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It is being content that, regardless of the many different possibilities that can occur, good or bad, the individual can succeed with satisfying results.
Therefore it is a matter of holding faith, as a target, in front of you.
It is staying present in the moment, open towards a flow of what can be useful and inspiring to you, seeking out that which is relevant, potent, and juicy.
It is trust - a trusting relationship with the self - with the assurance that one can act, and regardless of what difficulties might arise, they can be successfully overcome because the individual has confided in himself the faith necessary to succeed.
The two word parts, con and fidence, each have interesting meanings.
Conning towers are raised platforms or towers on ships used to navigate vessels over bodies of water.
These towers have the practical purpose of providing better visibility and direction.
Con also means to study carefully and commit to memory.
It also means to to strike or hammer something.
Fidelity means loyalty, faithfulness, and the devotion to promises.
Fiduciary, which is similar, is a person to whom power is entrusted for the benefit of an individual.
So together these two words, as applied to self-confidence, means the faith in the ability to navigate through situations.
It means the willingness to meddle, shape, mold and manipulate the natural way of things.
It can be a beautiful thing, even in the midst of all things around you going to hell, even while sailing through a storm at sea.
What is required on the part of the person is to see the appropriate target and trust in your ability to move towards it.
In order to stay on target and in the moment, the individual needs to focus on real and tangible things that can be used to help him succeed.
A sailor must use his instruments, the conditions of the weather, and the clear sight of what is in front of him in order to navigate the sea successfully.
Likewise, the self-confident individual must place his focus on what things can help him succeed.
In a performance setting, the focus must be on what is inspiring for the individual, not what is uninspiring and what might happen.
We create anxiety and confusion by focusing on all the things that could happen in order to create what we want to happen.
This is backwards and inevitably sets us up for failure by setting the wrong goal in front of us.
It creates turmoil because suddenly we are faced with all of the things we are thinking about that have the wrong emotional component to them: an atmosphere of fear.
If you are giving a speech, you might begin by thinking about whether your clothes look right.
Then you start focusing on the way your shoes sound when walking towards the podium or how crackling or shaky your voice might sound before you start to talk.
By the time you get there you are not even present.
You have created so much tension and worry things begin to fall out of your control.
It's because the focus on what you don't want uninspires confidence.
Focusing on what you do want and allowing yourself to act spontaneously inspires confidence and allows you to channel your full talents and abilities in order to succeed.
Focus on what is interesting.
Focus on what is right, not what is wrong.
Adapt and learn by doing.
Don't be afraid to scuff the knuckles a little along the way or get something wrong.
Allow yourself to make mistakes.
The secret to confidence is kindness.
Experts tell us that we are dysfunctional.
Incredibly, they assert that because we have been taught for so long to focus on what is wrong in order to get it right and have failed we are dysfunctional beings.
I say to those experts they are dysfunctional.
It is the tool, the technology that society has given to us that has allowed us to fail.
For the purpose of a simple analogy, imagine a computer's operating system.
The software that is installed on it determines the function.
If we install and run a piece of software that constantly reminds us that we are failures, that we should not raise our hands or stand out from the crowd as a unique, creative individual, the operating system is going to produce failure-type results, just as the software was designed to do.
If we change that software and run something entirely different, something that inspires and tells us all of the great things that we are uniquely capable of doing, if it reminds us of the positive things we can or want to have happen, it is going to produce positive, successful results...
just as it was designed to do.
I call this kindness technology: focusing on your needs, wants, and desires.
Confidence is the ability to create predictable results.
Predictable results give us a sense of mastery.
It takes the luck factor out of the equation.
Inspire, propel and motivate yourself in each moment.
With practice you can generate this as a predictable skill and have confidence in your self and more mastery over your life.
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