Confidence

It's one of the great intangibles, something so abstract that it can not be pictured in the mind's eye. The presence or absence of it can change the course of history substantially, and yet many people go their whole lives without ever even thinking the word. It is confidence, the bogeyman of people to whom things do not come easily, the blancmange of desserts, the scourge of things that must not be named for it can never be forgotten.

If you have always had confidence you don't think about it, and if you've lost it then you think about it constantly. The absence is what you feel. One person, faced with a fairly vital interview morning next week, would smile and prepare diligently, confident in their ability to deal with the forthcoming challenge in good spirits. Another would feel themselves tensing up into a mental corkscrew, becoming more and more agitated as the time draws closer, until finally being so much a mental wreck on the day that they end up flunking from sheer exhaustion and second-guessing.

What can be done if your confidence is but a memory? The important thing is to somehow not dwell on it, and build from the positives of what goes on around you. Don't get caught in a negative spiral, but become involved with something else just so things keep moving somewhere. Hold on, this is all very patronising, isn't it? When you're deep in the bowels of that feeling, that horrible feeling, of thinking that nothing will ever go right again, it's almost impossible to believe the contrary. Ultimately, you just need to take a small step and start something new. And then something new again, and again, and build from the horrible feeling to something just a little braver. Just a little. A fall from grace is instant, but the following ascent can be arduous and lengthy, but it's worthwhile at every inch if you don't want to live as a shadow of what could be.

And now, the personal aspect. Oh, great candy glockenspiels, interviews are scary! Another PGCE Primary interview to come, and all the self-criticism of the previous one threatens to burst out, but it shall not prevail! Nerves take over the stomach, sleep tries to defect to the other side, and a random goldfish keeps swimming past the window but insanity will not take over. Or, perhaps insanity already did take over, and the whole world is not making sense for a reason. What a daunting idea. It would explain Putin, the Republicans, all the guns, and blancmange anyway. Ick.

O.