Quote:
Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot  I'm a dad. I absolutely love little kids around 9 to 14 months old. That's the age when they start learning to stand and walk and toddle around.
They fall, and hurt themselves, and cry, so many times that it's amazing that they keep trying anyway. They never give up. Their confidence is astounding. And eventually it pays off - the confidence leads to competence. |
Recently I decided to teach myself how to unicycle. I had
no confidence that I could unicycle across the parking lot. On the other hand, I did have confidence (belief) in that I didn't care what people think as I crashed many times.
Instead of focusing on a belief like "I am confident that I can unicycle!" I thought, "Today's goal is to learn to sit on the unicycle." I simply worked on the process not worrying whether I could unicycle or not. Having the belief and expectation that "I can unicycle across the parking lot" would have lead to a lot of initial frustration (because of unfulfilled desires). This negative emotion could have led to abandonment of the goal.
I can now ride across the parking lot not because of my ambition, confidence or belief that I could - instead this is what I did:
1. Held the theory - riding a unicycle would be awesome. If I can do it, great! If not, no big deal. I'll keep practicing.
2. Set incredibly, easy goals to achieve.
3. Focus on the process and not the end result. Holding on to unrealistic beliefs and not achieving them will lead to negative emotion. Negative emotions lead to procrastination - and usually abandonment of goals.
My competence of riding across the parking lot lead to my confidence in riding across the parking lot.