Many of our professional failures are a result of the same thing — failing to prepare for the realities we are going to face. In life, the biggest thing we often find ourselves unprepared for is failure.
The failures themselves aren’t the problem. The problem is that with failure comes emotions like regret, frustration, anger, desperation, mistrust and shame, to name a few. These emotions cause us to suffer what I call “personal power outages” that damage one of our most important asset, our confidence. It’s the one thing that influences everything, so we’d better protect it.
Confidence, like a generator, is a power source, but we must create it ourselves internally. In this regard, confidence isn’t really a trait, it’s a muscle, and if we train and protect our confidence, it will grow.
Everyone knows that competence is essential to success, professional achievement and personal satisfaction. But without confidence, competence will only take us so far. And unfortunately, too many perfectly capable leaders lack confidence.
Successful people often exude confidence—it’s obvious that they believe in themselves and what they’re doing. It isn’t their success that makes them confident, however. The confidence was there first. Nobody is born with limitless self-confidence. If someone seems to have incredible self-confidence, it’s because he or she has worked on building it for years. Self-confidence is something that you learn to build up because the challenging world of business, and life in general, can deflate it.
Listen to today’s episode to learning the tips to boost your self-confidence.
