Themes - CONFIDENCE

Across all the literature regarding performers and arts in education I have found the theme confidence  coming up all the time. 
Being a performer myself my own experience of gaining confidence developed the more and more I trained. I put this down to being pushed onto the stage since being young and having to put on a confident front, it is then that I sit down and realise that I am not a confident person at all, I just portray this front of being a confident person. Some performers I spoke to in my interviews felt the same as this, yet when I speak to a few people not having any performance experience they consider themselves very confident, likewise portrayed this act of behaviour in their interview. From my own experiences I can also see that confidence can become arrogance especially in the performing arts industry in the situation of something like an audition. 

I found it interesting how some performers shared an experience with me and said they have a confident front yet when the wall is broken down hiding behind it is in fact a shy person. Rather than saying performing arts gives you confidence I would say it gives you the opportunity to step out of your comfort zone and become a confident person, it is the individuals choice if they take this opportunity and use it to its full potential. 
Do non performers get the chance to step out of their comfort zone as much as performers do? Yes! 
A great example of this was an observation I made at work noted in my journal...
A chef was doing a cooking demonstration in the theatre in front of 100 guests. The individual is normally used to hiding in the kitchen yet today put on a head microphone, stepped out of their comfort zone and talked about what they were cooking and how whilst answering questions from guests. Not only did they have to be confident about how they were completing the task of the demo but also the confidence that the food would taste good etc. I thought this was such a good example of showing the way a personal skill like confidence is transferable across all careers. 

When searching literature on the life skill what came up was self confidence vs confidence. Self confidence is the act of stepping out of the comfort zone and confidence being the act of doing whatever the task is. 
A great read on this topic is a blog by Daniel Fincke that I found online - Daniels Blog