Who Controls Your Self-Confidence?

Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy. ~Norman Vincent Peale

Self-confidence is when you are free of self doubt and believe in yourself and your abilities. It is one of the main components needed in order to chase and achieve your dreams. The Hidden Secret in Think and Grow Rich talks about persistence in it’s key formula to achieving ultimate success, and I would add that self-confidence is the key to achieving this persistence.

What Self-Confidence Is and Isn’t

Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick ~Theodore Roosevelt

Self-confidence is not about posturing or body language. It isn’t about what you tell others you are capable of, and it isn’t about your track record of what you have accomplished. While these things can convey to others that you are a confident person, they aren’t directly correlated. This is because of something I like to call false-confidence.

False-confidence is merely a projection of confidence and security in order to create an impression. It is often easy to see right through this facade, and to recognize that it isn’t very genuine. People that exhibit false confidence will usually break at the first sign of failure, because they do not have the real power of confidence at the core to back them up.

Self-confidence lives in the now, and has everything to do with your philosophy. Really confident people do not need to speak about or flaunt how confident they are. Real confidence is unshakable and is not determined by any outside person, situation or event. You don’t need someone to boost your confidence, or to accomplish something to feel good about yourself. What you need is a philosophy that you can live by, and be proud of yourself for. When you are a good person, when you set out to achieve your dreams, when your morals raise above laws and politics, you will be self-confident.

Self-Confidence and Success

You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them. ~Michael Jordan

Michael Jordan, one of the greatest athletes of all time, achieved the astounding level of success because he was confident in himself. Michael holds the basketballs leagues record for most missed shots. This shows that he didn’t let constant failure stop him from being persistent and pushing through to success and victory.

Thomas Edison, was another huge success because he was self-confident enough to endure ten thousand failures. That’s right, it took Edison that many tries before he successfully invented the light bulb. He just thought of the other 9,999 attempts as new discoveries as to how the light bulb doesn’t work. Without self-confidence, we might still not have electric lighting!

Get The Self-Confidence Your Deserve

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy. ~Dale Carnegie

You aren’t going to get confident by getting beat up, losing, sulking, and feeling sorry for yourself. Becoming self-confident is the proactive process of developing your philosophy and making the changes in your thinking that will get you results. Your philosophy shouldn’t be something you instantly create right this moment after reading this article (unless you have been thinking about it for months). Take a few months to discover for yourself what your life philosophy will be.

Things to consider when creating a philosophy that will lead to self-confidence.

What goals you want to accomplish
What fears you need to conquer
What is really important to you
What philosophy would serve you well for the rest of your life

Remember, it is you that controls your self-confidence. Now that you know that, you should be excited at the possibilities that are open to you. You can choose to be self-confident, it only takes one decision.

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http://www.simplephilosophy.com Steve

Alex, I agree with you that confidence is something you either have or you don’t. A lot of people confuse arrogance or boasting with confidence. You can tell a truly confident person by the way they carry themselves and their overall body language.

You are also correct that to achieve true confidence in any area of your life, you must have a well defined purpose that excites you to the point of extreme stubborness. Not matter what the obstacles they will achieve their goals because they are confident they will eventually.

Really enjoy your blog…I check it daily. Steve
http://mondaymorningpower.blogspot.com Mel

I believe that by just being a part of “Priscilla’ Palmer’s Personal Development list obligates each of us to also post this list. You like me (Killeris at “Attitude, the Ultimate Power”) are on this list. If you have already posted it, THANK YOU. If you have not posted it, I am officially putting out a challenge that you add additional sites that fit the theme and post it. This list can be found at: http://mondaymorningpower.blogspot.com/2007/09/personal-development-list-challenge.html.
http://www.inspirationtoachieve.com Matthew Roberts

Great post. Like Steve said in an earlier comment, it’s nice to see people separating self-confidence with outgoing arrogance.

Self-confidence is the belief you have of yourself… not how talkative or outgoing you are.

Matthew
http://www.InspirationToAchieve.com
http://www.howtowakeupearly.com How To Wake Up Early

Some time ago I’ve read Walter Anderson’s book The Confidence Course. Here is his 7 steps to self-confidence, I think it will be interesting for the readers of your blog:

1. Know who is responsible. Accept personal responsibility for your behavior. Say “I’m responsible”. Confidence is an attitude, and we acquire our attitudes.
2. Believe in something big. Your life is worth a noble motive.
3. Practice tolerance. You will like yourself a lot more, and so will others.
4. Be brave. Courage is acting with fear, not without it. If the challenge is important to you, you’re supposed to be nervous. Be in control, make a plan, and focus on solution.
5. Love someone.
6. Be ambitious. No single effort will solve all of your problems, achieve all of your dreams, or even be enough. To want to be more than we are is real and normal and healthy.
7. Smile. Because no one can do it for you.

//Sleeping Dude
http://www.best-of-time-management.com/values.htm Pamela

Nice post about self confidence.
We’ve heard a lot of things about self confidence, but we can always learn different things from different points of view.
http://www.alexshalman.com Alex Shalman

I agree. If you study ancient literature, history, etc. you’ll find that many ideas or not new, rather rephrased from different view points.
http://www.alexshalman.com Alex Shalman

Sleeping dude,

Thank you for contributing that list!
http://www.psych101online.com Helen

True. Sometimes people are confused about self confidence and it often leads to false-confidense. Thanks for sharing this great post.
http://www.alexshalman.com Alex Shalman

You’re more than welcome Helen. I knew you would like it (is that confidence or false confidence? hehe)
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[...] Self-confidence lives in the now, and has everything to do with your philosophy. Really confident people do not need to speak about or flaunt how confident they are. Real confidence is unshakable and is not determined by any outside person, situation or event. You don’t need someone to boost your confidence, or to accomplish something to feel good about yourself. What you need is a philosophy that you can live by, and be proud of yourself for. When you are a good person, when you set out to achieve your dreams, when your morals raise above laws and politics, you will be self-confident. – Alex Shalman [...]
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http://getconfidence.org Johan Skålberg

Nice post Alex,

Lot of thoughtful material here. Nice touch with the quotes as well. Since a teach Kali Sikaran I must confess that the favourite is Roosevelt.

Thanks
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[...] focus here is to build up your confidence. Let’s say you are nervous about playing piano in front of a larger audience than you [...]
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