So retirement confidence. There was an article in The Observer, newspaper, yesterday entitled, The Trick of Confidence, about how to build confidence, obviously, by Jamie Waters. I approached it with some interest it being a topic that often figured in my working days as an educational psychologist. The author of the article was very enthusiastic about the chap he was interviewing (Dr. Nate Zinsser) really bigging him up. Inevitably he’d (Nate) written a book entitled The Confident Mind: A Battle-Tested Guide to Unshakable Performance, which of course was the reason, as always, he had agreed to be interviewed. A hell of a title I think you’ll agree.
But I have to say the actual meat of the article was pretty insubstantial. What it boiled down to was what had been written about the techniques of developing confidence 10 or even 20 years ago. Which boils down to – if you think you can, you can.
Once again CBT figures large (being aware of what you say to yourself when you fail –it’s an opportunity to learn from your mistakes) and when you succeed (my effort led to the success). Duh I was telling teachers about this thinking years ago. And more predictably, the power of positive thinking. Zinsser does rather confusingly define confidence as doing something without thinking about it but probably I’m too dim to understand the whole of his message.
There was even reference to the concept that confidence was ‘situation’ or ‘skill’ specific. In other words that people’s confidence varies and isn’t simply an across the board thing, just that there are areas of one’s life where one lacks confidence. I’ve been telling myself this very same thing for years where it relates to my jazz keyboard playing. Along the lines of normally you are a skilled and confident person and it’s only when it comes to performing jazz in a public arena that you lose confidence to the point of becoming a quite needy person. But only in this area.
And there was this guy making a big name for himself saying the same things to military, sports, business personnel. But as I said in a previous retirement blog if and when I started my jazz classes again I would definitely make note of the kind of self-talk I was using. I would make sure that what I said to myself in the jazz setting was helpful to myself in terms of building my confidence.
So it was in this manner that I approached my new jazz class last Saturday morning. What a complete and utter nonsense that turned out to be. It turned out that the last thing I needed was to increase my confidence. In fact there might even be a case to be made that I was unnecessarily over-loaded with the damn stuff.
This may sound rather puzzling. Let me explain. It turned out that given the proper jazz orchestra already had a keyboard player I had been placed in the numpties group. And even this description over-eggs what happened to me.
The term group actually turned out to mean me (at 73) and one other, (a child of about 10). A bit later another child who was even younger showed up. The rest is almost too painful to write about. It was embarrassing, annoying and totally soul-destroying.
At one point the junior unit and I stood side by side on the same keyboard and I found myself encouraging him. Is this what I’m here for I asked myself? He wasn’t very good, rephrase that, any good. And when we’d arrived and been asked by the ‘tutor’ what we played bugger me with a fish fork if he didn’t say, I can play the piano. Oh jolly good, I leave the last class because there are too many keyboard players, I come here, there are two of us (and his dad) and we’re both keyboard players. I tell you, you couldn’t write it.
Incidentally, I’m wearing a mask and he wasn’t but for a change the mask was a great asset because junior couldn’t see the sneer of even the look of hate on my face and neither could his father or the tutor. Who says every cloud doesn’t have a silver lining. But honestly it was a very thin coating of silver.
Anyway he’s plonking away on the C note and I’m required to play a sequence of mind numbing simplicity over and over. Yes, I got two notes to his one but again this is precious little comfort. I do not need confidence to play this, I need a lobotomy.
The ‘class’ is supposed to last 40 minutes but after about 30 minutes the ‘tutor’ says well I think that’s enough. Too fucking right I think, more than enough. Much, much more. Thank God, it’s over. Only problem is this experience has scarred me for life and probably longer. I don’t think I will ever recover.
Some days you just can’t get ahead. Which leads to the realisation that attempting to be pro-active and find an alternative way of playing jazz has failed miserably, so what the heck do I do now? There are other jazz orchestras in this same set-up although none as geographically convenient and an even bigger possible problem, not only do I not know whether they require a keyboard I really don’t think I can face finding out. Ahh, you might say that’s because you’re lacking confidence but no, no.
Retirement confidence summary
Well you may be a bit confused about what this has to do with building confidence but let me just say after last Saturday morning’s experience you can’t be more confused than I am about life generally and my confidence is even lower.