One Proven Way to Build Confidence

True confidence comes from accepting your total and ever-present failure to be like anybody else, and from building your life from there.

1. Specialize. But don't specialize out of fear of competition. The competition will find its way into your home turf anyway.
   
2. Feel free to compare. It is both natural and good for learning.
   
3. Accept that you have already failed and that you will never do things the way the stars in your chosen field have done or are doing.

You don't play football like Maradona?

No problem.

Do you make that 10-meter pass today better than you did yesterday?

Will you make it better tomorrow?

You may not be a second Maradona, but you may make bigger contributions to football than the first and only Maradona!

Good luck!

One More Way Not to Build Confidence

Another common advice to build confidence goes, 'Stop comparing with others. Just work hard.' This advice is both impossible to follow and also harmful to do so.

Impossible

How can we stop comparing?

1. We do not live alone, in total isolation, in the universe.
2. We do not live in sensory deprivation chambers, with eyes seeing nothing, with ears hearing nothing, and so on.

Harmful

Why should we stop comparing? In matters of learning, comparison comes even before imitation and copycatting!

Say, I am a young swimmer. How much arrogance or blindness would it take for me not to know and learn from Thorpe , Phelps and other greats.

Say, I am a young golfer. How much arrogance or blindness would it take for me not to know and learn from Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Gary Player and other greats.

Say, I am a young footballer. How much arrogance or blindness would it take for me not to know and learn from Ronaldo (Brazil), Romario, Maradona and other greats.

There must be a better way. Let's see.

One Way Not to Build Confidence

Looking for your core competence, sticking to your strengths, staying true to your essence are commendable life strategies. But they will never build you true confidence. They encourage you to live inside a cocoon, to avoid real threats and real opportunities.

 Orcas cannot climb trees. Monkeys cannot fly. Eagles cannot swim.

So orcas should keep themselves to seas, monkeys to trees, and eagles to the sky?

1. So a budding poet should not study math because he will never be able to do math as well as his classmates? 
2. So a budding mathematician should not touch literature and arts because he will never do them as well as his classmates? 
3. So a promising engineer should never dabble in enterprise because he will never do business as well as her classmates?

All sound and sensible and sham and fake and lame!


If you avoid competition and comparison, the universe is never wide enough for you.


If you choose math out of your fear to compete in other fields, you shall find lots and lots of competition in your own field. What about famous mathematicians in history?

If you choose poetry out of your fear to compete in other fields, you shall find lots and lots of competition in your own field. What about famous poets in history?

If you choose business and enterprise out of your fear to compete in other fields, you shall find lots and lots of competition in your own field. What about famous entrepreneurs in history?

There is a better way. See the next post.

Seasons of Life, on February 17, 2011

I travel a lot. On foot and by trains mostly.

Travelling on foot has a purpose, so no problem here.

Traveling by train has no purpose, no meaning, and therefore hard to understand.

Am I taking a train ride to Mandalay? A town I love so much, a town good for fun and music and nothing else for me? Or am I going to Yangon? A new place, a new town that invokes the fear of unknown as well as promises great expectations, challenges, exploits and opportunities?

I read a lot too. For no particular reasons.

Take a lot of notes, dump a lot of notes.

Learn a lot, see a lot, understand a lot. But write very little, even for my diary, let alone this blog or any other place.

For no particular reasons.

Summer vacation. Free, loaf, drift, read for fun, play for fun. Travel for curiosity, read for pure curiosity.

How long can the summer last? How many years have gone in this summer? How many more days will this last?

In my youth, the seasons go like, in Myanmar, Summer(Hot season), Rainy season, Winter(Cold season).

Summer is for loafing.

Rainy season means new/upper/higher class, new lessons, new teachers, new learnings, new understandings, and maybe new friends too.

Winter means long runs, long games, hard studies, exams and tests, prizes and awards, and achievements and recognition.

I didn't have any problem with any season. Neither do I now.

Sweet summer! Then, what?

In Life(or to be more accurate in moods), summer can be followed by winter or rains, or even a new summer!

My Summer is sweet. But it just feels too long. Can't be sustained. When will it be over?

I still want to ...
I still intend to ...
I still believe I can conquer the world somehow.

Good luck.

Grief work - Homecoming in a Jet

on June 23, 2011

It's a misnomer, the title.

1. Sad about losses and misses, but this is also a release and a celebration!

2. True in the sense of reconnecting with one's true self. A shining, shining with greatness. But real visits may be years away. Sad.

A fragment of Japanese poetry comes to mind:

" For the sake of sons who pray,
Let the parting day be thousand years away."

What a samurai! Homecoming as in Healing the Shame that Binds You (Recovery Classics).

3. In the dark days of the 1980, and in a fit of temper, I heard ( myself saying ), "I am going to have a private jet." Maybe never, or long long later. It doesn't matter much at any time.

But Chin-Ning Chu's Jet I have, already have.

When a commercial jet is taking off, many a passenger get anxious and think that their jet will fail, burn or explode. But their negative thoughts don't have as much weight as they assume and most such jets function normally and safely.

Be as negative as you feel like.

The Jet is taking off: properly spec-ed, properly designed, properly built, properly piloted.