than just an active imagination. To imagine things, to see and hear things in your mind, is an important ability. 

For example, daydreaming is a process of imagination. It can comprise an elaborate fantasy world, where your mind wanders and your attention shifts from the task at hand to a place that is entirely your own. A secret place where you can explore anything.

Creative imagination has to include the ability not just to imagine things, but to imagine original things. 

It is seeing things that others don’t see and coming up with new ideas. 

So how do you cultivate this?

First, exercise your basic imagination. It can be as simple as thinking in pictures more, or listening to music in your mind. Play little ‘movies’ in your mind until you can watch them on command. 

This is a simple process, but for those of us that cannot do it easily, it can take a lot of practice. But it is not an unpleasant activity!

The second part of developing your creative imagination is to get more creative in your thinking and imagining. Start by paying attention to your unconscious mind. Your unconscious mind occurs outside of your awareness or control. It spends its time gathering and absorbing the information around you and your life experiences.

Our unconscious minds will always give us more of what we pay attention to. So if you focus on creativity, then your unconscious mind will feed you more creative ideas. 

Play games which exercise your creative imagination. One such game uses a technique called “concept combination.” 1 Alone or with other players, you combine random concepts or things in new ways, to decide upon the best idea. 

For example, a thermometer and a billboard could generate an idea for a sign that checks the weather and adjusts the message “Come in out of the heat for a cold beverage,” or “Come in out of the rain and warm up with our gourmet coffee.”

By combining concepts it means you can use a finite number of concepts to create a limitless quantity of new ideas.

If you want to find creative inspiration start redesigning everything you see. Imagine a better bicycle, a faster mail service, or a better chair. Continue this for four weeks, and it will become a habit. Of course, creative imagination goes beyond solving specific problems or inventing things. 

True creative minds are always coming up with the questions too, not just the solutions.

Moving viewpoints

If you want to develop your creative imagination, change your perspective. A child might think that working just not to work (to retire) is silly. 

Thinking from that perspective might give you ideas for how to make money doing things you enjoy. Seeing the world as a child sees it might give you imaginative new ideas. 

Looking at things from a customer’s perspective is a sure way to find creative improvements for a business. Work on seeing everything from several different perspectives.

Power of assumptions

Challenge your assumptions. What if restaurants did not have employees? What if restaurants were managed by robots instead. So one owner-operator could run a large restaurant alone. Challenge your assumptions across a wide variety of subjects. 

For example, Do swimming pools need water? Can exercise be a bad thing? Let your ideas run wild. Does a flying bed seem silly? It could lead to the concept of a helium mattress. When you get up in the morning, it floats out of the way, up to the ceiling. Do not stifle your creativity. 

Relax and let ideas come. You can always discard them later.

For these techniques to be a habitual part of your thinking, use them regularly. Since it takes at least 6 weeks to develop a habit, remind yourself to use them each day. 

Collect your favourite techniques. Your creative flow should be never ending.

References:

1 Fodor, Jerry A.; Pylyshyn, Zenon W. (1988). “Connectionism and cognitive architecture: A critical analysis”. Cognition. 28 (1–2): 3–71

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How do you think creatively?

There is nothing more magical and iconic than a Disney movie. Everyone has their favourites from childhood where we learned every word and song verbatim! 

Each Disney movie has a relatable storyline with a strong ethical message and they deliver it with phenomenal attention to detail and highest quality imaginary and graphics.

The Disney creativity strategy (Dilts 1995)1 is about developing your dreams and giving them the best possible chance of becoming reality. 

They named it after Walt Disney, who often took on three different roles when his team was developing an idea – the dreamer, the realist and the critic.

The strategy separates out these three vital roles involved in translating creative ideas into reality. 

This means they can be explored for maximum clarity and effect.

The usual way to use it is to allocate three roles to different people (dreamer, realist and critic) to assess ideas, plans or tasks. 

• Dreamer – The first person comes up with all the possibilities of the idea.
• Realist – The next person takes these ideas and looks at what it would involve putting the idea into practice.
• Critic – The last person evaluates its strengths and weaknesses. 

Sometimes roles are rotated to gather as many perspectives as possible. 

You can even use this in a team environment broken down into three stages. It successfully gets everyone brainstorming. So as to create and share thoughts and ideas. 

After creating ideas, then gets people thinking about what would have to happen in practical terms. Finally, they evaluate the possibilities.

Of course, the technique still works if you want to do it on your own. 

If doing it on your own, be sure to keep the roles very separate in your mind as you work through the process.

Making You More Creative

Many great things have started as a simple, creative idea. Creativity is about giving, so consider donating some of your best ideas to help others. The more creative you are, the more ideas you will create.

Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.”

Dee Hock 2

Everyone can be creative, but they have to start somewhere which feels right. The creative process will then become more natural. 

Consider the following to help you on your creative journey.

Record your ideas at the moment they occur.

It is important you record your ideas. Ideas can appear at the most inconvenient times. So maybe record and make notes on your phone or tablet.

Choose what will work best for you though and make sure you have a way to record your ideas at all times. You never know when an important idea will surface.

Don’t limit yourself to ideas that seem possible. Capture all of your ideas. Even those impossible to implement are still important for a couple of reasons. 

First, what seems impossible to you may not be impossible in the future or for someone else. 

Second, impossible ideas encourage further creative ideas that might be more likely to be implemented.

Change your scenery or location

A change can stimulate the creativity inside you. Sometimes something as simple as a walk is enough to spark a creative thought. A change might be as simple as looking out a window. 

You can also visit some place new like a park, beach, museum, art gallery or even shopping! The new environment can foster new ideas. 

Be a sponge  

Soak up as much information and data as possible, keep abreast of trends, global news, what’s in and what’s out. 

By broadening your knowledge into more areas, you make your creativity potential grow.

Think Big 

What question are you asking to prompt your ideas? The more dramatic the question, the more dramatic the impact your ideas may have on the world.

You can start by addressing smaller problems, but don’t limit yourself to those. You have unique experiences, knowledge and talents that should apply to helping to change things on a grand scale as well.

Use idea-generating tools like brain-storming and mind-mapping in all their forms. 

Follow these suggestions and you will be on your way to generating ideas to which make a difference. Get started today.

References:

1 Dilts, Robert (1995) Strategies of Genius, Meta Pubns

2 Dee Hock (1929-)American businessman and author.

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Why is Lifelong Learning Far-reaching Today?

CPD stands for continuing professional development. CPD is a job role requirement of many professionals like doctors, nurses and lawyers and in industries like food, pharmaceuticals and working with children.

It is training and development of key skills and knowledge to enhance your work delivery. Most times, there is a legal obligation for employers to make sure staff are CPD certified. The world is changing, and there are consequences for organisations to keep pace. Especially with many technological advancements. Most important element of CPD training is to keep your knowledge and skills pertinent in the workplace. The push from the 4th industrial and agricultural revolutions puts more pressure on governments and organisations to maintain the working human population’s significance.

Learning Gravitas

Robots are becoming better than humans at many jobs. This will grow and many jobs for humans will be affected. Thus, making lifelong learning essential, not optional. Whether or not you sit under a CDP need as part of your job role, you should you have a lifelong learning plan.

For two key reasons. First, to create a platform for your career development, which can sustain any change. Second, we love to learn. It enhances our self-concept and makes us feel good about ourselves. In turn this can make us better at our job. 

As a child, remember how it felt when you discovered something new or overcame a challenge.

Innate Curiosity

As children, we have an endless thirst for learning new things. What drives that learning quest? Curiosity is a tool children use for learning. The drive to learn additional information, perform some new action or learn a new skill comes from expecting a reward. In this way, we tie the concepts of motivation and reward to the notion of curiosity.

Research suggests we release higher amounts of dopamine when the reward is unknown and the stimulus is unfamiliar, compared to activation of dopamine when stimulus is familiar. 1 Curiosity about a subject makes it much easier to learn, keep and assimilate information about a subject.

Your natural curiosity means you will show an interest in certain activities and topics. You learn particular things for success in your day-to-day job activities. These activities exist on your curiosity continuum, experiencing everything from a 0 or 1 of dullness through to ecstasy of 9 or 10 in your learning experiences!

Win-Win

You should top up your work-related learning by exploring those things you are interested in. Your curiosity paves the way for learning, which opens your mind to new knowledge and experiences.

This feeds into your self-concept, building your confidence and helps to define your self-esteem.

Research tells us age and life stage are also significant: participation in formal learning, which decreases markedly in later life. 2 

But you find if you tap into that childlike feeling of loving to learn, it will bring immense benefits to your lifelong learning journey.

Lifelong learning encompasses many things not just getting the books out to study and pass an exam or test. 

Consider the details and aspects of what a lifelong learning journey means. Through uniquely tailoring your lifelong learning journey to your career and personal interests.

Education is learning what we should do, and training is learning how to do it. To succeed, we need both. As we learn, we watch out for ‘principles’, ‘fundamentals’, and ‘pattern’ to improve our learning and understanding by building foundations and connections.” 3.

You have the chance to control your lifelong learning, protect your career prospects, and enhance how you feel about yourself. What is not to like? Time to get started today!

References:

1. Costa, V D.; Tran, V L.; Turchi, Janita; Averbeck, B B. (2014). “Dopamine modulates novelty seeking behaviour during decision making”. Behavioural Neuroscience. 128 (4): 556–566.

2. Biesta, G., Field, J., Hodkinson, P., Macleod, F.J. and Goodson, I.F., 2011. Improving learning through the lifecourse: Learning lives. Taylor & Francis.BIS, 2012. National Adult Learning Survey 2010: Technical Report, BIS Research Report 63a; London: BIS.

3. Hamming, Richard, W. (1997) Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn, CRC Pressr

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Information, Misinformation and Disinformation

There are two major types of fake news. Misinformation is where incorrect information is spread, regardless of intent to mislead. It is any kind of wrong or false information. It can simply be a  mistake. If someone presents information, be it to share a story without checking the facts, even relying on a story headline without checking the content which tells a different story. 

Disinformation is false information made to look legitimate. Its purpose is to deliberately mislead or use biased information, manipulate a narrative or facts. Disinformation is intentionally spread such as propaganda or a hoax. During the coronavirus pandemic, there were many examples of fake news, both misleading and false. This includes conspiracy theories like Covid caused by 5 G, The virus escaped from a Chinese lab, or even COVID-19 does not actually exist (1). This exposure is widespread, wherea survey found between 45-54%of consumers worldwide had witnessed false or misleading COVID-19 news (2) .

Coming Of Age

The same survey (2) found 34%-51% of consumers experienced fake news on Politics. Today, the Internet is the primary source of news for many for data and information on everything from war, famine, climate change, politics through to celebrities latest diets, fashion, or must colour to wear for Autumn! We are so overloaded with so much data from high quality factual output through to frivolous nonsense. 

And it is not just the breadth of data available 24/7, which represents a challenge for us to disseminate, it is the streams of misinformation/disinformation wrapped around some valid statements or sound bites. A spaghetti junction of data sometimes too overwhelming to unravel. How do you make sense of this to reach solid conclusions and disseminate and assimilate data? How do you verify what you are reading, watching or listening to? Before answering let us consider how we utilise our thinking processes.

Telling Us What We Want To Hear

What is it about us where our default position can be to look for and trust information that confirms our existing beliefs and values? And frequently, this is even when someone has invented information. We have a fundamental problem with bias and this bias clouds our critical thinking when reviewing and making judgements about information. Most times, it renders our critical thinking useless. We would prefer to find data to corroborate a view, even if that information or claim is fallacious.

Fantasyland Of Fallacies

What is a fallacy? It is a system of reasoning that is invalid or can erode the rationale substance of an assertion or argument. (3) There is a vast range of fallacies out there. They can be formal or informal, and are commonly used when the person’s aim is to reach common agreement. You may use fallacies without realising it or recognise them from others. These fallacies are based on a bias. This is your inclination or prejudice towards or against something or someone. Many biases are often based on stereotypes rather than sound knowledge or experiences. It is a cognitive shortcut we use to quicken our problem-solving and decision-making process which leads to us to jump to conclusions and show poor behaviours.

I Knew It All Long…

Even although you did not, this is hindsight bias. It protects our self-esteem. This confidence boost can be a good, but in certain situations, it can lead to costly decisions. There are too many biases to cover here. As well as hindsight bias, some common ones you may know already include the anchoring bias, where people are over-reliant on the first piece of information they hear about. Or availability heuristic where people overestimate important information available to them, for example, a person might say that smoking, drinking or eating animals is not unhealthy because they know someone who lived to 90 by eating red meat, drinking a bottle of wine and smoking a packet of cigarettes every day.

Confirmation bias is when we listen only to information that confirms our preconceptions. One of the many reasons it is challenging to discuss subjects like climate change and animal agriculture. There are many forms of cognitive bias, which influence our thinking, making it faulty. So it is beneficial for you to take some time to understand any key ones affecting your thinking and observe how they influence your problem-solving, decision-making and behaviours. 

Now let’s go back to those questions: How do you make sense of so much information to reach solid conclusions and disseminate and assimilate data? How do you verify what you are reading, watching or listening to?

Power To Overcome Fake News

We can view critical thinking as lofty and dusty something created in ancient Greece during Aristotle’s time or as somewhat philosophical. But critical thinking is neither lofty nor dusty nor ancient or just for philosophers. It is something we should do every day in order to disseminate and assimilate the huge amounts of data around us. So let’s start with answering for what is critical thinking? In its simplest terms, it is about analysing processing and making sense of information. It involves checking in on your own thoughts, how they emerge and how free from bias they are. Being excellent at critical thinking means you have to have significant levels of open-mindedness. You should try to be evenhanded with your own thoughts, spotting those biases and discriminations, and correcting them.

A Critical Thinking Mindset 

Practising critical thinking means not only can you assess data, but it is helpful for your career. To be good at critical thinking, you need to ask relevant logical questions, gather data and assess it, with well-rounded conclusions and assess against counter evidence. So start practising critical thinking, consider:

Purposeful reading, watching or listening by asking constructed questions – break down your questions and consider using five Ws (Who, What, Where, Why, When) plus H (How) (4) Ask yourself what information you already know, you what is your aim and what might you miss or overlooking.

• Deal with your bias. Understand about the cognitive shortcuts you used to reach decisions or make quick inferences about what’s going on around you or the data you are reviewing. Learning to look out for any biases you have and making it a habit to question them means you can filter out any I’m helpful stereotyping or jumping to conclusions.

• Record your thoughts after you have read, watched, or listened to something. This will help you construct an argument for something, appreciate any form of bias, disseminate any data and then assimilate it into a useful summary or conclusion.

• Follow a checklist – identify a range of positions as options, compare and contrast, judge the credibility of the sources, evaluate opposing arguments based on evidence, bring together a range of evidence to gather your points, then draw conclusions based on what you have discovered. Then consider how you were present your argument.

Time To Say No To Fake News!

A European survey confirmed that 48% of respondents were checking facts to assess their validity and avoid fake news (5). By using the structure of critical thinking and managing any bias, you can become an expert in disseminating and disseminating information to find value, problem solve and make intelligent decisions. You will see through fake news and get to the core of a matter fast. In a world of much confusion, various agendas, political influence, it makes sense to assess your critical thinking processes and say no to fake news.

REFERENCES:

1. Lynas, Mark (2020), COVID: Top 10 Current Conspiracy Theories, Alliance for Science, https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/04/covid-top-10-current-conspiracy-theories/ 
2. Watson, Amy (2022) Fake news worldwide – statistics & facts, Statista
3. Aristotle  (384-322 BCE) Organon, (includes Sophistical Refutations) Smith, Robin. (2017)”Aristotle’s Logic”. In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.
4. Aristotle (384-322 BCE) Greek philosopher – Britannia Anselm, Amadio, Kenny, Anthony J.P. et al 1999 – 2021
5. Sloan, Michael.C. (2010). “Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as the Original Locus for the Septum Circumstantiae”. Classical Philology. 105: 236–251
6. Watson, Amy (2021) How do you check if facts in the news can be trusted?, Statista

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