Having confidence and believing in yourself

This blog isn’t strictly about learning English, but it’s about something that might help to make it a bit easier and maybe even more enjoyable: having confidence and believing in yourself.

If you think you’re not good enough, not learning fast enough, making too many mistakes, forgetting things…stop! Everyone has their own pace and their own ways of doing things. Sometimes it takes time to understand something, and that’s OK. Sometimes you might need your boss, colleague or teacher to explain again, or differently. If you're doing a course, you might need to change your learning method (rushed homework at the last minute?), the way you look at things, or maybe the teaching style just isn’t right for the way you learn.

Let’s first investigate “not good enough”. What does that mean? Who are you not good enough for? For someone in your family, a friend, a colleague… or is that voice coming from you or a past experience? Because in reality, if you’re doing the best you can in your current circumstances, then you most certainly are good enough, no matter what anyone thinks or says.

Next on the list: “not fast enough”, who says that? Again, it’s probably a judgment coming either from someone you know, or from yourself.

As for making mistakes…how can we learn if we don’t make mistakes? In fact, often we do this because we’ve learnt a rule and are following it, or we’re making comparisons between languages or concepts. This means that we’re actively thinking and puzzling, trying to make connections and ultimately…learning!

What about forgetting things? Well, if we remembered everything first time, we’d be superhuman. But we’re not. We don’t have brains like computers. It takes time to learn something new. Indeed, we all need to go back and revise things, preferably on a regular basis, before we can really remember them long-term.

So, what if we stopped judging, or stopped caring about other people’s (or our own) harsh judgments, and just continued to take things step by step, as best as we can?

What if we were patient with ourselves? I mean, think about how you would react to someone you care about or love. You’d be encouraging and kind, wouldn’t you? Why not try treating yourself like that? In my experience, kindness helps us to smile and carry on, whereas unkindness makes us stop and sometimes just give up.

All this advice…where does it come from, and why am I giving it? Well, because frankly at several points in my life I've had these issues myself, and no doubt will again. At times, everything becomes a competition with other people or with myself, and in my head I’m losing, whereas in reality I’m actually doing well. But as a wise person once said to me: comparison is poison. The only thing that comparison has done for me is to sometimes stop me reaching my full potential, or stop me enjoying or taking pride in something I’m really good at. In short, it has often made me miserable for no good reason.

For a while now, I’ve been learning Dutch, and I see so many similarities between how I feel about my own language learning and how students feel about theirs. So, it’s seeing students struggle with their confidence, and my own experience, that has made me want to write this blog. We need to start being kind to ourselves, give ourselves time, recognise that mistakes are normal and realise how much we’ve achieved so far, or even just today. One step at a time.