Courage and Confidence

I am writing today on courage and confidence, two of several positive emotions that you can create within yourself to change or better the course of your life.

In the book Your Destiny Switch, author Peggy McColl says that when you commit to a path towards a goal, courage gives you the means to make it happen. Often faith in yourself and/or a higher power will go hand in hand with how courageous you can be.

I have witnessed this courageousness and the doors that have been opened because of that courage, and the justice that is going to be the end result. My sister has her master's degree in counseling and was placed in an intership at a girls home for teens where she was to be supervised in counseling young ladies, as well as observe her internship supervisor counsel the clients. A short time into the internship, she witnessed her supervisor being unethical, was asked herself to be unethical, and then witnessed behavior that was clearly abusive to the clients. She immediately contacted her professor, without hestitation because her goal was to stop the abuse of the young ladies. Now, by doing this, she had to contend with possible negative consequences for her actions. Namely, to anger her supervisor and thus get a fail for the internship; have an air of tension on site for the remaining 5 months of the internship; have the college she's attending frown upon her for causing trouble for them. These are all very real risks, but because of her courage to do the right thing and see justice for these young ladies, it was a definite and clear decision for her.

The road was not easy once the report was made, however, it has proved the right course of action. First of all because her professor became an ally and helped her with guidance on how to proceed with the report, and this action led to her being able to find a new internship site, while her supervisor at the current site is now under investigation and the clients shall no doubt benefit from this. Not only this, but doors have opened for her that were unexpected: an internship site that she was particularly interested in before contacted her with an opening for an intern the week before found out that she could leave her current internship. So once that news was delivered to her, she was able to re-interview with this place and both she and the new site are very excited about the potential working relationship they may have. It just is proof to me that by using positive emotions, it draws postive things to you in an otherwise precarious situation.

I just want to spend a moment on the positive emotion of confidence. The author of this book states in a study on success, that the top 10 percent of those who achieved their maximum goal at work all had one thing in common: Confidence. They were described as "exuding confidence, so they get results." She states that "confidence will lift you up no matter what the challenge, helping you access all your personal resources. By feeling faith in yourself, you'll be aware of your many gifts and be able to use them to make your situation better."

In going back to my sister's situation at the current internship site, she had a final evaluation with her supervisor and the clinical director. Because she had assessed her current supervisor's inability to act professionally, and to give accurate feedback without letting her emotions guide her, my sister had that confidence of knowledge with her at that meeting. As she knew would happen, the evaluation was very inaccurate and frought with false information. But because she had the knowledge and confidence in her ability to assess her supervisor's dysfunction, she did not let the meeting lead to one where she felt compelled to continuously defend herself. The confidence she exuded did have an impact on her supervisor who seemed genuinely suprised that she didn't want to discuss what she was being told. My sister had the confidence that she would be heard by her professor, her school and in her written documentation to those who could make rational evaluations. I think this meeting ended up being very successful because my sister left a meeting that was intended to make her feel bad, feeling fine with what had gone on and was able to let go of it and enjoy the rest of her day. Again, another great example of what positive emotions can do for your pysche and how good things seem to be attracted to the positive emotions. I can't wait to hear what is next for her!