Confidence

Following on with a graduate attribute next I watched the youtube video on confidence. In this clip Dr. Ivan Joseph speaks about confidence been a skill and how practice and becoming good at something can help us gain confidence in what we are doing. He also talks about the voice in your head and how it can affects your confidence.

I can totally relate to this. As I touched on in my last post I’ve struggled with my mental health and how when I take on too much this has a negative impact on my mental health. This is it, it’s the voice in my head. When I’m feeling good the voice in my head (my self-confidence) is good and I feel I can take on the world and know what I need to do to get stuff done. However, when I start to feel overwhelmed my self-confidence is affected and I struggle with even the simplest of tasks. Writing these blog posts is a perfect example of this. For as long I had a mental block and just could not find the words or style of writing to get anything down. But after several attempts, all it took was one good blog post and some positive feedback from Frances to get the ball rolling. Now that I know that I’m on the right track the words just seem to flow. Amazing that eh?

I can also relate this to my job search. Rejection after rejection was having such a negative impact on my confidence but although I didn’t feel good enough, I knew I had to keep trying. I finally got my interview for Omega and I studied like hell for it. At Omega we manufacture lateral flow immunoassays. This was something I could relate to as I worked with immunoassays in my undergrad project. My confidence obviously shone through as the interviewer said he was impressed with my knowledge and offered me the job. 5 months on and my confidence is still growing. I am know starting to identify gaps in the workplace where I think my skills are useful. I have identified clear gaps in the training of staff and I am working the supervisor to put training plans together. Although this is not a requirement within my role, I know that this experience will help me in my future career and as I’ve recently learnt EXPERIENCE = CONFIDENCE.