What do you think is the one essential ingredient that all successful people have in common? The answer is more obvious than you’d think – confidence.
Let’s be honest for a moment. Have you ever achieved anything worthwhile in life when your confidence was in the toilet? Probably not. For example, without confidence, you never could have asked that special someone on a date, nor made that decisive career move. Confidence, much like a fine whiskey, causes our inhibitions and our self-doubt to fall away.
But confidence isn’t exactly something you can have served in a glass – you either have it or you don’t, right? Well, yes and no. While you can’t literally buy confidence, there are things you can do to develop and nurture it.
A helpful formula for improving your confidence is to remember the Four Cs, which stand for Courage, Commitment, Capability, and Confidence.
Let’s begin with courage. All renewed confidence begins with an act of courage. Whether it’s starting a business or having children, courage is about showing a willingness to go out of your comfort zone and throw yourself into the unknown.
Then we have commitment. Commitment is all about having the grit to see something through to the end. No matter what it is – a relationship, a job, a diet, or a work of art – you’re not going to achieve anything without having the commitment to see it through.
Next comes capability, which refers to the skills we possess already and our willingness to learn new ones by taking courses and reading books. We need to be prepared to work on specific skills if we’re to achieve our goals. If your goal is to become an expert chef, for instance, then you’re going to need to pick up a few cooking skills.
By focusing on the first three Cs, confidence will follow by default. Courage, commitment, and capability all improve your confidence because they’re the basis for any real achievement.
For a little confidence boost right now, grab a pen and paper and write a list of your victories – these include every skill you’re good at, every achievement you’re proud of, and every quality you admire in yourself. We tend to move on from our victories pretty quickly and dwell longer on our failures. So, this last exercise helps to remind us that we’ve actually achieved way more than we give ourselves credit for.
***extracted from Millionaire Success Habits by Dean Graziosi***
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