As a young adolescent, I never had a guide or mentor to show what real confidence was. I grew up like most where I struggled through school not knowing why some kids were popular and some were not.
I wasn’t bullied very much but, confidence was a complete mystery to me. I would see the popular kids joking around and having no fear in social situations and I didn’t know how to do it.
I know now that it has to do with how confident you feel on the inside. However, part of being able to feel confident on the inside is being taught, little by little how social dynamics work.
One of the hardest things for me to do when I was younger was to be able to speak in a group setting. This fear of public speaking come from the same place all fear comes from, which is the “unknown”.
In our martial arts school we have a class called leadership. It is held every Saturday morning at 10 am. In this class we teach a variety of different things.
However, one of the primary goals we strive to accomplish is to slowly expose kids to public speaking through the teaching of the martial arts.
At first the requirements are simple.
Step 1 is to be able to count to 10 along with the class as they are doing drills.
Step 2 is to be able to count while in the very front of the class.
Step 3 is to call of the name of the drill then count it off.
Step 4 is to start to give details of the exercise then call of the numbers to the drill. Finally, step 5 is full out teaching an entire martial arts class by themselves.
It takes quite a long time for students to reach the final step. It requires perseverance and dedication, but little by little, inner confidence grows and solidifies until we get the end result; a kid who is confident in any situation, can defend themselves if needed, knows the ins and outs of social situations, and is CONFIDENT is himself.
In this video you see just 1 technique out of hundreds that will help your child along the way to their mastery of real self confidence.