The Top Ten entry from this section is Ford’s quotation on self-confidence:
The man who thinks he can and the one who thinks he can’t are both right. Which one are you?
Henry Ford
For me this was an easy choice to make. Self-confidence is the bedrock of success. Without self-confidence you will never be successful, no matter how well-qualified, intelligent or hard-working you are. Why am I so certain? To succeed, you need other people to believe in you, including your staff, colleagues and bosses. If you lack self-confidence, it will be taken as a sign of weakness and that you lack belief in your own abilities. In that situation, people will rightly ask themselves, ‘If s/he doesn’t believe in themselves, why should I?’
I suspect that we are all born with a hefty supply of self-confidence. Unfortunately, as we grow and develop, life, disappointments and the words and actions of others knock it out of us. We need to replenish it, guard it and celebrate it.
Start today and follow the advice in Quotation 14; do something every day that scares you. The more you fear doing something, the quicker you should run towards it. By embracing what really frightens/intimidates you, your self-confidence will grow by leaps and bounds and infect all areas of your life.
ONE LESSON TO TAKE AWAY
If you currently lack confidence in certain situations, fake it. Act with confidence, even if the butterflies in your stomach are playing the 1812 Overture and using real cannons. Keep acting for a while and pretty soon the act will give way to genuine confidence.