How To Build The Self-Confidence You Need To Win At Life

Do you ever feel shitty about yourself? It happens all the time to most of us.

It seems like everyone is building billion-dollar businesses, becoming YouTube stars, or making it big on Instagram.

Deep down, most of us also know that it’s 99% bullshit. But at the same time, we see all these people living awesome lives, and we don’t care if it’s real or not.

Whether you want money, fame, travel, or none of that stuff, it doesn’t matter because it always comes down to this: How confident are you?

• Are you confident enough to say “fuck it,” and pursue you dream?
• Are you confident enough to say “fuck all this bullshit, I don’t need it,” and stay grounded?

You see? Self-confidence is important if you want to win at life — no matter what you’re after, a lack of confidence will always hold you back.

Research even shows that lack of self-confidence is associated with:

• Depression
• loneliness and feeling left out
• Lower academic achievement
• Lower life satisfaction

I’ve researched self-confidence for years, and the most practical theory that I’ve found is something called ‘confidence by competence.’

In 1952, Bernice Milburn Moore published an article called Self-Confidence For Competence in the journal of Educational Leadership. In the article, she discusses self-confidence for teachers, but I’ve found it useful in all settings of life.

If you look up the definition of self-confidence, you always get more or less the same description. Moore describes it as “a trust in self, a faith in one’s ability to be able to meet situations as they may arise.”

But more importantly, she says:

“Self-confidence without competence is of as little use as is competence without self-confidence.”

It means this: Going to business school is competence. But using your business competence to lead a company is self-confidence plus competence. They are only useful when combined.

That analogy goes both ways. Just confidence in yourself, without the competence, is also useless — talking the talk is not a sustainable strategy.

You need the talk and bravado, but you also need to develop the skills to back up your talk.

Building Your Self-Confidence

So you become more self-confident if you become better at what you do. That’s the system, and it’s backed by research.

How can you use this information? The following process is easy—but completing the steps takes hard work.

It goes like this:

1. Improve your competencies
2. Put them into practice
3. See results
4. Grow more confident
5. Repeat

That’s the process.

“That’s great and all, but what if I don’t see results? Plus, I don’t have the time to practice.”

If you want to make excuses, that’s fine. It’s your life. But this method of building self-confidence is based on real, tangible steps, and not intangible stuff like affirmations. Confidence doesn’t appear magically by itself.

You can tell yourself every day that you’re confident, lucky to be alive, or whatever — but if you lack the skills to get shit done, you’ll never truly believe in yourself.

And that’s my biggest issue with a lot of self-help theory and writers. Yes, affirmations, positive thinking, goal setting, is all great, but it’s NOTHING without execution.

How can you expect to build confidence if you never do anything? It’s impossible.

“Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.” — Thomas Carlyle

“What competencies should I improve?”

That depends on what you’re after. But there are also some skills that I believe every person can benefit from.

• Emotional intelligence — Research shows that humans are inherently social. Without good relationships, we die. And if you want good relationships, you need emotional intelligence: Understanding other people’s emotions and how to respond to them. This is something you can learn.
• Self-awareness — You can practice self-awareness by continuous self-reflection. Write down your thoughts; try to understand why you do what you do, what you can do better, and what you’re doing well. Know yourself.
• Problem-solving — Our current school system dates from the industrial revolution. We’re trained to become cogs in a wheel. We’re not trained to solve problems in complex situations — instead, we do what we are told. But the world has changed and in the current state, the person that is better at problem-solving will win.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that your life will be better as long as you wish for it.

When you put in work and see the results — like a stronger body, more energy, more money, or whatever you’re after — you start believing in your ability to get shit done.

Now go out there, do things, get better at them, see results, repeat that process and grow more confident.

P.S. If you liked this post then you’ll like my books as well. You can get them on Amazon.

The Power of Focus
“Anything is possible to that person who can focus their mind on one thing exclusively until that focus is no longer required.”

Very few people are able to truly focus their minds. Most of us get side-tracked, distracted, lose interest, or simply try to do too much.

It seems that when we try to focus ourselves to a single task, other things present themselves and we find ourselves unable to decide how to proceed. Do we continue doing what we were working on, or do we switch gears and go off in a new (possibly better) direction?

Napoleon Hill writes extensively about the power of determined focus of mind in his classic, “Think and Grow Rich”. Sticking to a decision as if your life depends upon it is one of the key points that Mr. Hill was determined to get across to the reader of that magical self-help masterpiece.

There are many example of exactly WHY being focused leads to success.

One example – have you ever tried to cut a piece of steak with a butter knife? Doesn’t work nearly as well as using a sharp (physically focused) knife, does it?

What happens when you focus a beam of light into a point with a lens? That light gets hot enough to burn paper, right? Further
focus of light into a single wavelength yields a laser beam that can even cut through metal.

While most people have difficulty juggling 5 balls at once due to the diffusion of focus required for the task, almost everyone can easily juggle a single ball – because their mind is focussed!

Henry Ford proved to the world that a group of people are far more productive when each person focuses upon a single aspect of the overall process. Now, assembly lines are the standard way to manufacture anything.

Top business people find that they are able to get much more work done when they clear off their desks and work on one task at a time. They pull out a folder, do the work required, and file it away until it’s needed again.

Those who list the things they must do each day on a ToDo list find that they are able to get much more done in a day simply because they are focused on one thing at a time until each item on the list has been checked off.

Those who meditate find that by focusing their minds to a single point provides them with a clarity of mind that yields some interesting results. Not only do they attain greater inner peace, but they are able to deal with Life’s many challenges with less effort and happier results.

And those who work with mind power development courses such as the Silva Method or the Keys To Power system find that as they acheive greater degrees of mental focus, they are able to influence the world around them in ways that seem almost magical.

Mental focus is not something that you either have or you don’t, but is something that can be developed through exercise, practice, and determination. However well or poorly you are presently able to focus your mind, you can develop your mental
powers to the point where you can focus on a single thing without any distractions whatsoever.

Anyone can set aside 5 minutes at a time to develop their power of focus. One simple exercise you can do during this time is to count backwards, starting at 100 and counting down to 1. Don’t rush through this, take your time. The idea is to focus your mind completely on each number before moving on to the next one.

Another simple exercise is to memorize things. Pull out your contact list – those people whose names and phone numbers you need on a regular basis. Or anything else you find yourself looking up from time to time. This exercise has the added
benefit of practical application.

However you decide to develop your power of focus, you’ll find that you’re able to get much more out of life because of it.

P.S. If you liked this post then you’ll like my books as well. You can get them on Amazon.

Charismatic leadership has a convincing power to inspire other people. It is a leader with its own unique charm to persuade his or her group. To be a charismatic leader, one should know how to identify the situation and step up for their team.

After viewing some of what charismatic leadership means, let’s try to look a few vital tricks you need to know to achieve their charm.

First, develop a genuine interest in your subjects.

To succeed as a charismatic leader, you need to develop a genuine interest in your followers. You have to find time to relate with them at their level. Take your time to listen to their suggestions which you can easily implement to make things work. There is every need for you to show empathy to the plights of your followers. This can help you a lot in carrying them along.

Second, be sensitive to your domain.

You have to be very sensitive to your domain in order to succeed as a charismatic leader. Your immediate environment should be well known to you. From time to time, you have to make sure you know exactly the details of what is going on in the domain or environment. This helps you to know exactly the areas to focus on when leading your people.

Third, have a vision for the people.

Charismatic leadership ought to have a vision for the people he is leading. It will be very difficult to the leader and for the people if no one knows where your team is heading. You have to set attainable goals and share your thoughts with your people. This gives both parties a sense of direction to look for.

Fourth, be ahead of your followers in everything

To succeed in your groups endeavor, you have to take the lead for them. You have to be ahead of your followers in everything. The leader should have the knowledge and interest to discover better ways of leading the team. Your followers should see you as their ultimate person whom they can rely on every time.

Fifth, take responsibility all the time.

As a charismatic leader, you have to take responsibility all the time in any given situation. You cannot run away from your responsibilities especially when the tides are working against you. A true leader should stick to the right principles and continue to carry out the duty for everyone.

Lastly, charismatic leader should be open to change. This is what keeps us moving forward, innovative and better every time.

To sum it all, it is believed that having these traits of charismatic leaders can work in an organization to boost the morale of the people and brings the company to the top for its overall performance. It also moulds the society the way they envision themselves to be.

With these attributes of a charismatic leader and if you are able to practice all these tricks for yourself, you could be one of those charismatic leaders that can lead your team to success.

P.S. If you liked this post then you’ll like my books as well. You can get them on Amazon.