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| LIFE IS A CONFIDENCE GAME
Sunday, May 2, 2021
Courage is in everyone, but not everyone is brave.
Bravery is in everyone, but not everyone has bravado. Bravado is in everyone, but not everyone has something to say with sufficient courage worthy of boasting.
Twenty years ago, I visited Toastmasters for my first time – my exploration of the world where we too often hear, ‘the only thing some people fear worse than death is public speaking.’
Experience teaches that’s a clever phrase but not a truth. However, once those novices get basic skill training, most people overcome their nervousness and get their butterflies in formation.
Confidence, dare I say courage, and bravado takes longer to unearth, but they are in everyone.
Therefore, people speak with more authority and thus demonstrate greater confidence in subjects they know deeply and care about passionately. And with training, they project confidence when telling stories of fiction or nonsense too.
The challenge with confidence is that some self-editing is required to guard against saying something that should not say at all – while saying it so well.
Everyone has a voice.
Too often, those voices go unheard because someone lacks the confidence to start talking, and too often, that’s because someone stronger, louder, or more confident is holding court or commanding the room.
We are not as strong as our potent voices, but we get stronger when we engage weaker voices to grow louder when we help shaky voices to become more confident, and when we should others through constructive and kind-hearted critique, that we want to help them get to be better, more confident, and effective at telling their stories – and getting more people to listen.
Reader feedback:
Well unfortunately these waves are going to continue because the government can't follow their own rules. They say the border is closed for travel, it's not. No European Flights, there are. I counted 27 Airplanes, mostly Air Canada fly over our heads on Thursday and Friday. A friend works at the Airport and says they are still accepting flights from Europe here in Calgary, from the United States. They are also not pushing or forcing the quarantine rule at the airport. My friend had enough and left work yesterday morning went to her doctor and asked to be put on stress leave. She said every flight has covid testing positive passengers. Because she has her elderly parent's living with her after removing them from a nursing home last year she's at a higher risk. Sad. Nobody in this government truly cares what happens to people. And it shows, MJ, Calgary, AB
Mark, as you say inconsistent, not to mention nonsensical. I am blown away “we” haven’t demanded our leaders implement and enforce the ideas that have worked in other places. Maybe a semi-famous person I watched recently is right, we are all incompetent. As you know, I have thought for a long time our “leaders” are incompetent, but it makes more sense if we think of all of us being so. LH, Lethbridge, AB
Great letter this morning! I agree about all the inconsistency, in dealing with Covid. I could understand it at the beginning, when everyone was trying to figure things out, but now we should be a well-oiled machine, going forward. I have come to the conclusion that modern man no longer knows how to sacrifice himself for his neighbor, or well-being. No one wants to be restricted in any form, even for the betterment of the world. Let’s not even get started with the younger generation! And I don’t know about you in Canada? But here we received a little paper card after our 2nd dose. It’s something that any moron could copy and falsify! We should have been issued something to the likes of a credit card, with codes of info for travel and so forth. I still have not gone out to eat, it has been well over a year. Even vaccinated, I don’t care for the idea of someone I don’t know being near me without a mask. After all, we here in the great U.S. now have all the trump nut-cases around us!, DC, Palm Springs, CA
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