The Confident and Knowledgeable Leader

“It is sad but true fact that many men of mediocre ability get further than others who have outstanding talents, merely because they know how to act confidently.

All the great leaders of men have known the importance of acting in a confident way.”

-Les Giblin

In addition to confidence, a good leader must be knowledgeable in the areas he’s expected to lead. A confident leader, without knowledge, is a leader that doesn’t know where he’s going.

I’ve realized recently that I’ve become someone knowledgeable at work but my confidence isn’t where it needs to be for me to achieve the next level of my career. There’s some doubt in my heart that likely flows through my voice, my work, or in how I behave.

Confidence isn’t something that comes up naturally to me - it’s something I constantly have to work on. Books, such as “How to have confidence and power in dealing with people” by Les Giblin, helps tremendously.

A confident person, without ability, is more likely to achieve greater success than the person with ability but with no confidence. While confidence isn’t everything, it definitely is important.

The Secret to Confidence is Discipline

Confidence is something that's difficult to come by as a child but today I see that a child is more likely to feel confident when he feels likes he's capable of doing great things at something. A child that's good in sports, for example, is likely to get some sense of confidence from it. Discipline is key to get good at something and is one of the steps of getting confidence. 

I played soccer as a child but never really became good at it and therefor never achieved any meaningful confidence from it and the root cause of this is because I wasn't discipline. I was never taught to stick to things when they were difficult. I was never taught to work hard at something until I become good at it.
In my family, we always had a misunderstanding of where talent originated from. We used to think that some people were born with innate skills that made them better when in reality it's the person with the best work ethic/discipline that gets good at things. Because of that misunderstanding I never really become good in anything that gave me any sort of meaningful confidence.

It took me a long time to connect discipline with confidence as this isn't something that was taught to me in school or in my personal life growing up. It makes so much sense, however, as we do come to feel confident when we're good at something and the only way to get good at something is to be discipline with it.

You're Enough

Does anyone ever feel like they're perfect the way they are? Or are we all feeling inadequate in some way? When will we ever feel like we're enough or just as good as anybody else? Why is it that the perfect picture of ourselves never matches our reality?

"Other people see in us what we see in ourselves." 

-David J. Schwartz

Life insecurities is getting in the way of living to the fullest. To just be and let it be sounds simple but it definitely isn't'. This isn't something that becomes better with age as I've seen many people in the last stages of their lives still not being at peace with themselves. It's something that we first need to identify as a problem and work towards improving.

"The key to winning what you want lies in thinking positively toward yourself. The only real basis other people have for judging your abilities is your actions. And you actions are controlled by your thoughts. You are what you think you are." 

-David J. Schwartz

It's difficult to feel confident when we feel inadequate. What  can we do to work on this? We need to attack this problem on two fronts:

1. First, and most importantly, we need to think positively towards ourselves. Sure, we may have some bad sides but we also have some good sides. There are good and bad things in all of us - this is what being human is all about.
2. Second, there are some things about us that we definitely need to change. If we have addictions, for example, it's not enough for us to simply think positively about them - we need to get rid of them altogether.

To recap, think positively about yourself, identify the things that are a nuisance and fix them. Even when we fail to change, just the thought of seeing ourselves as a project to work on is sometime enough to see the better side of us.

It is better for us to identify our own problem than to have others identify them for us. Fixing ourselves is our responsibility - nobody can do that for us.

Look Your Best But Don't Overdo It

*David by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

We're a society that's very appreciative of beauty which places a, often unfair, pressure on people to look a certain way. There are some good sides of this as it sometime inspire people to make dietary, or lifestyle, changes in order to bring out, what is widely considered, attractive physical features. This becomes a problem, however, when taken to extremes. Some people don't feel pretty unless they look like they can lift a car.

The pressure to look a certain way can be so great that some people will get all sorts of surgeries to "fix" what they think is wrong with them physically. If you have no reason to get a new nose, other than you think it's too small or big, then why do it? Note that there are no surgeries that will allow us to look 20 years old once we reach the ripe old age of 60. Plastic Surgeons are obviously not against this trend as it allows them to own a few cars and a condo in the Bahamas.

"Exterior beauty without the depth of a kind soul is merely decoration."

-Anne Marie Cummings.

On one side, it's great to live in a society where we have the option to change our physical appearance but I hate the fact that it is so widely used for the wrong reasons. Somewhere along the way, we have lost sight of what true beauty is. It's not about how you look as much as who you are. There are no surgeries available that can fix a broken soul. It is far more pleasant to be at the company of someone with a kind heart than someone with nothing but a pretty face.

The Best Thing About Me

Even though I work full time, I often go through interview exercises in my head. I do so to prepare for future job search.

One of the questions I ask myself, during these imaginary interviews, is "What is your best quality?" and there's one answer that comes up more so than others which is: I understand the importance of staying humble. 

A person stops learning as soon as he considers himself an expert. Daniel R. Castro, in his book "Hidden Solutions All Around You", said "Don't be blinded by your own expertise." Richard Feynman refers to it as the "ignorance of experts".

I believe strongly in this philosophy because I have seen it first hand. I saw people come to my project being so confident in their abilities that they didn't bother learning the new things to accomplish the task at hand and that ultimately lead to their downfall.

If an expert is not humble then he not only set himself up for failure but he may also come across as arrogant, rather than confident, to his peers.

I believe so strongly in this philosophy that it's been the motto of this site (listen to those with the fruit from the tree) from the very beginning. Be humble my friends and learn until the day you die.

Why I'm Proactive

"People place confidence in the fellow who acts. They naturally assume he knows what he is doing." -David J. Schwartz

Being proactive, for those of you who doesn't know what it means, is basically being able to add value to the company/project without being told to do so - it's about you figuring out the next steps instead of your superiors having to do it for you.
For as long as I can remember, I've always been proactive to some extend but I wasn't always adding as much value as I could due to lack of experience. Most performance reviews I've had at work as referred "proactivity" as being my biggest strength but what most people don't know is that I'm only proactive because I hate being told what to do.

You read that right - I'm proactive because I don't like being told what to do. To me, having a superior sit down with me and go over my next task is a bigger pain than just having me do that sort of work. First of all, in most cases, I have a clearer picture of what needs to be done than my superiors do and I consider it a waste of time to try to explain to them that how they want me to work doesn't really make sense in the context that we're in... So I just do it.

Here's another "secret" of mine: While I have an idea of what the big picture is I don't necessarily know all the steps/task to get there before I start. This is the crazy part to me because when I look at a proactive person, from the outside, I feel like they have a clear picture of every steps in order to get the task done but it's rarely the case (at least to me). Most things are figured out on my way to task completion.

How to be proactive?
On my proactive journey, I've identified 4 things that help me be proactive. Those are:

1. Don't be afraid to make mistakes - One of the reasons why most people aren't proactive is because they're afraid of making mistakes. By having a superior figure out the task, it becomes easier to put the blame on them when the results aren't as expected. Proactive people tend to have to take the responsibility of failures because they're the ones that came up with the steps.
2. Understand the bigger picture - In order to developed effective steps towards a task completion, you need to understand the bigger picture. What needs to be done and what is your role in it? This obviously becomes clearer the longer you are on a project.
3. Hate being told what to do - I mentioned this before but when someone tells me what to do, they are also indirectly telling me "I don't trust you with this so do it my way". Since I don't want to be told what to do my mind automatically focuses on the next steps.
4. Have a creative mind - Having a creative mind does help with being proactive since you need to be creative to come up with tasks that may not of been done before. Reading, writing, drawing and other creative endeavors can be help develop a creative mind and ultimately help with proactivity.

Are you proactive? What makes you proactive? Share in the comments!

Confidence is not Truth

In dealings with people, confidence is everything. Anything said with confidence can be perceived as truth even though the two aren't related.

We've all got scammed at one point or another by someone who told us something that sounded like it was the truth because it was said with confidence. "I don't feel like he's lying" so we thought.
In a more extreme case, Hitler was using this approach to convince an entire Country that Jews were bad people and they should die. It makes no sense if we approach what he said from a logical point of view but it was repeated, with confidence, so often that people started believing in it.

Salesmen are thought to believe in what they are selling. To be sold on the product themselves if they ever wish to sell it to someone else. To believe in one's product is to have the ability to communicate its positives with such confidence that the listener will be sold on the idea as well.

What we have to do, as the listeners of those messages, is check the facts and form our own opinions.

How We Speak To Ourselves

How we speak to ourselves affect how good we are at doing things. Who is more likely to hit a home-run? The person who tells himself "I'm going to hit that ball out of the park" or the person who tells himself "I'm probably going to miss it again"?

Last year, I started drawing again and while my physical skills did improve - how I speak to myself when I draw is what changed the most. My self-talk went from "I can't draw" to "I can draw". Practice helped change how I talk to myself when I pick up a pencil.
Here's the thing; I don't draw as good on days that I feel negative about myself and it's not because my physical skill suddenly went out the window, it's because of how I speak to myself.

The person who's confident will get good at a new skill faster than the person who's not confident.

Intellectual Laziness

"Many people welcome authority because they have little confidence in themselves or are intellectually lazy: to accept the word of someone else is to take the easy way of gaining comfort and assurance. [...] Such conformist tendencies in human beings create fertile soil for modern high-pressure advertising and propaganda." -Titus/Smith

How can we stay away from intellectual laziness? If you want control over your intellect, you need to feel like you're in control of your life. Otherwise, you're a slave to your way of thinking and are influence by which ever voice is the loudest.

We're Not Experts In Everything

"...each of them believed himself to be extremely wise in matters of the greatest importance because he was skillful in his own art." -Socrates

A master programmer possesses knowledge of the computer languages and may develop confidence in himself as a result. He then might think that he has knowledge in areas in which he has not. We must not think of ourselves as experts in areas which we have no experience in.

Self Confidence

A lack of self confidence makes other people doubt in your abilities to accomplish anything even when you have years of experience on the subject.
Self confidence can make an expert look like a fool or a fool look like an expert.

What this means is that confidence in your abilities is just as important as the abilities themselves.

Self confidence needs to be treated individually rather than be bound to what you do (or what you like). Doing otherwise will only create a temporary posture when your field of expertise is brought up but you will loose it as soon as the subject change.

Being comfortable with yourself will make you comfortable in any situation.

If you want more information, the below books (pictured above) are a good place to start:

• "Resolved - 13 Resolutions for LIFE" book by Orrin Woodward
• "How to have confidence and power in dealing with people" book by Les Giblin
• "Psycho Cybernetics" book by Maxwell Maltz

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Revision Wednesday
Blog post originally created on December 19, 2013 and can be found here.

The Comfort Zone

I like to think that I don't have a comfort zone but I'm constantly reminded that I do have one when ever I complain or make excuses about something.

A couple of days ago, I was asked to do a French translation video and I kept poking holes at it and complaining. Now that it's done and I think back on it, I did this because I wasn't comfortable doing it since I had never done it before.

If something is comfortable for us to do, we'll be less likely to complain about it. After all, it is part of our comfort zone and therefor we know what to expect. Complaining about something may point out to you that it's not part of your comfort zone.

At the end of the day, those experiences are fun and makes you grow so suck it up!

Finances & Self Confidence

I recently dusted off an old copy of success magazine (subscribe here) and found a wonderful reminder of why it's important to have control over our finances.

“It's been said that if you want to know how people feel about themselves, look at their bank account. Money is an outcome, a reflection of one's mindset and self-confidence. And money doesn't lie. It's unemotional and unsympathetically revealing. It's a rigid measurement of value that's easily counted.” -P.6 of “Success Magazine – February 2009” article written by Dale Hardy

Debt is bad for various reasons - including how we perceive ourselves. It's hard to feel like a winner when we're going further behind in our finances every month.

While some argue that there are such a thing as a “good debt”, none of them feels good to me.

Make Fun of Yourself

"A man who can laugh at himself is truly blessed, for he will never lack amusement." -James Carlos Blake

Pride tends to kill the joy out of life. Life is more fun when we don't take ourselves too seriously and are able to laugh at "us".

The popular belief is that confident people laugh at other people when infact it's actually the opposite. Small men will laugh at big men in an attempt to feel better about themselves. The person who can laugh at himself is the bigger man of the two since he shows confidence by sharing his weaknesses with the world.

If you look closely enough, you will find things to laugh about yourself. Don't be afraid to share those with world!

The Downside of Reading about Great Men

Reading about great people is a shortcut to success but it can have a down side. As human beings, we tend to compare our short comings with someone else's strengths. Reading about the great things a person did can be demoralizing if we compare their success with our failures.

When reading about great men, focus on the positive sides of things. Be inspired by the stories and think about your strengths.

"Building Confidence in Yourself" by Bill Lewis

Bill Lewis is an amazing LIFE leader and founder and recently spoke to a crowd about Building Confidence in Yourself. See a preview of the discussion below:

Self Confidence

A lack of self confidence makes other people doubt in your abilities to accomplish anything even when you have years of experience on the subject.
Self confidence can make an expert look like a fool or a fool look like an expert.

What this means is that confidence in your abilities is more important than the abilities themselves.

Self confidence needs to be treated individually rather than be bound to what you do (or what you like). Doing otherwise will only create a temporary posture when your field of expertise is brought up but you will loose it as soon as the subject change.

Being comfortable with yourself will make you comfortable in any situation.

If you want more information, the below books (pictured above) are a good place to start:

• "Resolved - 13 Resolutions for LIFE" book by Orrin Woodward
• "How to have confidence and power in dealing with people" book by Les Giblin
• "Psycho Cybernetics" book by Maxwell Maltz

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Revision Wednesday
Blog post edited/re-posted on February 25, 2015

Confidence Boost when we Create

When we create something, we are proving to ourselves that we can do something which also boost our confidence in the process.

Obviously, if we're not good at it, not much will come out in terms of confidence. I only started to feel more confident when I saw that I was getting better.

Create to boost your confidence!

When You Just Don’t Connect

There are times when you’ll meet people that you simply can’t connect with. Instead of appearing funny/nice/honest/... to them, you’ll be an annoyance.

The best thing to do in those situation is to let them be and move on. There’s simply nothing you can do to help the situation. Be sure to apologize if you feel they saw your interaction as arrogance. It’s not your fault, they may just be having a bad day.

Have you encountered anybody like that recently? (That you either found annoying or you feel like you were an annoyance to them)