The Secret to Raising Confident Kids - Part 1

A lot of times martial arts enthusiasts just shout confidence without having a clear understanding as to how to achieving that. If we don’t have a clear system of achieving it then we’re just kind of hoping that we put our kids in and a confident kid will be spat out, well that’s not always the case if we don’t have the right systems in place.

Confidence comes from the experience of genuine success. Now note that I said genuine success. False success will lead to false confidence. What I mean by false success is that if we do something for our kids without giving them the risk of failure then they won’t experience true success in something. Likewise if we just lie to our kids and keep telling them they’re fantastic and great at everything even when they’re not, that’s false success. If everyone gets a trophy that’s false success.

It’s ok if not everyone gets a trophy because life is filled with abundant opportunities to succeed, not everyone has to succeed in the same way for everyone to be successful. When we achieve something after a genuine struggle we have renewed faith in ourselves and we feel more capable to take on the next challenge. That’s true confidence. This takes time, and that’s why the martial arts are a great process for this, because people are willing to put in the time. Once a child experiences success genuinely what we can do as parents and teachers is put a spot light on it so it reinforces the effort they made and the results they achieved. This positively reinforces that behaviour and makes them more likely to take on bigger challenges in the future.

One thing I find that is extremely helpful for this, which anyone can do, everyone should do, even adults, is keep what we call a confidence journal, or a success journal; I learned this from one of my mentors, Lee Milteer, who is a fantastic lady, a great teacher and speaker.

A confidence journal is something simple but special where you log your achievements. As an adult if you’re using this you have to spend some time thinking back to your achievements and writing them down chronologically.  Earning your degree, buying your first home, finding your dream partner and putting a ring on ‘em , landing a job that you wanted, anything you achieved that is significant to you. For kids, it can be getting an A+ after dedicating time to practice and study, scoring their first goal, getting an award at school. The trick to this is to put achievements, things that needed effort and that took a little risk. Do not put in things that would happen anyway, like lost their first tooth or first day at school, because those may not be achievements as much as activities that we would just default into anyway. This is more for things that had to be earned by putting in time and sacrifice.

When we build this up we can refer back to it during times when we’re feeling doubtful and not confident. It will give us a little faith in ourselves to step out of our comfort zone so we can start achieving new things again. Typically whenever your kid is feeling shy, low on confidence and doesn’t believe in themselves they are not going to want to step out of their comfort zone and try anything new, and as a result, they might be stuck in a bit of a rut, same thing with adults. At times like that you can pull this out and show them what they’ve achieved in the past using some effort, focus, determination, and faith in themselves. This will usually get them in a more confident mindset. Very simple little tool but can be very useful. As we say in Kung Fu, little hinges swing big doors.

There’s another very important part of developing confidence in more of a social context that I want to get into but it’s a little lengthy so it’ll have to wait for next week. I’ll post it in about a week from now, so please like this page or subscribe so you’ll know when it’s up. Thanks for watching this video; I hope you found it useful, if we can help develop confident kids today then we’re going to have great leaders in our community tomorrow.