I Choose Confidence

Seth Godin’s Philosophy 

Seth Godin, a Blogging Genius

Doubt is easy to come by, but confidence is almost never found with as much ease. It seems that the roots of uncertainty can stumbled even a person with a perfect eye for confidence. Clearing the roots of unsureness may be one of the most ambiguous things to do, but wether or not to begin the clearing process is a definitive choice. Seth Godin expands on this thought in his post, ‘Confidence is a Choice, Not a Symptom’. Godin found that many people find confidence after they accomplish the task at hand, not during or before the process. Godin refers to this type of boldness as symptomatic confidence because it is something that accompanies success as evidence of the accomplishment. On the other hand Godin talks about effective confidence which is not reliant of outside events and comes from within a person. As I read through this short article I naturally began to reflect from where I pull my confidence. For as long as I can remember my parents have always been my biggest support system, you could even go as far as calling them a fan club. They have never once doubt me or my abilities, although I have probably done that more times than I should have . They show me that I do not need to be successful in order to have confidence, since baby steps are still progress. If I can have pride in every step I take toward a goal then I can have can have confidence in myself since confidence is a choice, not a symptom. I see the pride that my parents have in me and from that I can choose to speak my confidence. Sure, flaws make things interesting, yet the way someone responds to their own flaws is even more fascinating than the actual fault. If a person can respond to their supposed shortcoming with confidence, it is usually found that the aspect that is being criticized isn’t a flaw at all, it is a trait. One of my best and wisest friends once told me that, “my only flaw was thinking that I had many.” If that isn’t a confidence booster, then I don’t know what is!

As a leader I think it is so important to grasp the difference between symptomatic and effective confidence. The quicker the leader understands which one they thrive off of the quicker they can start incorporating the other one. Most people, like me, use symptomatic confidence which is viewed as the weaker of the two types. All great leaders NEED effective confidence in order to really start breaking down barriers, accomplishing tasks, and building relationships. From here on out I’m setting a goal to use effective confidence and supplement it will symptomatic confidence. The way I’m going to accomplish this is by coming into situations with an open mind and remembering that anything I can ‘bring to the table’ is worthwhile. I will also try to rid myself of preconceived notions about the task at hand and my level of ability to complete it adequately because that will only bring me back to my symptomatic ways.

~The fearless and doubtless, McKenna Mathis

Introduction to Communication

COM 267

During my course load this semester I took ‘Introduction to Communication’ to help me obtain my leadership minor. Although this class was called COM 267 the class and myself knew it just as plain debate. We knew it as this since everything that we had learned in the course we could relate back to a form of debate or persuasion. In attempts to make a summary of this course this reflection consists of a brief description of what I have learned in the class and what surprised me about the knowledge gained.

This class expanded my knowledge not only from a “debate” standpoint, but also the way I look at situations in my life. These things include, but are not limited to, what argumentation and debate is, what a debate consists of, procedures of a debate, how to conduct my own debate, and how to spot fallacies during a debate or while analyzing a controversial piece of text. Within the first few weeks of class, I gained knowledge as to know that an argument consisted of a claim, reasons, and a conclusion, as well as how to recognize each of these parts by looking for indicator words. Not only did I learn that debates consisted of these key points, but also how debaters use unstated assumptions, inductive reasoning, and deductive reasoning to support a claim. Another key form of reasoning is evidence. Over the course of the semester, our class had been taught how to evaluate evidence based on reliability, expertise, examining the biases, how recent a piece was published, and how relevant that piece was to the claim. After mastering what a debate was and what it consisted of, the next thing I learned were the procedures of debate and how to begin constructing my own arguments. The most important part of this process was learning the stock issues. Both the Lincoln-Douglas and parliamentary debates use stock issues, which are significant pieces of a debate that the affirmative must ‘carry’ or ’prove’ to win. These pieces are known as the harms, inherency, solvency, and topicality. When preparing for my own debate on a given topic, I found how to construct my argument around just these stock issues. The last thing taught in this term, was how to spot the use of fallacies, which are arguments that seem to provide valuable reasoning but in fact do not.

The most surprising thing I learned in this class is that debate and argumentation is not what it seems to be at first glance. The only impression that I had of debate was what I saw on television where politicians were yelling at each other, making personal attacks and acting like fools in general. Now I have learned that there is a large difference between debating and fighting. I was also shocked to know that there are different processes of debate, such as Lincoln-Douglas Debates and Parliamentary Debates, and that each had a specific set of rules and procedures.

I believe that all of the information I learned this semester will not only help me greatly over the course of my college education, but in the future and beyond that as well. I know being familiar with the styles of arguments, evidence analysis, and the experience of spotting weak arguments will give me an upper hand in any composition or English class that I will encounter in the future. As for the course in general, I will be able to use all of these skills as a leader in my day-to-day life. Perhaps the most valuable skill learned was the confidence that I gained during the debates, which will serve me well in the years to come. I feel much more comfortable speaking in front of others and developing my own opinions of any given topic. On top of that I developed a closer relationship with my  Leadership Advancement Cohort since I teamed up with many of them and encouraged each other. Overall, this new knowledge will be very useful to me as a leader at Central Michigan University.

~McKenna Mathis