Posts Tagged ‘Confidence’

Lost: Our national confidence. How do we get it back?

BigCake doesn’t want to come over all religious, but Easter Sunday has got him pondering new beginnings.

Two pieces of media today highlighted our lack of confidence as a nation and got BigCake thinking about what can be done to fix this.

Peter Biggs in an interview with Chris Laidlaw on Radio New Zealand commented on “our lack of confidence of our place in the world”.

Biggs is Managing Director of advertising agency Clemenger BBDO in Melbourne, but still has strong connections with New Zealand, including chairing the NZ Book Council.

He says we used to be proud of our progress with policies like ACC – “We’ve now lost that.”

And in The Sunday Star Times columnist Finlay MacDonald hit a similar but harsher note saying “self-flagellation, not rugby, is the national pastime”.

BigCake remembers when nearly all New Zealanders were proud of their country. We had the best scenery, the healthiest people, were the best educated, had the highest quality of life, gave women the vote, had the best race relations, climbed Everest, cracked the atom…

Visitors to ‘God zone’ barely needed to touch the hallowed turf before being asked ‘what do you think of New Zealand?’

Not so much now.

We’re too self aware and world-wise for such a dumb-arse question.

But we’ve also lost the confidence to be able to ask it.

The ‘God zone’ myth, and the self confidence that came with it, has pretty much up and died along with the whole idea of progress towards a better New Zealand.

In its place we get endless debates and half-hearted answers.

How do we get that old confidence back?

Dunno. How you turn around a national psyche is a biggie.

Starting off very small, BigCake (after having a look back at the mainly negative slant of most posts) is making a commitment to being more positive. So you’ll see more posts highlighting Kiwi achievements that contribute New Zealand’s economic and social progress.

Perhaps we can all make a small contribution, you know for example by putting our energies into why we should do something rather than why we shouldn’t.