I just asked Merril “what will I write about?”  She said “confidence.”  I said “ooooh I don’t know I could do that.”  My ploy was not lost on her.  I actually think it is a great idea.  I sat musing on it for a while and decided to put pen to paper (figuratively).
It reminded me of something I saw recently.  I have forgotten who said it but I know I liked it.  It was something like “well being is built on overcoming not avoiding.” 
I feel the same way about confidence.  To me nothing is ever gained when I avoid what I know I must face rather than face it and deal with it.
It sort of reflects how I have been working lately.  Tasks may be huge and seem impossible.  That is until I break it down into smaller parts.  Smaller parts often seem doable.  When I do a heap of them together, a larger task gets done and what seemed impossible becomes a thing where I can say, “been there, done that.”
I make sure I celebrate my successes.  Positive rewards help motivate.
To me, as I often say having a go is what matters.  Not success or failure.  Naturally success is better and will always remain the goal but failure has lessons.  As has been said failure is one more way I learn not to do it.
Confidence can be attempted to be knocked out of me.  I can have others saying I will never amount to much or I am a waste of space.  The choice is mine as to listening to voices that pull down.  It seems there are plenty of those.  Those waiting for me to blow it.
But I am not waiting for me to blow it.  I am waiting to succeed and working towards it and enjoying success along the way.  Nothing inspires success like success.
One thing I have found is that when I deal with negativity long enough it gives up.  It knows it is wasting its time.  That is a battle, but it is a battle worth winning and won with persistence.
It helps me knowing I have a really good coach.  

I sometimes think I must go about in a bubble.  I recently read about something I had never heard of though it became a buzz phrase.  Black Swan Event.  It was a term made popular by a guy called Nassim Taleb who wrote a book called “The Black Swan” which spent close to a year on the New York best sellers list.
Black Swan was a term used in finance mostly to denote an event that happened which was totally unpredictable and extremely rare and had major implications (ie the global financial crisis).  In hindsight it is generally seen as predictable though no one predicted it.  In its original state it would refer to mostly negative implications.
The meaning of the term had to be altered after the discovery in Western Australia of Black Swans.  Originally it was felt they did not exist as only white swans were reported as being seen.
My reading referred to Black Swan moments as events in life that happen but are totally unpredicted and have major positive implications.
The example given was a lady taking the kids shopping.  In her mind the day was, get some things needed for the house and go home.  As it turned out she saw a lady obviously in distressed.  When asked, this person said she had been separated from her mum who did not speak English and had her stroller (she was holding a baby), phone and wallet.  The shopping lady spent the next couple of hours hunting for the mum, buying food to feed the baby and eventually finding the mum.
The time together led to the person being asked over for a bbq lunch and long story short the distressed lady ended up hosting a bbq and inviting lots of her friends.  Friendships were made by people who only met because someone chose to help out someone else.
I sorta like the premise here.  It is all about the seeming randomness of events.  I (rightly I think) plan my day, but unpredictable things happen.  Things that can change my life forever.  Bad things and good things.
What I like about the thought is that although I cannot plan for it, life can be so much more expansive than I imagine.  I can plan my day, but anything can happen.

I’ve been hearing in all sorts of situations, and at many different locations, something I feel but have never said.  “Common sense is almost like a superpower.”  Bemoaned is how despite there being so many incredibly bright people, there are still matters that seem unsolvable.  Violence, wars.  It seems to me the list of problems is growing rather than diminishing.  From where I stand, they actually appear to be getting worse.
But I am actually an optimist.  In the short term though I am a pessimist.
One of the reasons for my pessimism in the short term is what I have seen over the course of my life and what I have seen in history.  Bad stuff seems to be accelerating now.  It seems to me we have many bright people that have propagated unproven or untested ideas.  They have been foisted onto people of good will and been seen to not work.
It seems to me that instead of owning up to failure, people with contrary ideas are made to look like they have no idea (sometimes they do not and are driven by self-interest alone).  Unfortunately huge amounts of the population suffer as a result of failed experiments.    History repeating itself.
What I notice is that it is not the ones who get ideas wrong that suffer, but those impacted by the failed experiment.  Reminds me of the saying “I wouldn’t worry about it – because it wasn’t me!”  Yet I do not think common sense is dead but merely dormant.
Like so often happens I am reminded of C.S.Lewis in The Silver Chair (one of the Narnia book).  One group of something (I have forgotten what sort of creatures they were) were like on automatic pilot.  There came a time though they realized they had been zombies.
It is that sort of thing that makes me an optimist. I have been like in the grip of a boa constrictor with its hold on me tightening every time I breathed.  Yet I do think common sense will prevail.  It will be harder to escape than it might have been, but it is looking more and more likely to me that there will come a time when humanity says enough is enough.
In the meantime, I will use something that does not require a superpower and declare, “it doesn’t look good.”