*Don’t Let Confidence Allude You, Intend It

Establishing an environment for success in anything requires one illusive ingredient: confidence.  

Being confident isn’t always as easy as it might seem when viewing that quality in someone who is already confident and successful.  Many of us struggle with it daily, but it doesn’t have to be a lifelong war; it can be just one of the many skirmishes we engage in during our lives.

Have you ever noticed how confident you feel when you repeat a task over and over with relative ease?  That you don’t have to fear the outcome because it is a given?  That you don’t experience any anxiety before performing your job because you’ve done it so many times you’re confident in your skills?

The old cliché “Practice makes perfect” fits this example to a T.  The more you do of anything, the better you get at it, if you are paying attention and choose to be proficient.  But, do you feel that way going in?  More than likely not.

Actors have another word this: rehearsal.  Plays slated to open in any theater go through weeks of rehearsal as the actors can become familiar with their lines, economical in their deliver and movements.  They have to memorize the script, interact with other actors and hit their marks (places on the stage where they need to be at a certain time).  

The rest of us act on the much larger stage of everyday life out in the world.  We don’t have a script for our daily lives unless we have a game plan for our work and play.  But, what we do have is jobs, businesses or homes that require we perform regularly in a certain way.  The more time we spend engaged in our “work” the better and more confident we become.

Salesmen and women are often given scripted sales presentations to use to become efficient in their delivery and understanding of certain products; the more they give the presentation the less they have to look at it because they “know” what’s coming next.

Confidence in one’s self is obtained in a myriad of ways during life, the trick is to convince yourself that no matter what job or obstacle you need to tackle, you will succeed because you have already succeeded in the past at other similar duties.

One trick I’ve learned is to “intend” to do something well.  Our minds are flexible and trainable, so if you tell it you intend to do something it will follow your wishes.  You can use this in a lot of things like, intending to arrive for an appointment on time no matter what the traffic looks like, intending to be happy today in spite of any problems that present themselves, or intending to follow through on a task that you secretly dread.

Most of life is a mind game.  And most of the time the other player in the game is your mind.  If you let it conjure up a lot of reasons why something will fail, it most certainly will.  If you intend to succeed you will.  Practicing confidence is as important as practicing any other task; intend to practice with confidence, and then intend to succeed with confidence.  If you stop practicing you will lose your edge and be insecure; no one wants that, so intend to be confident daily and you will become proficient at it as well.

Any way you look at it, it’s just one man’s opinion.

Keith……