Personal Confidence and Motivation (Review)-Part 1

PERSONAL CONFIDENCE AND MOTIVATION BOOK REVIEW

Title          : Personal Confidence and Motivation
Author      : Sean McPheat
Publisher  : MTD Training & Ventus Publishing ApS
Pages        : 58

CHAPTER 1 : Introduction Personal Confidence and Motivation

The more that people are motivated to be successful and achieve the goals set for them, the more their confidence in their own abilities will grow as well, which can, in turn, make them even more motivated. We all know people who are confident. They seem to face life’s obstacles with a level of calm that is enviable. They get into action to respond to a problem before giving themselves time to dwell or worry too much. Confident people are more successful at work, because they have a belief in their own abilities to the point that they feel comfortable handling whatever comes at them. A simple definition for motivation is that it is a description of a person’s motive to action. You can have a low level of motivation to perform an action, for example, if you are taking a long time to complete a project or even to begin it.

And people sometimes confuse confidence with arrogance. The arrogant person is usually actually an insecure person and their arrogance is a way to hide their insecurities. Where an arrogant person is boastful, a confident person has no need to boast – they know that their achievements speak for themselves. Where an arrogant person will have trouble admitting they were wrong, a confident person is perfectly willing to admit when they are wrong – they know that the admission doesn’t diminish their value or their abilities. If an arrogant person tends to focus on looking good or appearing to be the best, a confident person focuses on being the best and doing the best.  

CHAPTER 2 : Theories Regarding Personal Confidence

According to psychological research, there are several theories regarding how a person’s self-confidence is important to their well-being and their ability to function in the world at their fullest potential. In this chapter we will look at the differences between self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-efficacy, and theories about why each is important in the workplace.

1. Self-confidence can be boiled down to the belief that a person has it in their ability to succeed at a task, based on whether or not they have been able to perform the task in the past. However, there are actually two aspects of self-confidence. The first is competence, whether or not you have the necessary skills and abilities to complete a task. The second is self-assurance and whether or not you believe that you have the ability to complete the task.  
2. Self-esteem is the capacity to respect and think well of yourself. It means that you appreciate yourself as a unique individual with your own set of skills, talents, and abilities. 
3.  Self-efficacy as “people’s judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances. It is concerned not with the skills one has but with the judgments of what one can do with whatever skills one possesses.” In other words, self-efficacy is an individual’s evaluation of their own ability to be successful in attaining a specific goal.