There’s so much hype surrounding self confidence. Amazon alone lists 117,087 titles in their Self-Esteem category, where all the self confidence books are held. What is
it about this subject that is so alluring, is there anything to it, and if so, are there any secrets to it that are maybe not so obvious that keep many from taking
stride in this amazing quality?
The dictionary has an amazing clue as to the secret of confidence hidden in it’s definition: Confidence; the state of feeling certain about the truth of something.
The keys here are the words ABOUT and TRUTH.
Confidence is a state of being certain. But being certain ABOUT what? And is it the truth, what you are certain about?
This is huge, and it holds the key to unlocking it.
First of all, self-confidence is one of the most amazing assets that a successful person can have. Brain Tracy has said that in his studies on successful people, he never came across a single successful entrepreneur who achieved extraordinary things and didn’t possess this quality. But with all the respect I have for the many teachers I have learned from over the years, there’s one thing of tantamount importance that I feel they have all forgotten when talking about self confidence.
The Activating Factor: Competence.
It reminds me of how when I began studying Vitamins and nutrition, I came across the studies of Dr. Weston A. Price, the father of western dentistry. He spent years studying cultures around the world, and analyzing what made them healthy or not. To sum up his journey, he discovered that people who ate certain nutrients in large quantities, (in this case, fat-soluble vitamins – A, D, E, and K,) were healthy and vital, with no signs of toth decay, while those with diets short on these nutrients were not, and had decaying teeth. One interesting case was that of two identical brothers – meaning they had the same DNA – one who left the family farm and ate processed food for his diet and had poor health and decaying teeth, and one who stayed on the farm and ate these fats and had great health and perfect teeth. It turned out, that it wasn’t the fat-soluble vitamins in and of themselves that was making them go to work at making the body amazingly healthy – there was an activating ingredient at work, and since he didn’t know what it was quite yet, he simply called it Activator X. Science later discovered that not only was he right, but that the name of Activator X was Vitamin K2 – A non fat-soluble vitamin.
Perhaps you can see where I’m going with this here. Having the actual vitamin that does the work in the body, isn’t enough. You need an activator to bring it to where it needs to be in the body. Even if you take all of the vitamins in the world, if you don’t have the right shuttle to make those vitamins go where they need to go, (Vitamin K is king at doing this, for everything from vitamins to minerals like Calcium,) they aren’t going to be utilized properly. As above so below. What is true in the material world is also true in wthe worlds of our psyche and the mind as well. So I consider this a Universal Principle. If fat soluble vitamins are the sword, Vitamin K is the hand by which it is directed at it’s target. The same is true of many, many other things in life, one of them being confidence.
Self confidence is an amazingly powerful sword. It can cut through anything. Doubt, fear, anxiety, criticism, you name it. But a sword with the potential to cut through
any material is useless without a hand capable of wielding it. This is what self-confidence without competence is like. It needs to be based on something substantive. If your confidence is based on just the fact that you feel it is so, it is meaningless. But when confidence is directed by a strong desire to be great, and is guided by the hands of determination toward that which is noble – hard work, consistency, persistence, dedication – this is when and where confidence becomes all of the things people talk about in these books and in these talks.
So many people today have read books on confidence, and we see so much false confidence in the world today. The most common manifestation of this is in the form
of being falsely confident based on things that are external to them. To get a picture of what this looks like, think of someone with a gun, or someone in a gang or group, who all of a sudden feel overly confident. This isn’t real confidence, because the thing that they have confidence about, (fighting in this example,) they have zero competence in. True confidence backed by competence in this area would be Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor. They have confidence not based on things external to them, but by their own competence. They have the determination, dedication, consistency, and persistence necessary to make them excellent at what they do, and THIS is what makes them confident.
When your confidence is based on competence, or at the least a desire to be, it is truly a magical thing to behold. It can bring you tremendous results in your life. From dating, to jobs, to pretty much anything.
Desire to be great – then be confident in your commitment to that greatness, and watch the world come to you.
Thoughts? I’d love to hear from you.
