Do We Really Need Self-Confidence Boosting Advices?

Often we are given Self-Confidence Boosting Advices from lecturing books, and the self-help sections in weekly magazines. Confidence, usually positively associated with character strength  is rarely examinedfrom its backside. But where does confidence come from? Take a look with me, and tell me whether you agree with me upon it.  This will be my advice on confidence.

On Poul Krugman’s blog, I have recently read his own reflections upon his own career choices. Being a columnist at New York Time, a leading economist among academics, a professor, an author and editor of bestselling books, and not least, a Nobel Prize Laureate, he is nominated for a Secretary of Treasury position.

13 Writing Lessons Learned From Stephen King’s On Writing [Infographic]

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The power of our sexual impulses…at work

We often underestimate and neglect the power of our sexual impulses at work. We have dress codes, social norms and clear limit on it. Often, the topic of sex at work is unmentionable, flirt is no-go, so is sexually appealing clothing, make-up and behavior.

 But sometimes I feel that sexual influence is just all around, even if we don’t see it. From the job interviews, to the firings, a person's looks or movements, or their voice or smell attract attention- thus having an impact on somebody’s willingness to hire/fire, cooperate, help, promote and share information. Moreover, the attraction may be enhanced by a person's adornments, clothing, perfume, hair style and anything else which can attract the sexual (let’s focus on non-innocent) as well as non-sexual interest of another person. This attraction forms the environment on which we build our relationships on.

My secret revealed...

It’s Christmas time. It’s time for miracles. Or not.

It should not be harmful for us to believe in miracles, at least for a day, or minute, or a second.

With all your good Christmas spirit, I would like to ask a second of your time to help me create a miracle.

In return I will share my secret with you:

My Big Loss; Or How Women Can Save the World.

Recently I experienced a big loss, only because a company - let’s name it XXX – had server issues. The result was that I lost my online creative project, which I had been working on until 2 AM for multiple nights. I evaluated that I had invested about 100 hours of my time, over-exhausted the creative part of the brain and lost effectiveness at my work as a result of sleepless nights. This project was supposed to be a Christmas gift to my lovely 3-year old girl. And one day it just disappeared. My dear friend, who just happened to be around at that moment, helped me go through the crisis and assured me that the company probably had backup of their servers and that the problem could be fixed. We wrote a letter to them, explaining how important it was for me to recover the project. At least, I kept hope up until one evening (which I will probably never forget) where I was informed that my project was irrecoverable. In order to comfort my frustrations, they compensated with a gift certificate, on which, of course, again, I would have to invest another 100 hours and lots of sleepless nights.

I was outrageously angry. I didn’t need another headache. What I needed was just a little understanding of my feelings, moral support and motivation to start again from scratch. The company XXX had chosen a strategy of solving the issue by giving me a gift certificate, a rational choice, I would say. However, neither did they succeed in restoring my project/frustration, nor in returning my customer satisfaction.

So was this gift certificate what I really needed? If they had just showed their understanding of my feelings, I would most likely have been more motivated to start over again from the beginning. But their apathy towards my feelings was overwhelming. So for now, I will never go back to them. 

“Soft” vs. “Hard” Leadership

My technological evolution in 2 days

Once at my workplace we were rewarded with a free paper-based calendar (what a well-deserved bonus). To my own surprise, I refused the gift. I am modernizing myself. The next day with colossal excitement and a bunch of questions, I was visiting an electronic, “Beep and Gadgets”, exhibition. To my own unexpected astonishment, I felt geeky, but cool! What a progress!

 I started to really understand that knowledge of high tech and the skills to take advantage of it, is an important a factor to succeed in your career. For example, other departments, like finance, design, you name it, are more dependent of abilities within IT. Therefore, following the technological development with the right speed is critical for your own career development and for boosting your intelligence. It definitely gives more value to your skills when you are really good and fast with high tech. Therefore, I decided that it would be advantageous for me to be swift with beeps and gadgets.

Beeps and gadgets are not only nuts and bolts, gaming, fast social updating, virtual dating, but it’s a whole world of opportunities in your pocket. If you are really fast with following high tech progress, there are opportunities to explore, and not only for men (who were the majority on the exhibition), but also for women.

"Thinking, fast and slow"

My class mates used to tell me that the reason I got high grades in oral exams was because of my confident argumentation. I used to believe it was true. However, it was schooling, it was easy to make assumptions, to prove a theory, or apply a specific formula, and consequently, sound certain.

However, recently I have noticed that unfortunately, in some situations I was misguided by my own perceptions of reality, my own argumentations, or even my own knowledge on a particular subject. Especially now, after being employed for one of the biggest Danish companies, I have completely changed my perception of certainty, after having experienced “real-world” uncertainty.  Because of business complexity, my own intuitive and not-intuitive perceptions can be misguiding. Not that my understanding or solution to a given problem are wrong, but as the world becomes more complex and information more limited, my own decisions become more biased, and arguments less powerful.