Building Self-Confidence

I was in 8th standard and had to deliver a speech in an English club meet. I was down, perturbed, and with almost zero confidence that I could deliver a speech in front of 300 people including College Principal, Head of English Department, and seniors. My English teacher came to me, and said, “ Rizwan, be confident.” I was not able to measure the depth of this term that time but the words were only sufficient to boost my inner strength up by a point. I came to stage with shivering hands and legs, and started delivering the speech. At the end, speech was below average with almost no appreciation. My English teacher who had a faith in me without any significant reason came to me and asked to meet in his room after the meet.

I was sitting in his room and waiting for him to come. After couple of minutes, he entered in the room, and I stood up in respect. He asked to sit, without any wrinkle on his forehead, he said, “You effort was appreciable, but you were not you while delivering the speech. The only issue was, you were not confident.” He started explaining the things that put some strong marks somewhere within me, and I am writing this post to explain the term confidence as I feel and believe.

The term Confidence starts from believing yourself and acting on that Belief. I have noticed people at workplace, neighborhood, and in daily life that always appear to be self-confident and on top of the world. Everything looks to go right for these people and they always seem calm, unruffled, and successful in everything they do. Whenever I have noticed these people, I always found that these self-confident people usually are successful in each and every area of life. Is this because they are smarter than others? Or is it because they are opulent with money? Maybe they are just lucky? I believe that none of these things are necessarily true. I believe, self confident people are aware of the impact of believing in themselves and relying on their abilities.

Self-confidence gradually and ultimately creates opportunities for success and with each new success next building block is put into the place. I think, success built upon success reinforces self-confidence with each new milestone. Self-confident people perceive themselves to be able to achieve new set of milestones, and this perception creates certainty in their lives. It hardly matters what kind of profession people have opted. A person can be confident while working as a chauffer, chef, waiter, auto-rickshaw driver, accountant, executives, and middle and high level managers. Holding a high level position is not a necessary parameter to be confident.

I want to share an incident in support of above-mentioned lines. I couldn’t get a job immediately after completing my professional education, so spending money was the major concern at that time. I used to have food in a roadside cheap dhaba as I was no option left with. There I met a guy who I found speaking very confidently with a smiley face, and as much happy one could. He was working as a waiter and was pretty able to entertain maximum number of tables at any given time. One day I asked, “what is your salary.” He said, “Rs 500, food and stay free.” I asked, “I found you happy and doing your job flawlessly. How do you manage this?” He said confidently, “ One has to work to survive, now it is one’s choice if the work is done with full potential and interest or crying every time. I do my job happily and with concentration.” I found his words full of confidence. Time was passing gradually, and seven long years passed. Two days back, I was passing by the same dhabha, and there was a sudden thought to see if the guy was still there or not. I found that the same guy was sitting at the counter now, and working as a full time cashier. I think, this was only his self-confidence that helped him to work hard and better, and made him a cashier from waiter.

Confidence is concerning knowing yourself, who are You, why are You here, and what you want to be. In a nutshell, confidence is all about self-trust. In general, we say that I have confidence in him/her because we trust the other person, and can depend on him/her. The same theory goes for you. If you trust yourself, your ideas and your abilities, then you can be self-confident. Build your own choices, stop taking things personally at work place, and seek help-advice to get developed.

On the other hand, a lot of people believe that being confident means being outspoken or egoistic. In fact, the reverse is right - the egocentric loudmouth is usually much less confident than they let on. So, it is important to understand the nuance of confident voice and loudmouth.

There is a famous quote by Larry Kersten-

Before you attempt to beat the odds, be sure you could survive the odds beating you.