The MONTHLY Motivator - October 2012

The power of confidence

Whatever you set out to do, you’ll do it much more effectively when you have complete and total confidence in what you’re doing. Confidence opens doors for you. Once you get in those doors, confidence enables you to live up to the high expectations of others and the high expectations of yourself.

The great thing about confidence is—it truly speaks for itself. When you’re confident, you don’t need to announce it. People know. More importantly, YOU know. If fact, that’s really what confidence is, right? Knowing, without the slightest doubt, knowing that you can do it.

Think of someone who is truly confident. Picture that person in your mind. You can tell just by looking, you can tell just by listening to what he or she says. That person is confident. You know it. Everyone around knows it.

Now let’s be very clear about one thing—confidence is not arrogance. A lot of times, people confuse confidence with arrogance. But they are completely different animals. Confidence comes from strength—real, authentic, abiding, well-founded strength. Arrogance, on the other hand, comes from weakness and insecurity. Inside every arrogant character is frightened, insecure person. People try to use arrogance as a substitute for confidence. But it is a poor, pathetic substitute that has no real positive value. And arrogance doesn’t really fool anyone for very long. Arrogance loses its power almost immediately. Confidence, on the other hand, lasts. Arrogance runs out of steam right away. Confidence continues to grow stronger and stronger.

So don’t make the mistake of thinking you can adopt a superficial attitude of arrogance and that you’ll be able to get by with that. You won’t. Arrogance will fail you every time. It’s well worth the effort to develop the real thing, which is confidence.

Confidence is not loud. It doesn’t need to be. Confidence is quiet, and persistent, and effective. Confidence is not boastful. It doesn’t have to be. Instead of merely talking about getting it done, confidence actually gets it done. Confidence doesn’t change its course or objective with every shift in the wind. Instead, confidence enables you to adjust to whatever changes come along without having to compromise your values or intentions. With confidence, you can weather all the little distractions and disruptions and continue on the course you’ve set, continue on the course you’ve set for the long term.

So, where does confidence come from? How do you get confidence in every area of your life? Well, the thing is, you can’t really go out and GET confidence. It’s not something that can be transferred to you from someone else or from something outside of you. The only way to have the power of real confidence in your life and in your actions, is to build it yourself.

---

To continue reading this member-only content, please log in if you are a current subscriber/member, or if you’re not already a member, you can join today for an annual price of just $15 and get immediate access to the full text of this article and many others, plus additional member-only content such as downloadable audio programs and e-books. If you’re not ready to join right now, we invite you to look through our extensive archive of more than 6,000 shorter daily messages, which are fully available for everyone to read.

--Ralph Marston

More Monthly Motivators...