Key Takeaways:
- Confident people don't compare themselves with others. If you do so, that's not confidence but arrogance
- Confidence can be trained. Repeat actions again and again and you will become confident while doing so
- Don't let defeats get you down. No master has fallen from the sky - keep going, tomorrow will be better
Introduction:
Confidence is probably one of the best-known personality traits. But why does it seem like other people have it and we don’t? And why do many people, mix confidence and arrogance and thereby undermine the positive concept of confidence? These questions make it important to take a closer look at the definition of confidence.
"The quality of being certain of your abilities or of having trust in people, plans, or the future" - Cambridge Dictionary
The definition presented here describes confidence as the strength to trust in oneself and one's abilities. Confident people know that they cannot achieve everything and that they are not perfect. And they are always aware of their strengths and weaknesses and know how to use them at the right moment. Arrogance, on the other hand, can only come about through comparison with other people, as the resulting upgrading of oneself gives short-term satisfaction, but will lead to little success in the long term.
How to Develop Confidence:
We expect to be self confident, but we cant be, unless the task is not new to us. […] The way to improve self confidence is repetition, repetition, repetition! - Dr. Ivan Jose
One of the big misconceptions about personality traits, in general, is that we quickly start to believe that they are inherent and there is nothing we can do to change that. This belief is of course comfortable because it allows us to keep the status quo. But it is wrong. The quote above describes the fact very well. We cannot be confident in tasks we have never done before. Imagine giving a speech in front of 3,000 people and never having given one before. Of course, you're not going to be able to go up on stage like Steve Jobs and give one of the most impressive speeches in the world. Start small! Practice the speech in front of the mirror. Then in front of your family and slowly expand the audience until you feel confident speaking in front of such a large crowd. It sounds easy at this point, but what stops most people are defeats. We all know it, when the speech doesn't go well the fifth time, we like to think we're just not cut out for it and give up. I believe fundamentally that the most confident people are the ones who have suffered the most defeats. Because only in this way they could continue and become secure in areas that no one else had managed before.
The positive influence of confidence on the life of individuals has also been demonstrated by scientific research. Confidence makes it easier for people to communicate a common vision to their professional colleagues, and empower subordinates as well as increase their work performance.
Take action:
Knowing that confidence can be learned, we can now take action to work on ourselves. Here are my ideas:
- Prepare yourself. If you are giving presentations or expecting an awkward conversation, go through it beforehand.
- Try to improve the little things every day. This will soon make them your habit.
- Believe in yourself. If you don't do it, no one else will.
