In order to obtain ultimate confidence, first and foremost you need to know you. After you discover what it is that you love to do, after some considerable soul searching, then you can work toward greater confidence, happiness, and contentment. If you are not doing what you love or have great passion for what you do, you need to change. Because only by doing what you love will you have the desire needed to master your given skill so that you can obtain the confidence you seek.
But how do you master a skill?
Well, assuming you've discovered your passion, the obvious answer is work-a concerted, focused, consistent effort put forth over a period of years with little to no vacations. Sounds unrealistic? Sorry. Maybe after some time you can vacation, sit back and relax for lengthy periods of time, but to obtain success you need to put in your hours. And if you desire vacation over work--some even love their work so much they desire not to vacation--then you need to go back to the drawing board and find your true passion. Even genius comes from great effort; genius which is 99% perspiration, 10% inspiration.
Let's look at a couple of examples to see what we're in for.
Da Vinci. Here's a man who had passion, focus, and discipline. He is a well-known genius: painter, engineer, inventor, etc. But how did he become such a genius? What special character enabled him to stand above the rest?
He was an astute observer. He would spend hours and hours just observing shadow and how change in light and the shifting of form affected shadow. He observed most everything with the same concentration and focus. He spent hours and hours looking at the human body and studying it, imagining and questioning to obtain problem solving insight. He worked at it. He observed, meditated, concentrated and focused on the environment around him and then with his insights problem solved.
Was he unique? Was it only Da Vinci who could have come up with the great insights, art, and inventions that he did? Or was it his work-ethic and mental toughness, combined with unwavering passion and faith in his abilities sprinkled with innate talent that saw him through to discovery and solution?
Over time, there are very few who have ever lived who have or have had his passion. And more than anything else, it's passion, courage and follow through or belief in ones vision that enables ones success. Da Vinci lived in a time when one who was merely suspected of breaking a law could be put away or killed. He was arrested one time for sodomy charges and acquitted. But because he was a bastard child, he constantly fought as the underdog. And even tough many did not respect him or his freedom and his very life was in jeopardy, he kept moving forward looking to, as he said, "The stars on the horizon" rather than focusing on the muck and myer below.
As Da Vinci said, it's all about perspective, perspective, perspective.
Great confidence is not just achieved overnight. It is manufactured through time and effort.
There are many who are great talents, thinkers, doers who have to spend years, decades without success--any or limited--but they continue, they only move forward through great difficulty and trial and an excessive passing of time because they have great belief in and passion for what they do. Martin Luther King said that if you don't have something to die for then it's not worth living. That, my friend, is passion. And sometimes it's the only thing that will get you through the tough times.
Those with passion are the winners. The survivors. The doers, movers, and shakers. It's a tough road, but as they've moved along it, they've ultimately achieved success, for even though they've failed and failed often (yes, failure is not only an option it's a necessity) they never gave up or gave in. And that, my friend, is not only the secret to great confidence, but the secret to success and life.
Here's what Mr. C. M. Schwab, a friend and admirer of Andrew Carnegie, had to say about one of the most successful people of all time: "I never knew a man with some much imagination, lively intelligence, and instinctive comprehension. The play of his mind was dazzling and his habit of close observation gave him a store of knowledge about innumerable matters. Confidence radiated from him."
How'd he get this way? Work, focus, passion, planning, consistency, courage, integrity, desire, and work, work, work. If you work hard enough, long enough, with focused concentration and desire on that which you are passionate about, in the process overcoming and working through obstacles large and small, how can you not have confidence? Great confidence? But more importantly than mere confidence, you will be building your future and leaving a legacy not only to family but all those in the larger world that you will infect with your strength. For if you build yourself up in such a way, if you continue to grow, gain in confidence, insight, understanding, and passion you will attract to you hundreds, thousands, millions even as your light draws in those like a magnet who are looking for the same, for we all desire great joy in our life but so few understand the work and sacrifice it takes.
Take the time now to find your passion. That which you would die for. And get to work. There is no greater feeling in knowing of the great outer and inner (character weaknesses) challenges you've overcome to obtain great success. As you build in strength, as you overcome weaknesses, as you pass through trials, taking on all difficulties with fear but working through your fear, you will build an unwavering passion and strength, that which you can not only take to the bank but that which you can use to lift others from their dull, uninspired live.
God bless
