The Bold & The Bashful

CONFIDENCE MAY SEEM LIKE AN ELUSIVE QUALITY YOU EITHER HAVE OR YOU DON’T, BUT TRUDIE MCCONNOCHIE DISCOVERS IT’S ACTUALLY SOMETHING YOU CAN BUILD AND FOSTER

When you think about ways to boost your confidence, dancing awkwardly to Dancing Queen in front of a roomful of strangers probably isn’t the first idea that comes to mind. But that’s exactly how Rob O’Donnell, a facilitator at the School of Life in Sydney, starts his ‘How to be Confident’ class – urging students, in a you-don’t-really-have-achoice-about-this kind of way, to get on their feet and join him for a short stint of singing and dancing to ABBA.

Few people enjoy the cringe-worthy experience – certainly not Rob himself – but it does effectively tackle something that stands in the way for many people wanting more confidence: the fear of looking silly.

Rob, who has a background in learning and development, says feeling self-conscious is what often holds us back from approaching situations with confidence. But that doesn’t mean people who appear to be confident don’t feel worried about what others think of them.

“We all look at other people and we think, ‘They must be really confident’. And when you go and talk to them you generally find they’re nowhere near as confident as you think they are,” he says. “We tend to be hugely overgenerous to other people and hypercritical of ourselves.”

Defining confidence is tricky, since it means different things to different people. The Macquarie Dictionary describes it as “self reliance, assurance or boldness” – and it’s that last word which hints at one of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to confidence.