low confidence and aware of it

[Santtu]

I feel like a regular average Joe, with average looks, poor finances and low to average popularity. Spending some of my moderately miserable time in teh intarwebs, I stumble upon two tests, which I answer just like I feel at the moment.

Other tells me I'm the life of the party with mad skills to earn a fortune if I wanted.

Other reveals me I've got a low confidence.

I'd have a high confidence if I believed the situation were as reported in the first test; yet the other reports I have a low view of myself.

Suppose I'd believe in these tests having been accurate. I can pronounced myself healed! I was a great person all along, just not recognizing, thanks to my erroneous bias.

What is the validity of this thought pattern and the conclusion?

Discuss.

[Jennifer]

If no one responds to your thread, how will you react?

[disregard]

I'm not sure if this is a serious thread, but in any case: If you have low confidence, get outside of yourself. Many self-proclaimed deep-thinkers are doing little more than entertaining egoistic preoccupations because their mind cannot break free from the sickness that is anxiety and self-consciousness. Daily exercise, meditation, and activity will help to wash away your concerns with your Self.

[Santtu]

Originally Posted by Jennifer

If no one responds to your thread, how will you react?

I was being my miserable self all the time. Q.E.D.

[Night]

Validity of the thought pattern?

Relative to the exams? Poor; the exams seem to offer contrasting perspectives and/or your answers were too erratic during one/both to facilitate a normalized score. Maybe the tests were produced in contrasting cultural/financially-minded workshops. Regardless, the sample set was inconclusive; objectively enriching a score with the evaluations you described probably isn't likely and/or wouldn't create a reliable reference point. (Check your substrate, too... )

The conclusion (such that it is) seems fat with confirmation bias. Self-perception is a flexible entity; self-worth is probably not a quantifiable sum.

Joe's not a bad guy, anyway...

[Edahn]

Originally Posted by Santtu

I feel like a regular Joe, with average looks, poor finances and low to average popularity. Spending some of my moderately miserable time in teh intarwebs, I stumble upon two tests, which I answer just like I feel at the moment.

Other tells me I'm the life of the party with mad skills to earn a fortune if I wanted.

Other reveals me I've got a low confidence.

I'd have a high confidence if I believed the situation were as reported in the first test; yet the other reports I have a low view of myself.

Suppose I'd believe in these tests having been accurate. I can pronounced myself healed! I was a great person all along, just not recognizing, thanks to my erroneous bias.

What is the validity of this thought pattern and the conclusion?

Discuss.

You don't need some BS internet test to believe in yourself. You don't even have to know that you'll meet the classic benchmarks of success (money, intelligence, etc.). You just need to work with what you've got and make the best of it, and stop your mind from harassing you about who you're not, or who you might not become. Work with what's in front of you from moment to moment, to the best of your ability. Put in some solid effort. If you fall, get back up. Shift your goal from attaining A B and C to "kicking ass to the best of my ability."

Anxiety and self-doubt is kind of like a mask people wear for years. After too much time, they come to identify with the mask and don't know what else they are. You can use the advice I've given you to help remove it, or you can come up with some other way. The way I see it, your entire post is mask-speak.

[Santtu]

Originally Posted by Night

Validity of the thought pattern?

Relative to the exams? Poor; the exams seem to offer contrasting perspectives and/or your answers were too erratic during one/both to facilitate a normalized score. Maybe the tests were produced in contrasting cultural/financially-minded workshops. Regardless, the sample set was inconclusive; objectively enriching a score with the evaluations you described probably isn't likely and/or wouldn't create a reliable reference point. (Check your substrate, too... )

The conclusion (such that it is) seems fat with confirmation bias. Self-perception is a flexible entity; self-worth is probably not a quantifiable sum.

Joe's not a bad guy, anyway...

You're into it. Yes, diving into the depths of measurement, methodology and psychological fallacies. But then, what assumptions do you use to get to the idea of conflicting tests? That a person's self-confidence is a sum of the material condition of the trait's subfactors? If that were so, a person answering consistently would receive consistent scores from tests asking the state of their material conditions and those that ask their confidence with the said factors. But, I'm inclined to believe this is not the case.

You mentioned the chance that the tests might have been calibrated on a different population.

I'll dare to propose something more drastic. There isn't an established norm of confidence in relation to person's material conditions. The society hasn't established it. The psychologists haven't. Some treat them as separate and independent, some tightly interdependent. Some think a person's statement of their conditions is a statement of confidence. Others think it's a, d'uh, a statement of their conditions.

The whole concept seems ill-defined to me.

[Santtu]

Originally Posted by Edahn

You don't need some BS internet test to believe in yourself. You don't even have to know that you'll meet the classic benchmarks of success (money, intelligence, etc.). You just need to work with what you've got and make the best of it, and stop your mind from harassing you about who you're not, or who you might not become. Work with what's in front of you from moment to moment, to the best of your ability. Put in some solid effort. If you fall, get back up. Shift your goal from attaining A B and C to "kicking ass to the best of my ability."

Anxiety and self-doubt is kind of like a mask people wear for years. After too much time, they come to identify with the mask and don't know what else they are. You can use the advice I've given you to help remove it, or you can come up with some other way. The way I see it, your entire post is mask-speak.

Yes, there's part that, worrying about myself. Yet it hardly describes my situation psychologically.

If I should really get into bottom of this, I've got a carefree attitude of detachment and contentment. I do recognize the intellectual need to see all my capabilities come true. I've thought a lot about the Finnish stance on Northern American self-confidence courses and such. I understand how believing in one's capabilities can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it can also lead some to be bombastic with no factual reasons at all to back up their inflated confidence.

Tests and such are manifestations of people's belief in this self-agrandissement. Yet, aside from psychological wow-factor and feel-good issues, self-confidence could be seen as a continuous variable describing a person's expected achievement in an arbitrary task. For purposes of selecting the most appropriate tasks to strive for, one should have realistic view of their future achievement in a given task.

Someone has great confidence and little reason to back it up? They'll stay happy and fail perpetually at too great tasks. Too little confidence? They'll perpetuate a series of tasks below their skill level.

What I'm disappointed with, is the simplistic idea that a self-confidence is a "must have" and "more, the merrier".

I do have unreasonably low practical view of myself. I thank you for the advice given to improve my current situation. There's a real deal behind this, as my burnout few years ago has diminished my self-confidence, something I've striven to gain back gradually.

Yet I'm interested about measurement, and the optimum self-confidence. Not for myself, I got that covered. But.. people don't think about optimum self-confidence in U.S. culture, do they?

[nightning]

Hmmm it's like how self-report survey for university professors indicates that 95% of them think their teaching abilities are above average... Clearly that cannot be accurate, but it does point to a population with high confidence though. Whether this is a group with high levels of competency and thus elevates the bar or merely a mis-perception of their actual abilities is besides the point.

So indirect means of measuring confidence do exist... but I highly doubt straight questionnaire format can detect low confidence when the individual is uncertain of their actual level of confidence. (Hmmm I find that to be a funny statement... being uncertain about confidence... do excuse me. )

[Santtu]

Technical remark: I'll be sleeping for about 7-9 hours, unable to answer Do not interpret it as a sign of abandoning the thread. Carry on. It's good so far!