Self Confidence E-Book

Luca Stanchieri

• Herausgeber: Hashtag Zero
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

SELF-CONFIDENCE: A Training Course in Success, to transform your insecurity into CONFIDENCE in Yourself!Self-Confidence is a journey in stages to liberate us from our sense of lack of personal potency, and to govern the emotional wounds that have influenced us.Carefully follow Luca Stanchieri's suggestions, and your qualities will be finally recognized, expressed, and realized. Your talents and potential, if they are well-trained, become capable of changing your reality.With a balanced and targeted preparation, it will be easy to transform work and love into to precious opportunities for self-realization. You will also learn to perceive a new and life-changing feeling: that of bettering yourself every day, because finally, you're on the right track.

Leseprobe

Credits

SELF-CONFIDENCE

The perfect training to increase the confidence in your self!

written by

Luca Stanchieri

translated by

Clive Riche

cover by

Massimiliano D’Affronto

published by

Hashtag Zero Srls, Rome (Italy)

ISBN: 9788899804022

© 2015 Hashtagzero Srls

All rights reserved

www.hashtagzero.it

[email protected]

Introduction

Chapter 1

FROM THE ORIGIN OF INSECURITY

Section 1

Expectations

Giovanna is a young woman of 30 years and is pregnant. A pregnancy that she had neither chosen not planned for. After a brief period of disorientation, she decided to keep the baby, and is happy about that. Giovanna had a very troubled youth. After finishing school, she left university and was surrounded by friends and connections which were in conflict with her mother’s wishes. Her father, separated from the mother for some time, has always been close but more as a friend, than as a guide. She ventured then into the world of discotheques, footballers, strip-clubs, and betting halls.

A world of easy money, immediate pleasures, multitudes of famous or dangerous connections. An underworld city, where marginalization and sporting fame meet in a world of fantasy, far from the limelight. At that time, her meaning in life was enjoyment, excitement, and engage in social life made up of relationships, betrayals, possessive and desperate love-affairs.

Happiness resided in fragile and powerful, and strange friendships with the wealthy, where life took place at night, and you woke up in the late afternoon. Friendships to cultivate, defend, resolve. Hers was a strange sense of belonging to a special world, out of the normal, where the game of chance, with its swirling roller coaster was the main antidote to boredom and routine. She never gambled, but her friends did, and she lived the excitement and desperation as if it where her own, rejoicing when things went well, and assisting and consoling when disasters occurred, dissociating from those who wanted her to tame her lifestyle.

Her mother, who had always been closet o her, lived in a dimension of anguish, desperation, anger. She was not able to understand the reason behind her daughter’s choices, and she took refuge in pathology. She tried to derive a name to her daughter’s behavior, from the online manual of personality disturbance. She was always at her side, but never failed to make her feel the hell and anguish which her errant life-style, without purpose, full of risk and stupidity, was creating for her.

When Giovanna’s best friend decided to have a child, after having roamed for years amid disco bars, and shopping, even her life changed. Maybe she was tired. Maybe she felt drained. And so Giovanna started studying again, with seriousness, and diligence, obtaining excellent grades, entering a new environment, without ever abandoning or betraying her old friendships, but distancing herself one step every day.

She moved house, re-established relations with her mother, found a new boyfriend, and reorganized her days around her study and going for walks with her dog. She started a new life. She understood how good she was at studying, and her excellence and professional seriousness was noted in her training, where she found confirmation among colleagues and teachers of her interpersonal skills.

Her mother lived this change with joy, and supported her organizationally, serving as secretary in all bureaucratic matters , while Giovanna dedicated body and soul to her studies. When she discovered she was pregnant, she decided to continue the pregnancy, communicating this decision to her mother in an SMS. Once again, her life project had no forseeable and predictable future path. Her boyfriend, that she’d known and frequented for a few months, took her decision well, and decided to share this event with Giovanna, which would change both their lives forever.

And the mother? Puzzled, confused, sad, helpless, annoyed, as if her daughter run over a pedestrian, while driving intoxicated. She returned to the same state of anguish as before. They argued as never before, always by SMS. The mother maintaining a demeanor which made no bones about her opposition to the choice. Giovanna hurled back unspeakable phrases, with a desperate and angry violence. Giovanna would have wanted a mother who stood by her and helped her in this extraordinary decision, who would have supported her, while she continued to study, so that her pregnancy and giving birth could coincide with the conclusion of University. She would have liked her to be joyous and playful, like a safe haven, ready to enjoy, to protect and encourage.

The mother would have liked Giovanna to be studious, diligent, focused on her degree, and then on her professional achievement, finally able to handle life and gain her independence, without dangerous deviations.

When their two visions crossed, there was created a furious quarrel, where Giovanna struck and her mother took the blows, as always, without one or the other knowing how to change their positions. And as in every war which doesn’t produce ruptures between one battle and the other, there is a sort of truce. The mother continued to be an organizational secretary for her daughter’s studies, while she was preparing for her exams and her thesis.

Five months into her pregnancy, and Giovanna had not said anything to her father.

Giovanna had taken a path of profound change, even if apparently repentant, in reality lived with intensity in each moment. Her existential change was radical. From one life, where clothes, food, make-up, and worldliness represented the sense and purpose of conception of hedonistic happiness, immediate, exciting, gratifying immediately and superficially, to a life based on a project, a purpose which required constant effort, concentration, deferred gratification, and a reconstruction of identity, to serve the well-being of others (her degree was in the Professional Health Sector).

A new phase in her life which had brought her to conceive the real possibility of having a child, assuming responsibility, raising the child to be happy. In the future she would have had a job she loved and a child she adored, and certainly a growth of maturity which she had already demonstrated that she was able to deal with.

The mother never changed her behavior. She had always been called upon, seeking to help her, often to come to her aid, always protecting her. She had hoped for a change in her, but when Giovanna communicated her pregnancy, just when she seemed to have embarked on the right path, her world crumbled around her.

In these two lives we see decisions, behaviors, actions which hide, and produce sense and significant. But above all, a relationship where the two women judge each other on the basis of an ideal model, in which neither belongs. A model which produces expectations and then disappointments, and thus conflicts.

There is, moreover a matter which remains in the background. Giovanna had not yet said anything to her father. It is probable that she was afraid of the reactions of a man she deeply loved, and who would be shocked, because he still saw her as a child, or not mature, or ready. Giovanna felt insecure. Not to the point of not giving birth, but to the point of not saying anything to her father. She was frightened of facing him. She was afraid of disappointing him.

But where does a way of thinking that sees in another a prototype of expectations that punctually disappoint, arise from, gene rating violent relationships even though they are based on feelings of love? From where does our insecurity arise? That insecurity which makes us feel fragile, vulnerable, undecided and vacillating, even when one is convinced in taking one road instead of another? It was born in the head of an engineer, who became more famous than he expected…

Section 2

The origins of deviation from the model

A century ago, an engineer, Taylor, and an entrepreneur, Ford, invented an organizational model that was called Scientific Management, and applied this to the manufacture of automobiles. They had a revolutionary concept of the company and productive mechanism, so much so as to merit the praise of Lenin, their arch enemy.

The idea is that a manager, should be able to elaborate an organizational rational model, capable of increasing productivity, eliminating waste, measure the commitment of each individual production employee with the aim at maximizing profits. The final product, ready for sale, was the result of a series of combined actions which were to agree with pre-established standards.

The roles of a company were to be essentially three: the scientists/managers, creators of the production process, the executors/workers, who put this into practice, the controllers who were to verify that the production was in line with the established norm. In that period, there was not forseen a fourth figure that would break upon the scene tens of years after, the customer.

Ford produced for twenty years, always the same machine, in the same color, constructing a real and true industrial empire.

The Taylorist model was revolutionary because it sought to insert elements of organizational rationality into the chaos generated by the conflict between foremen and workers.

To increase productivity and reduce costs, the whip (always) and the carrot (almost never) was no longer sufficient. In those times, the selection of the workers was done by throwing apples outside the gates, the Mafia was used to repress strikes, the foremen were corrupt, there were no pre-established working hours. The model claimed to provide certain rules, to rationalize the productive process, eliminate useless costs, maximize productivity per employee. To work in a Ford Factory at those times was a privilege to which many workers aspired.

Scientific Management has been so successful as to be used in one way or another until today, and has gone way beyond the confines of business, influencing the school, family and interpersonal relationships. It has penetrated into the way we see ourselves and take our decisions. We live, and suffer without realizing it , in a gigantic Ford Company.

The purpose of the Fordistic model is to eliminate or reduce waste.

There are two types of waste:

1. Production Waste: one eliminates all that which is not built according to the original project.

2. Productivity Waste: one must reduce or eliminate any behavior that does not conform to the norm of stability.

Without knowing or predicting this, Taylor and Ford forged a cultural paradigm of incredibile success which survives today notwithstanding its inadequacy. The rational pretext which distinguishes it, is a myth which lacks scientific basis even in modern companies. And yet it continues to be used as a legendary instrument of control.

We think of the transformation taking place in the banking world. In the recent past, a branch manager was a sort of feudal lord. To be received into his office was considered a privilege of the account holder. Today, he is a kind of sales manager, a door-to-door salesman of luxury.

Among his functions is to sell financial products to the bank’s clients, or to acquire new clients. His work is not programmable through specific actions, to be planned according to a rational sequence. The director should persuade, convince, welcome, satisfy his clients and motivate his own team to do the same.

The variables of human interaction are so numerous that no engineer is able to predict their sequences. Had he been able to do so, an informatics expert would have already invented a software to substitute our beloved director. The Taylorist model therefore cannot be applied to establish the sequence of actions or the agenda of our executor of luxury.

And so? How to control this? Human ingenuity knows no limits. And thus they have invented the system of objectives-results. Every year, to our director, there arrives a list, with the results to be achieved. How are these objectives established? The top management seeks to see the market trends (of course, unpredictable), the dynamics of the past, the requirements of the shareholders. He manipulates uncertain invariables in order to furnish outcome-goals which should be certain. In short, the top management far short of proposing a scientific objective, delegates to the director the scope of achieving his own desires, which are subjective, relative, imagined. To render them more credible, he mobilizes the concept of urgency, emergency, necessity. With the objective-result, he transforms a subjective desire into a company pretext. Not to carry this out, is a threat, which can mean catastrophe.

And so, our executor, who despite calling himself manager, can be fired at any time, begins his labor in search of the result, and is always uncertain of his actions, he does not sleep at night, devises ever new solutions, but is not able to be relaxed and concentrated. In truth, he knows that his result depends on his performance only partially.

As in sport, to play well is the strategy which with most probability leads to victory. But one must also take luck into account (the so called finalizing of the game) and of the adversary, who can play better than us. In the company, the market trends, the changing needs of clients, the strategies of the competitors, cultural influences are determining factors.

And so, at the end of the year, the top management surveys the situation. On what basis? The gap that exists between the objectives and the results achieved from below. It is the same logic that exists in the bars of Rome: if your favorite team has won, then it has played well and will be carried in triumph, if the team has lost, it has played badly and deserves being covered in mud. It is from the result that performance is judged, never the other way round. Our branch director can also justify himself saying the this year the stock market took a giant dive, the giants of Wall Street have collapsed, and China stopped growing, the Middle East exploded, unemployment increased, and the housing market has stalled…

He is a “discardable” and his position is at risk. The Taylorist model triumphs, transforming the desire of the top management into a pretext (I must do it, because I say so), which measures the other as conforming or not conforming. The days of secure employment are truly vanished forever.

Section 3

School as a measure of discarding

The school is always prey to conflicts, symptoms of a sort of inexorable decline. Early school leaving in Europe is catastrophic. The Neet (Neither in Education, Employment or Training) is a phenomenon which affects millions of young people who have escaped from school and dispersed into the outskirts of the large European cities. The parents are those who bear the weights of this decline. The educational achievement of the children is the main source of conflict in the family. The school is organized, or better, should be organized according to a Ford model.

From the Ministry are arrive rules and programs, the teachers transumi standards and supervise the performance, and the students are the executors. Never before in the history of education, has a teacher been deprived of his function as a teacher. Can you imagine Socrates carrying our the educative programs of the government of Athens?

Right from elementary school, the Taylorist principle assumes the form of a lengthy training in adaptation. The mathematical measure of competence and of results clashes both with the material to be measured (the dynamics of learning) as with the subject to be measured (the physiological development of children and preadolescents is very variable, but the measure of judgment is identical). In some countries, such as Finland, marking and the relative promotions and demotions do not apply until the age of 16, preferring a qualitative type of feedback and evaluation. In our country, the paradox is that the professors are prompt to protest against the metric Invalsi tests, but not against the system of marking and failures.

In the school good conduct is also measured. When do you get full marks? When you allow the teacher to give his lesson. The purpose of the lesson in fact, is reduced to giving the lesson. And the learning? Evaluating of potential, vocations, attitudes? The formation of the personality and the planning of one’s life? The evaluation of obstacles, personal and social, to learning? Critical thinking, and god forbid, creative thinking?

None of this was proposed in the Tayloristic model, none of this is provided by the school. On the contrary, the students are judged according to their distance from the norm and the model to which they must adapt. The objective is to reduce the deviant behaviors which impede the “good lesson” and eliminate the students who do not conform to the end model proposed. And is in this way that the most fierce insecurity is trained into being. We see them in the last year of school, when nine children out of ten do not have the faintest idea of what to do about their future.

Section 4

Deviation in the model family

When a child reaches adolescence, the dynamic relationships that were dominant in childhood have to change. When this does not occur, all hell breaks loose. Family education is often characterized by concern. The children have a childhood organized in every aspect. Accompaniment to school, sport, free time, parties, birthdays, trips, pediatrician, dentist, tv, tablet, cell phones…everything is under strict observation.

The ideal stereotype is that the child is good because he conforms to the rules set by mom and dad. His adaptation is synonymous with good behavior. Then what happens is that he grows up. And then, everything collapses. He studies less, he chooses not to go to the swimming pool any more, he stops going to the church, he chats with friends, wants to go out at night, doesn’t tidy his room, is not concerned about his future, comes to lunch his underwear, passes the night in front of the computer, responds in monosyllables, dresses as he wishes, doesn’t take showers, or stays there too long, smokes, drinks, doesn’t find a girlfriend, or chooses the wrong one, doesn’t communicate, doesn’t get up in the morning, doesn’t come back at night, is listless, or responds aggressively.

And this is just a short list of “deviant” behavior. Certainly, he doesn’t steal, doesn’t engage in violence, doesn’t break the law, and is basically a good lad, seeking his way, with an uncertain future. But this counts for little.

Every deviant behavior is nothing other than straying from the accepted norm, to which he should be recalled at first with sermons, then with shouting, and then threats. When the pretext of recalling him to the rules of the game fail, it is replaced by anxiety and anger. The parents begin to live a growing sense of insecurity which invades all poles: themselves, their beloved ex “little boy”, their educative relationship.

The never know if they are doing the right thing, or if they are mistaken. The psychology books do not help. One says the opposite of the other! How does one resolve the situation? What attitudes must be changed, and what must be maintained? Every day a new doubt arises. How, and what can the ideal parent do?

Bribes (I’ll pay you to study, I’ll buy you a computer) or threats (I’m not going to give you another euro, I’ll smash your computer), are desperate ways of applying the Fordistic model: I’ll give you a rule, obey me because I’m your father.

Into consciousness, there comes in the combination of pretext and control, which gets shipwrecked in a pathetic failure. The young person, in turn, becomes an accomplice. In his counter dependence, freedom is to do the opposite of what the normative code of mom and dad would have occur. Their security is that of never doing what their parents say. And so, instead of expressing themselves, cultivating their talents and finding their path, our good little human, adheres to the favorite sport of the family: to argue every evening.

The parents have in their mind a model of the child they would wish for, and clearly perceive the discrepancy lived in the home. The child, also has in his mind, the model that the parents would like, and seeks to move further away from this. Both are victims of the logic of deviation from the model. They are sure that they have no alternative.