As your brain develops, you gradually learn what things in this world can/should be done, and what things cannot/should not be done. All your behaviors are influenced by the people around you, and often, what holds you back from participating in something is your lack of confidence.
Throughout our lives, we have all been more or less influenced by the “dogmas” of secular and social behavior. We may have been taught from childhood that speakers speak the truth, CEOs are visionaries, police maintain social order, and respecting others means listening quietly until they finish speaking, and if they say something wrong, you should point it out gently depending on the occasion—well, this is a bit complicated.
When you decide to participate in open source projects, confidence will play an important role. The open source community has inherent participatory nature. Participation is the currency of the open source world, and the amount you hold depends on your confidence. The higher your participation, the higher your skills, and the more you share your ideas and insights, the more you can improve a project through your commits. All of this requires you to have strong conviction—you have something worth sharing—and you’ll often think about what to do and what to share.
Here we have to mention this fact: each of us has something worth sharing. But you need to figure out what that thing worth sharing is, and where to share it to make this sharing the most positive and meaningful.
Think seriously about the following three points, which will strengthen your confidence and make it easier for you to make progress in the open source community.
No One Sees You from Your Perspective
You must always keep in mind: you are a completely independent individual, and others’ comments about you are as if they don’t exist; only then can you better gain confidence.
We are all used to thinking that people around us judge us based on our behavior. This habit is a byproduct of learning how to live more like a social group. And likely during our childhood, when parents set up reward mechanisms based on our behavior, this habit took root in our hearts. During adolescence, teachers evaluated our performance, gave us grades and scores, and compared us with our peers. Such motivational and reward mechanisms established a feedback loop in our brains that includes self-reflection. We need to predict whether we’ll get rewards and be prepared for what might happen.
Nowadays we all have this question: how do people around me see me? However, the truth is that most people won’t spend much time evaluating you correctly and objectively. All of us just focus on our own rewards, we have our passion for certain things, and many problems waiting to be solved. Some people are busy caring about how they affect people around them, they won’t spend time on you. They won’t notice at all whether you made a mistake, talked loudly, or were just like background music to them. All those doubts are just in your own mind, not in anyone else’s.
Our desire to be accepted is also part of life’s meaning, but this is subject to the whims of the people we meet. These people may lack a comprehensive understanding of us, such as what we’re called, where we’re from, the experiences that shaped our cognition, and so on. Whether we can be accepted by people is something beyond our control. However, we can change this through communication.
In the community-driven world of open source, it’s very important to remember this: people won’t think too much about your feelings. Because your colleagues and mentors are busy with other projects or community members.
Once you recognize this, embrace the world enthusiastically through active communication. Seek help, tell others your needs, point out your contributions, let people know you’re working hard with them, and that you’re an active member of this community. When people gravitate toward you—rather than the opposite—your open source credibility and confidence will be greatly enhanced.
Everyone Loves to Share What They Know
Any successful open source community is a community that includes teaching and learning. To thrive in open source, you not only need to use your existing knowledge but also constantly absorb and digest knowledge from courses provided by others. Fortunately, people generally love to share what they know.
Think about how you feel when someone asks for your opinion. How wonderful it is for your ego and self when you learn that others have recognized the opinions you expressed.
During childhood, our brains weren’t developed enough to hold the vast amount of information in the real world. We once thought we were the center of the world. Before age six, our cognition was constantly growing. During this period, our parents would respond when we cried, and adults around us would satisfy our demands. This would form evidence in our hearts that we are the most important in the world.
Our neural circuits are established during this period, and our personalities are formed during this time. As we learn to participate in social and urban life, we gradually realize that we are not the center of the world. However, that consciousness originally formed and deeply rooted in our hearts won’t disappear immediately. Correctly understanding our personal consciousness in the overall social atmosphere will help you connect and get along with others.
Accumulating learning experiences through collaboration can well hone yourself, develop your social relationships, and improve your skills. To enter the world of open source, continuous learning is indispensable.
So, what does this have to do with confidence? By showing that you value others’ knowledge and efforts, you improve not only their confidence but also your own. At that point, you’ll feel more flexible. Sometimes, you have to admit there are things you don’t understand.
Confident people might say “Yes, I don’t know,” but won’t be discouraged by it.
You Reap What You Sow
You must have heard “pretending to know when you don’t makes you a fool forever.” Let’s put it this way: confidence is like many other psychological phenomena. Actively remind yourself: I’m smart, interesting, engaging, talented, articulate, a great companion, unique, knowledgeable, a strong learner, a thoughtful self-reflector, or any other trait you want to possess, and over time you’ll feel like that’s who you are. And if this can work on you, it will work on others too.
We call this self-affirmation.
Furthermore, in the open source world, how you consider and treat others, others will treat you the same way in return. If you want to succeed in open source contributions, you need enough confidence to believe in your positions and the things you stand for, of course, you need to express it in an acceptable way while being inclusive of other opinions and viewpoints. The mark of a leader is shaping the image they want to see in life, regardless of whether others imitate it.
So, do you have other ways to boost confidence? Remember to tell us in the comments section.
(Header image: Gabriel Kamener, Sown Together original, modified by Jen Wike Huger.)
Author bio:
Laura Hilliger - Artist, educator, writer, technologist. She is a multimedia designer and developer, technical liaison, project manager, an open network hacker who likes collaborative environments. She advocates for change and currently works hard to grow Greenpeace. Alum @Mozilla, UC Berkeley, BAVC, Adobe. Twitter @epilepticrabbit.
Compiled from: https://opensource.com/article/17/1/3-ways-improve-your-confidenceAuthor: Laura Hilliger
Original: LCTT https://linux.cn/article-8592-1.htmlTranslator: GHLandy
Reposted from: Developer Relations »
