Self Confidence: The magic within you

We all have the fear of unknown, we all want to achieve great things in life, but we still do have the fear of the unknown. Now let's say you are into public speaking but you have never ever spoken in front of 1000s of people watching you. Would you say yes to an opportunity that comes by or would you say no because you have never spoken in front of 1000s of people. It all depends on how much you believe in yourself, if you believe that you will be able to speak, you will and likewise if you believe you won't be able to speak,  and so that will happen. So when you don't have anything in life materially, all you need is self confidence and an unquestionable belief within yourself even when times are tough. So there's a strong correlation in your belief within yourself and your ability to grab opportunities. 

Now, we understand the self confidence, self belief thing, but the problem is how do we have belief in ourselves when things are not going our way? You know there would be a lot of self help books about the same topic, about what self confidence is, how to gain it, do affirmations, blah blah blah. In my opinion, self confidence does not really come through that, you can't do the affirmations and not be competent in the field and say you are confident. You need to have the basic competencies, or you need to trust yourself that the basic competence can be learned and you will learn it. Self confidence believe or not also comes from competence. You can't really go ahead and jump in deep waters without knowing swimming and just doing affirmation that I am great at swimming, honestly, I think that's bullshit. You should rather spend your time learning swimming in shallow waters, get better at it every single day and then go and jump in the deep waters. The time when you will have to trust your abilities is the time you jump for the first time. So the first thing, I would say is being competent at whatever you wish to do, whether that's swimming, or coding or for that matter playing cricket, you should have the basic competence, now when you aim for the big shots, taking that risk, that's when self confidence comes into play. 

Why is self confidence really important in life? In my humble opinion, it's not just important, it's a must have(an essential). Without self confidence, one cannot lead a happy and beautiful life. In fact it's also important to have fun, without being fully self confident it's impossible to have fun as well. Imagine what self confidence will do to you, firstly it will make your life happier because you would attract good relationships, friendships and acquaintances. It will make you achieve your goals, it will give you the money that you desire, that dream home, and even that dream car. But these are all surface level things, but if we go to the depth of it, we don't just want a dream home or wonderful relationships, we want a loving home, a supportive family and wonderful conversations throughout the day. That's all we want. We want to feel important, we want to achieve important things, but all for the feeling of importance. So self confidence gives you exactly what you want in life. 

Okay so to summarise, self confidence is important for our happiness, it can give you a feeling of importance, competence plays a crucial role in self confidence, but what else? How can we become more and more confident. Firstly, its important to understand that there are limitations that we all have, in terms of what we can achieve, the first thing is to get rid of all of that and tell ourselves that we can achieve it, that's the first step of confidence. If you want to be the number one cricketer or batsman or a bowler or a allrounder in cricket, believe you can achieve that. No matter what your skill level is now, you can always work on it. If you want to be the number one developer in your team, believe that's possible and trust your abilities. Take challenging projects, work on it and being the number one developer will give you unbelievable confidence. But most importantly have the grit and persistence to continue. Stick to that one goal, don't try to deviate a lot from it. Just keep improving daily on whatever it is you are doing, breakthroughs are achieved through daily mundane activities after all. 

The most most most important thing to self confidence. Action. Act. Act. Act, can't repeat this anymore, but once you have decided on what it is that you want to do, just act in the right direction. And just to add to this, a opinion that I have, I feel self confidence is not about just talking and walking a certain way but genuinely through your gut and inside believing that its possible to do so and so thing and trusting your abilities to do that. 

Here's a wonderful picture I found on the internet: 

Look at this beautiful list: 

1. Open Minded(can accept that he/she is wrong at times)

2. Gives compliments to people. 

3. Willing to learn from other people(Another way to put open minded)

4. Accepts responsibility + Admits mistakes 

5. Operates on principles

6. Not afraid to show flaws- This is very important, everyone has flaws but remember showing your flaws is not an act of cowardliness but courage. 

7. Positive thinker

8. Risk taker

9. Never talks negatively about others.

10. Abundance Mindset - Giver

11. Likes spending time with people

12. Accepts others differences

13. Can laugh at themselves. 

14. Makes decisions quickly. 

15. Keeps learning and growing. 

-- Take this list and see where you can improve, I am sure a lot of people transition from insecure to semi insecure to self confident. Till then keep learning and growing and remember to show your flaws, scars, and your true self. You can and you will.