Kudos to Operations and Business Intelligence Research Group (OBI) lead by AP Dr NorZairah Ab Rahim, Advanced Informatics Dept, Razak Faculty UTMKL for the initiating this meeting with Prestariang (M) Bhd for further collaboration on research & professional IT certification.
Just wait for our new announcement on the new Professional Certification Course! And of course for potential research students, do come and join us as we will be expanding our research domain as well with rich industrial experience by our partner.
Part of academic tasks, either you are a student, researcher or academician you are required to publish a research paper. It can be your own research results as well as review article of other scholars studies. The main dilemma here, is how to make sure you produce a GREAT paper that can be published in reputable and high ranking journal? To understand the ranks and indexing of the journals I will explain in other posts.
So how to make sure you will be able to write a ‘killer’ paper and publish in ‘reputable’ journal?
Here are the tips:
Know the type of your paper. Is it Review paper or Original Research
Identify the suitable journals. At least your paper contains the citation from that journal (20%), similar paper produces in that journal, or you are able to cite some of the editors/reviewers of that journal
Now it is time to write your paper according to that journal format & preferences.
Being part of a working team for a workshop on the impact of social media on wellness conducted on 14th April 2018 by OBI Research Group. Invited the wellness participants from various background all over Malaysia and the Wellness Coach. Tg Asmadi. The researcher conducted the Focus Group Discussion (FGD) as part of the methodology in this research.
Self-confidence is extremely important in almost every aspect of our lives, yet so many people struggle to find it. Sadly, this can be a vicious circle: people who lack self-confidence can find it difficult to become successful.
Learn how to become more self-confident, with this video.
After all, most people are reluctant to back a project that’s being pitched by someone who was nervous, fumbling, and overly apologetic.
On the other hand, you might be persuaded by someone who speaks clearly, who holds his or her head high, who answers questions assuredly, and who readily admits when he or she does not know something.
Confident people inspire confidence in others: their audience, their peers, their bosses, their customers, and their friends. And gaining the confidence of others is one of the key ways in which a self-confident person finds success.
The good news is that self-confidence really can be learned and built on. And, whether you’re working on your own confidence or building the confidence of people around you, it’s well worth the effort!
How Confident Do You Seem to Others?
Your level of self-confidence can show in many ways: your behavior, your body language, how you speak, what you say, and so on. Look at the following comparisons of common confident behavior with behavior associated with low self-confidence. Which thoughts or actions do you recognize in yourself and people around you?
Confident Behavior
Behavior Associated With low Self-Confidence
Doing what you believe to be right, even if others mock or criticize you for it.
Governing your behavior based on what other people think.
Being willing to take risks and go the extra mile to achieve better things.
Staying in your comfort zone, fearing failure, and so avoid taking risks.
Admitting your mistakes, and learning from them.
Working hard to cover up mistakes and hoping that you can fix the problem before anyone notices.
Waiting for others to congratulate you on your accomplishments.
Extolling your own virtues as often as possible to as many people as possible.
Accepting compliments graciously. “Thanks, I really worked hard on that prospectus. I’m pleased you recognize my efforts.”
Dismissing compliments offhandedly. “Oh that prospectus was nothing really, anyone could have done it.”
As you can see from these examples, low self-confidence can be self-destructive, and it often manifests itself as negativity. Confident people are generally more positive – they believe in themselves and their abilities, and they also believe in living life to the full.
What Is Self-Confidence?
Two main things contribute to self-confidence: self-efficacy and self-esteem.
We gain a sense of self-efficacy when we see ourselves (and others similar to ourselves) mastering skills and achieving goals that matter in those skill areas. This is the confidence that, if we learn and work hard in a particular area, we’ll succeed; and it’s this type of confidence that leads people to accept difficult challenges, and persist in the face of setbacks.
This overlaps with the idea of self-esteem, which is a more general sense that we can cope with what’s going on in our lives, and that we have a right to be happy. Partly, this comes from a feeling that the people around us approve of us, which we may or may not be able to control. However, it also comes from the sense that we are behaving virtuously, that we’re competent at what we do, and that we can compete successfully when we put our minds to it.
Some people believe that self-confidence can be built with affirmations and positive thinking. At Mind Tools, we believe that there’s some truth in this, but that it’s just as important to build self-confidence by setting and achieving goals – thereby buildingcompetence. Without this underlying competence, you don’t have self-confidence: you have shallow over-confidence, with all of the issues, upset and failure that this brings.
Building Self-Confidence
So how do you build this sense of balanced self-confidence, founded on a firm appreciation of reality?
The bad news is that there’s no quick fix,or five-minute solution.
The good news is that becoming more confident is readily achievable, just as long as you have the focus and determination to carry things through. And what’s even better is that the things you’ll do to build your self-confidence will also build success – after all, your confidence will come from real, solid achievement. No-one can take this away from you!
So here are our three steps to self-confidence, for which we’ll use the metaphor of a journey: preparing for your journey; setting out; and accelerating towards success.
Step 1: Preparing for Your Journey
The first step involves getting yourself ready for your journey to self-confidence. You need to take stock of where you are, think about where you want to go, get yourself in the right mindset for your journey, and commit yourself to starting it and staying with it.
In preparing for your journey, do these five things:
Look at What You’ve Already Achieved
Think about your life so far, and list the ten best things you’ve achieved in an “Achievement Log.” Perhaps you came top in an important test or exam, played a key role in an important team, produced the best sales figures in a period, did something that made a key difference in someone else’s life, or delivered a project that meant a lot for your business.
Put these into a smartly formatted document, which you can look at often. And then spend a few minutes each week enjoying the success you’ve already had!
Think About Your Strengths
Next, use a technique like SWOT Analysis to take a look at who and where you are. Looking at your Achievement Log, and reflecting on your recent life, think about what your friends would consider to be your strengths and weaknesses. From these, think about the opportunities and threats you face.
Make sure that you enjoy a few minutes reflecting on your strengths!
Think About What’s Important to You, and Where You Want to Go
Next, think about the things that are really important to you, and what you want to achieve with your life.
Setting and achieving goals is a key part of this, and real confidence comes from this. Goal setting is the process you use to set yourself targets, and measure your successful hitting of those targets. See our article on goal setting to find out how to use this important technique, or use our Life Plan Workbook to think through your own goals in detail (see the “Tip” below).
Inform your goal setting with your SWOT Analysis. Set goals that exploit your strengths, minimize your weaknesses, realize your opportunities, and control the threats you face.
And having set the major goals in your life, identify the first step in each. Make sure it’s a very small step, perhaps taking no more than an hour to complete!
Start Managing Your Mind
At this stage, you need to start managing your mind. Learn to pick up and defeat the negative self-talk which can destroy your confidence. See our article on rational positive thinking to find out how to do this.
Further useful reading includes our article on imagery – this teaches you how to use and create strong mental images of what you’ll feel and experience as you achieve your major goals – there’s something about doing this that makes even major goals seem achievable!
And Then Commit Yourself to Success!
The final part of preparing for the journey is to make a clear and unequivocal promise to yourself that you are absolutely committed to your journey, and that you will do all in your power to achieve it.
If as you’re doing it, you find doubts starting to surface, write them down and challenge them calmly and rationally. If they dissolve under scrutiny, that’s great. However if they are based on genuine risks, make sure you set additional goals to manage these appropriately. For help with evaluating and managing the risks you face, read our Risk Analysis and Management article.
Either way, make that promise!
Tip:
Self-confidence is about balance. At one extreme, we have people with low self-confidence. At the other end, we have people who may be over-confident.
If you are under-confident, you’ll avoid taking risks and stretching yourself; and you might not try at all. And if you’re over-confident, you may take on too much risk, stretch yourself beyond your capabilities, and crash badly. You may also find that you’re so optimistic that you don’t try hard enough to truly succeed.
Getting this right is a matter of having the right amount of confidence, founded in reality and on your true ability. With the right amount of self-confidence, you will take informed risks, stretch yourself (but not beyond your abilities) and try hard.
So how self confident are you? Take our short quiz to find out how self-confident you are already, and start looking at specific strategies to improve your confidence level.
Step 2: Setting Out
This is where you start, ever so slowly, moving towards your goal. By doing the right things, and starting with small, easy wins, you’ll put yourself on the path to success – and start building the self-confidence that comes with this.
Build the Knowledge You Need to Succeed
Looking at your goals, identify the skills you’ll need to achieve them. And then look at how you can acquire these skills confidently and well. Don’t just accept a sketchy, just-good-enough solution – look for a solution, a program or a course that fully equips you to achieve what you want to achieve and, ideally, gives you a certificate or qualification you can be proud of.
Focus on the Basics
When you’re starting, don’t try to do anything clever or elaborate. And don’t reach for perfection – just enjoy doing simple things successfully and well.
Set Small Goals, and Achieve Them
Starting with the very small goals you identified in step 1, get in the habit of setting them, achieving them, and celebrating that achievement. Don’t make goals particularly challenging at this stage, just get into the habit of achieving them and celebrating them. And, little by little, start piling up the successes!
Keep Managing Your Mind
Stay on top of that positive thinking, keep celebrating and enjoying success, and keep those mental images strong. You can also use a technique like Treasure Mapping to make your visualizations even stronger!
And on the other side, learn to handle failure. Accept that mistakes happen when you’re trying something new. In fact, if you get into the habit of treating mistakes as learning experiences, you can (almost) start to see them in a positive light. After all, there’s a lot to be said for the saying “if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger!”
Step 3: Accelerating Towards Success
By this stage, you’ll feel your self-confidence building. You’ll have completed some of the courses you started in step 2, and you’ll have plenty of success to celebrate!
This is the time to start stretching yourself. Make the goals a bit bigger, and the challenges a bit tougher. Increase the size of your commitment. And extend the skills you’ve proven into new, but closely related arenas.
Tip 1:
Keep yourself grounded – this is where people tend to get over-confident and over-stretch themselves. And make sure you don’t start enjoying cleverness for its own sake…
Tip 2:
If you haven’t already looked at it, use our How Self Confident Are You? quiz to find out how self-confident you are, and to identify specific strategies for building self-confidence.
As long as you keep on stretching yourself enough, but not too much, you’ll find your self-confidence building apace. What’s more, you’ll have earned your self-confidence – because you’ll have put in the hard graft necessary to be successful!
Goal setting is arguably the most important skill you can learn to improve your self-confidence. If you haven’t already read and applied our goal setting article, you can read it here.
Key Points
Self-confidence is extremely important in almost every aspect of our lives, and people who lack it can find it difficult to become successful.
Two main things contribute to self-confidence: self-efficacy and self-esteem. You can develop it with these three steps:
Prepare for your journey.
Set out on your journey.
Accelerate towards success.
Goal setting is probably the most important activity that you can learn in order to improve your self-confidence.
A fisherman wants to catch his own fish, not be handed one.
Everybody is a winner.
For decades now it has been the custom for educators to make kids feel good about themselves for no particular reason. This practice, which is not backed by any evidence, is based on the premise that high self-esteem leads to high achievement. Accordingly, participants in spelling bees and sporting events all come away with trophies so that no one feels bad about not measuring up. In the classroom, students read titles such as Everyone is Special and complete All About Me projects that catalog their fine qualities. Teachers refrain from criticism and take care not to tie praise to performance. The problem with gold stars, prizes for everyone and other bribes, however, is that they don’t work. Rather than bolster achievement the practice simply motivates individuals to accrue more rewards and instills a sense of entitlement.
I deserve to be rewarded even though I didn’t do anything.
Former DC School Superintendent Michelle Rhee, Tiger Mom, recently commented on the everyone-is-a-winner trend by noting that her daughters’ rooms are covered with ribbons, medals, and trophies, “Yet I routinely tell my kids that their soccer skills suck. If they want to be better they have to practice hard, [but that] still won’t guarantee they’ll ever be great at soccer. It’s tough to square this with the trophies.”
Though well intended, research shows that the self-esteem movement has hobbled the millennial generation. The habit of unearned praise interferes with learning, and giving an “A for effort” only succeeds in giving students an inflated sense of their abilities. A 2007 LosAngeles Times report on international student assessments across 30 countries, titled “F in Science, A in Self-Esteem,” showed that American students ranked 21st in science and 25th in math, prompting experts to declare that “Americans are unprepared to compete in the global economy.” Despite their dismal performance, American youths aren’t bothered by their ignorance. In fact, they don’t recognize their mistakes or get that they don’t know nearly as much as their peers in Finland, Canada, New Zealand, or Great Britain even though they think they do. They are hooked on praise instead. According to a recent paper in the Journal of Personality, young adults “prefer a boost to self-esteem over sex, food, drinking, and pretty much any other pleasurable outlet.” Should they need a pat on the back there is a smartphone app called iFlatter that will “brighten your day, make you laugh, and boost your confidence” regardless of your actual knowledge and skillset.
Tell me I’m the greatest
Competition is a fact of life, and yet the fear of making anyone feel bad has crept up the ladder to adult concerns. It is seen for instance in the Academy Awards in which the timeworn phrase, “And the winner is!” has given way to the bland but politically correct, “And the Award goes to.” The zero-sum premise is that every winner demands a loser and that personal accomplishment only comes at the expense of someone else. This is rubbish. But the thinking persists and would be merely annoying if its effects weren’t so corrosive.
Recently reviewer Kay Hymowitz wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the 15,000 studies that the movement has generated. “And what do they show?” she asks. “That high self-esteem doesn’t improve grades, reduce antisocial behavior, deter alcohol drinking, or do much of anything good for kids. In fact, telling kids how smart they are can be counterproductive. Many children who are convinced that they are little geniuses tend not to put much effort into their work. Others are troubled by the latent anxiety of adults who feel it necessary to praise them constantly.”
The solution to this muddle is actually simple: If you want self-esteem, then do estimable things. Accomplishments and know-how can’t be handed out or downloaded into someone’s brain like they are for the characters in The Matrix. They must be earned through individual effort. It is the endeavor that generates a sense of pride and inward esteem. Imagine handing a fisherman a prize catch. You may think you’re doing him a favor and saving him the trouble, but you are robbing him of the pleasure instead. A fisherman wants to catch his own fish, not be given one.
I caught it myself!
Numerous psychological studies have confirmed that satisfaction is an inside game. While it feels nice to be rewarded, the glow of the dopamine rush is short lived and doesn’t produce lasting change in mood or behavior. After the thrill of winning, for example, lottery winners and Nobel laureates revert to their previous temperaments. A look at accomplished individuals who regularly win awards and medals shows that they are driven by the effort rather than the result. It is the striving rather than the reward that is long-lived. Furthermore, the knowledge of one’s capability is continually satisfying throughout one’s life.
Self-esteem feels good because it calls on the emotion of pride. Pride in turn arises from one’s sense of confidence and capability. Esteem and related emotions instill a sense of success and the confidence that you can accomplish whatever you set out to do. In addition the feeling is fun. “She always seems to enjoy whatever she’s doing,” people say. Achieving such a state, however, is not possible without discipline.
My own effort.
Like capitalism whose riches cannot exist without the threat of bankruptcy or heaven without the possibility of hell, self-effort must be willing to risk failure. Failure, when it happens, is never the end of the world, and building up a tolerance for rejection builds up the courage to put many irons in the fire knowing that only some will come to fruition. The advantage of such a strategy is that it assures a continual string of positive results. When set back, as everyone is from time to time, you will be able to pick yourself up and try again or else move on to something new. Repeated achievement reinforces itself. It cultivates a mindset that anticipates success. To observers, it might look like you have amazing luck, but they’d be wrong. The circumstantial luck of fortune is passive and uncaused. What flows from the effort, acting on the opportunity, and following through is resultant luck. As Thomas Jefferson said, “I’m a great believer in luck, and find that the harder I work the more I have of it.”
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