I was closing out of Remote Desktop Connection Manager and got the popup shown here. Am I sure? To the extent that we can really be sure about anything, then yes I’m sure. Why is the No option selected as the default? Is there an assumption that I’m flying by the seat of my pants, acting randomly and without certitude? That I’m not a confident person? That I lack the courage of my convictions? Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Confidence
Big Fishes in Small Ponds
A colleague and I are discussing an article about too many kids quitting science because they don’t think they’re smart, in which Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford, says, among other things: Being a good parent has become synonymous with giving out ability praise. Parents still think this is the greatest gift they can give to their children, and as a child gets more and more insecure, they give more and more of it. And, by the way, a lot of employers and coaches have said, “My employees cannot get through the day without accolades and validation.” Even professional coaches have said they cannot give feedback without these people feeling that they’ve crushed them. We’ve created several generations now of very fragile individuals because they’ve been praised and hyped. And feel that anything but praise is devastating. My colleague mentions Malcolm Gladwell‘s book David and Goliath, in which Gladwell claims… Read more →
A Recipe for Confidence
If you know very little, and have a coherent story that explains the little that you know, you can be a very confident person . . . Read more →
Confidence
‘Confidence’ I now regard as a psychopathic state. Confidence, it’s a cry for help. I mean, you look at all that out there, and what you feel is confidence? — Martin Amis, Money Read more →
Raising the Confident Child
I know a guy — let’s call him Goofus . . . Goofus is dumb. I don’t mean that in a colloquial way. I don’t mean that he’s uneducated. I mean he clearly has a subnormal level of intelligence. The most striking thing about him though is that he’s completely unaware of his own limitations. I’ve never heard him utter anything but platitudes and nonsense but in his mind, he’s the most interesting man in the world. So many kids by the age of 12 or so have had their confidence in their own abilities extinguished by parents and teachers, that I really have to give Goofus’s parents a lot of credit. I’m not kidding. They raised a supremely confident idiot. Read more →