Working on my confidence

At the top of my list of goals this year is to take better care of myself. In having those words, I then ask: what does it mean to take better care of myself? One of the lenses through which I have been thinking about this question recently is confidence. I want to be more confident, especially talking to people with whom I have not yet spoken.

I thrive in social situations where I know at least a few people in the room. I can chat with the people I know and build confidence to speak with more people. I have and do put myself in situations where I’m in a room with people I don’t know and try to chat, but this is mostly at infrequent events. I would like to do more practice between those moments.

One thing I have been doing is speaking to people in the lift. I like to say good morning or good afternoon when in the office around people I don’t know or chat about the weather. The hardest part is saying the first word — of reaching out.

I am thinking about confidence in terms of creativity, too. I sometimes worry that I don’t have enough new ideas to explore. But this week I started to interrogate that perspective more. Wait, I do have ideas! They may require further development, but they are at least a springboard.

This blog post was an idea I had this evening. Before I started writing this post, I did worry about writing about confidence. I can’t remember why; I think it was because it’s a new area. But challenging myself is one of my goals as a writer. I want to explore. Through writing, I get to know myself better.

I am keen to have more conversations with people as I go out and about; chatting with baristas, speaking to people on the lift, making small-talk in the times when there would otherwise be silence. Today, I chatted with someone while waiting in line for a coffee. We had a great conversation about coffee making, city and country life, and more. If I hadn’t reached out, there would have been the awkward silence while waiting for a coffee.

I am trying to develop the muscle of feeling like it’s a good time to say hi, then saying something if it makes sense.

In terms of creativity, I want to be more open to new ideas — to be more confident in trying something entirely new. It is from trying new things that one’s mind opens. And, as a writer, trying new things gives me plenty of inspiration for what to write next!