I’ve mentioned my middle son has just done his SATs.

The other day he was parroting what he’d heard from a classmate over tea.

“I’ll never use all this Grammar in real life” he said.

I explained that he was talking nonsense.

And that the more clearly we can communicate with others and the more able we are to understand them, the easier we’ll find life in so many ways.

And that a good understanding of the structure of our language massively underpins that communication ability.

One thing I’ve become much more interested in in recent years is the origin of words.

Particularly the words we use about the things we struggle with.

Because, often, when we break that word down it can help us see it in a different way.

I’ve got some other ones I’ll cover in the coming days.

But today I’m going to talk about “Confidence”.

Something I’m sure we all wish we had more of at times.

Every single one of us.

I realised something recently about the word Confidence.

It starts with ‘confide’.

“tell someone about a secret or private matter while trusting them not to repeat it to others”

The key there is “trust”.

If it’s something we’d be happy for them to tell others, we wouldn’t class it as “confiding”.

A quick Google shows both words have the same origin.

The Latin word “confidere”.

To “have full trust”.

Trust is key.

Confidence is where we trust ourselves to be able to deal with a specific situation.

To do what we intended to and / or believe we should.

To follow through.

Trust that our actions match our intent.

Keeping our promises to ourselves.

When we don’t, we lose confidence.

So more confidence can only come from keeping more promises to ourselves.

Doing what we said we would.

Setting realistic plans that we can just choose to do.

Not super challenging ones that’ll only happen if our energy is high and all the planets align.

Goldilocks promises.

Not too easy.

Not too hard.

Just doing stuff we’re super comfortable with won’t change our confidence levels.

Setting ourselves up for failure will – just the wrong direction.

Settings intents that are just outside our comfort zone………..

That are worthwhile, but doable………

And then doing it even when we don’t feel like it……..

Remembering that not doing it isn’t just not doing it………

It’s breaking a little promise to ourselves………

And that every action is a little vote for the kind of person we see ourselves being and becoming………

Is where confidence will gradually develop.

Much love,

Jon ‘Watched Con Air with the older kids the other day. I think I misjudged the Age Rating’ Hall

P.S. This link is the biggest vote you can ever give for a new and improved you –> www.myrise.co.uk/apply)

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RISE in Macclesfield was established in 2012 and specialise in Group Personal Training weight loss programmes for those that don’t like the gym and find diets boring and restrictive!


Jon Hall
Jon Hall

When not helping people to transform their lives and bodies, Jon can usually be found either playing with his kids or taxi-ing them around. If you'd like to find out more about what we do at RISE then enter your details in the box to the right or bottom of this page or at myrise.co.uk - this is the same way every single one of the hundreds who've described this as "one of the best decisions I've ever made" took their first step.