THE POWER OF CONFIDENCE

Sure, there is love, security and a lot more in life.  However, after 84 years, I've found that something called confidence is key to a successful life of comfort and happiness.  The beauty of this state of mind is that you can help anyone around you--not only your family and friends, but more so, your community, local and throughout the world--to gain confidence by suggesting a pathway towards this objective.

At one point, the title of this posting today was THE GIFT OF CONFIDENCE.  This is because one grows up with no sense of what confidence is all about.  I found that someone in your family, teachers, coaches and even organizations provide you this gift that, if you learn it right, can lead to a better life.  Actually all of them, in my case, were involved.

But then, I thought about that word, confidence, and found it is a lot more meaningful to underscore the significance of power.

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  Confidence is contagious.  
• You can more effectively influence people and institutions if you act with confidence.
• This will lead to greater success.
• And success breeds success.
• That is the power of confidence.

But how do you gain confidence?  There are infinite ways.  As this is my blog, I'll be one example.

First of all, many thanks to everyone who helped me gain confidence.  As I reflect on my past, when growing up, I can state with certainty that I mostly meandered through it all without much confidence.  But my family, teachers and schools helped me build sufficient confidence to take me to what I am today.

A key factor to comprehend is that you really can't just determine that you have confidence.  That will inevitably lead to overconfidence.  Confidence is something that builds over time, and requires a series of successes, from small ones to what can lead to monumental victories.

So on to how I gained confidence. 

• I grew up in Kakaako, a below-average neighborhood of Honolulu in my days.  Today, it is on the periphery of the Ward Complex, gleaming with tall towers.

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  My family never really lacked for food and life growing up was mostly okay, although we were poor and lacked social connections.
• The one special benefit I had was that my mother was the oldest of six siblings.
• My older brother was born ten years before me.
• When I came, I was the only baby in the group.
• The youngest brothers and sisters of my mother were about same age as my brother.
• The next group of cousins, including my younger brother, came four years later.
• Thus, I was the one showered with love for almost four years.
• There is something to this advantage that builds confidence.

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  A second was that my brother Stan was rather conscientious and driven.  He played the clarinet and ukulele, exercised every morning, ate a lot of fruits and by the time I was approaching teenage-hood, he had graduated from the University of Hawaii in civil engineering and was in graduate school at the University of Michigan.  He later headed for a PhD at UCLA.  He asked me to join him in Ann Arbor, but subsequently, after his master's degree, moved to the Navy Civil Engineering Laboratory in Port Hueneme, California.

• 
  In the entirety of my youth, well into when I first started working in the sugar industry after graduating from college, Hawaii was a white paternal society, epitomized by what was still happening in sugar plantations.
• The manager was king, and there were camps for different ethnicities.
• I recall one reception at the managers home, where I looked around and a dozen were caucasian, with a Filipino and me, Japanese.
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  I actually did well in this setting, for I had just graduated from Stanford, and it was no different there.  I knew how to survive in that setting, and did well.
• Manager of the Hutchinson Sugar Company was Bill Baldwin (photo above), who introduced me to Pearl, was especially helpful, for he also paved my way towards a PhD, and later shared an office with me in the U.S. Senate.
• Can't  say enough about Pearl, my wife (with Pepper, in our Kauai backyard), who maybe was most responsible for my success.
• 
  About Stanford University, this was a miracle I can't fully understand.
• I can't call it luck that I was accepted into that institution, but there was nothing in my K-10th grade education that showed I had any potential for something greater than maybe going to the University of Hawaii and graduating with a bachelor's degree.
• My grades were good, but not outstanding, and I tended to score high in the math portion of comprehensive exams, and abominably low in verbal.
• So low that I was in the bottom 10% during the 8th grade comprehensive (nationwide) test.
• So low that I scored under 300 in the practice Scholastic Aptitude Test in my junior year of high school.
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  But in this sophomore/junior stage of high school, several things happened to change my life.
• My brother went to the University of Michigan's graduate school in civil engineering and suggested I join him there.  I could live with him.  However, I needed to improve my application to add a few activities and show some potential.
• I had a friend who said he would be going to college on the mainland, a huge departure from the University of Hawaii in those days.

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  He, I think, encouraged me to apply to the best schools, so learning that my brother had moved to California, I arbitrarily picked the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University.  I had no idea that this was delusional and ridiculous.  If you make a mistake on your way to success, you need a lot of luck and high ideals to get anywhere great.
• Bishop Estate kicked us out of Kakaako, and my family moved to Kalihi, forcing me to catch a bus to McKinley High School.  This broke my ties to my boyhood gang, and for the first time I had a chance to plan my own life.  

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  I also learned that opportunity can come from disaster.  There is something about calamity that forces you to respond.  Similarly, you will fail a lot on your way up.  Learn from them.
• 
  I broke my wrist playing basketball in the spring of my junior year.  In Honolulu in those days, people like me tended to work in the pineapple cannery during the summer.  This I could not do, and my sudden life readjustment led to my decision to improve my verbal score on the upcoming real SAT.  I essentially memorized that red and blue book about how to pass the SAT.  Spent my whole summer doing it, so that when I took the real SAT early in my senior year, my verbal score jumped from 280 or so to 650, placing me now in the 90th percentile.  My math score was in the  high 700s.

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  My biggest decision in my junior year was to run for vice president of the senior class.
• No one knew me, and I had never run for any office before, even in any classroom.  
• I can't believe I did this, but two things led to my victory

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  I was running against three females.  This had to be an advantage for me.  I might add that the favorite was a very popular Linda Tom, who went on to become a Narcissus Queen.
• I was photographed wearing a cast and arm sling during my Daily Pinion announcement and introduction, and I think some felt sorry for me.

• 
  The vice president of the senior class is automatically chairman of a wide variety of activities, like commencement, etc.  I was suddenly in charge of a half dozen things.  From nothing to most responsible person in the class for my college application.
• My writing ability was embarrassing, and I knew nothing about poetry.
• But if you keep adjusting something you write and take a chance on writing a poem, sometimes good things happen.
• I entered an essay and a poem to two different national anthologies for essays and poems.  I was selected for both, and they got published.
• 
  I asked my English/Social Studies, Math and Biology teachers to write letters of support for me.
• My E/SS instructor was Mildred Kosaki, who herself quit teaching soon after I left McKinley, and eventually became a board member of Hawaiian Electric Company.  Her husband, Richard, was a new political science professor (who much later became chancellor of the campus), I selected to become our commencement speaker.  First time a true unknown ever was given this role.
• This is a photograph half a century later.
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  My science instructor, Sueko Hirokawa, regularly was named teacher of the year.  In my senior year I won a science fair on campus and was given the Bausch and Lomb Award for Best Science Student.
• My math instructor, Morris Pang, went on to become a high level administrator in the central education office.  I just happened to make a perfect score on one of the math comprehensives, a first for the school.
• If not for these teachers, and my older brother Stan, I would not have even applied to Stanford.

• 
  Some athletic activity was also necessary, so in my late sophomore year I tried out for the tennis team.  Played something like 750 out of 760 days in high school, and became third singles.  We actually beat more high schools than not.  Had the best record on the team, and I won a letter, two, actually.

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  Oh, I was accepted to both CalTech and Stanford, but chose the latter because they offered a full ride:  paid for the tuition, room and board, plus gave me a 10-hour/week (M-F from 7-9PM to watch the rare book room of the library, into which no one comes, so I could study) job.

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  Getting into a school like Stanford, gives you confidence.
• Later, after graduating, I realized that maybe I was pretty capable, so that was the confidence base I used for the rest of my life, leading to:
• Gaining a PhD in biochemical engineering.
• Becoming a Professor of Engineering with tenure at the University of Hawaii.

• 
  Director of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute.
• Worked:
• NASA's Ames Research Center on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on laser fusion, twice.

• 
  U.S. Senate for Senator Spark Matsunaga, and drafted original bills which became law in Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion and Hydrogen, plus was the lead Senate staffer in the passage of the Wind Energy and Deep Seabed Mining legislation.

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  Combined much of the above into a plan for the Blue Revolution, and in December of 2022 gave a TEDx talk on the Blue Revolution.  Watch also this Podcast from the Seasteading Institute.
• Turns out that you don't brag about confidence.  This comes when people respect you.

From Better Up:  Build self-confidence--These tips get beneath the surface.

• What is self-confidence, anyway?
• What are the benefits of developing self-confidence?
• 3 downsides of excessive self-confidence
• Are self-confidence and self-esteem the same?
• How to build confidence
• What are some tips to be more confident?
• Go forth with confidence

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