Every successful person has it. Every happy person has it. You should have it.

The other day I was thinking: If there was one thing I should work on, what would it be? 

Get more efficient in what I do? Use my time better? Learn more, read more? Exercise more?

All of these points are good. But there’s something more powerful. If you get it right, many things in your life will get better.

So what is it?

CONFIDENCE IN YOURSELF

You can’t grasp how important it is.

Let me give you some concrete reasons for this claim. When you HAVE CONFIDENCE IN YOURSELF ….

1. You care less about the opinion of others. You don’t drown in your doubts as often as before. 

This means you find your inner compass and act according to it. You don’t get easily influenced by other people’s words. You accept their opinion and contemplate on it, sure. But if you decide something you don’t need the OK of anyone. And you don’t bury your plans and dreams because someone else doesn’t like them. You simply don’t doubt as often as when you have zero confidence.

This helps you follow through with the things you are determined to do, and the person you’re determined to become.

2. You dare to take necessary risks. You are not afraid of failing.

If you are confident about your actions, you are not obsessed with doing things perfectly, and neither are you afraid to fail. You did something and it worked out? Perfect! More of that. You did something and you failed? Ok, let’s see what to improve. This is self-confidence. Failing does not mean you are stupid, with no skills and a loser. It means you found a way that does not work. Full stop. If you’re easy about failing and taking risks, you have a great chance of getting where you want.

Believe me, this attitude is worth gold. 

3. You are more happy and healthy.

Yep, you sure may be more healthy when you are more self-confident. You don’t bite your nails, scratch your skin and sit with your shoulders down. But more important, when you are fine with yourself and you like yourself the way you are, your health reflects that. You might get less often sick because you are more resistant. You sleep better. What’s inside your mind has a direct connection to the processes in your body. When you are self-confident you have less doubts and less fears, knowing that you’ll always find a way how to handle things. You are more calm and happy.

These are only three of many benefits. What is super important to know is that one thing affects the others. If you’re sad you see the world as a sad place, everything is sad. You create sad circumstances. If you are self-confident you see everything with different eyes and you create a different reality. 

Note: I am talking about a deep, peaceful and wise confidence in yourself. This is not about an aggressive, ambitious I-am-the-best type of alpha person who gets successful by force. It’s true that such a person seems confident in his or herself. But it’s just the surface. If you scratch a bit, you find vulnerability. This vulnerability turns into doubts and aggressiveness if things don’t go according to plans. These people get offended when someone talks bad about them. They show off because it’s what keeps their image. Plus, these people are not on their best way to get happy and stay healthy. So just to make it clear: This is not real self-confidence and not what I’m talking about in this article.

I’ve seen significant results on myself.

Confidence in me and the things happening around me is something I’m working on every day. I catch myself doubting about my skills, an article I wrote, whatever… and I know I mustn’t give in to these doubts. Perhaps I’ll write a post on my own experience and my tips to become more confident… if you’re interested.

For now I can say that doubting less about myself attracted really powerful things in my life. To give an example: I have been asked by a literary agent if I wanted to write a book. The other very important change: The more I appreciated myself the less headaches I had. There’s nothing that triggered better changes in my life than starting to believe in me and appreciating myself. And I’m still at the beginning…

Finishing for today I’ll leave you with some words by Alan Watts on self-confidence and making decisions. Inspired by the Eastern world and his Tao teachings, he said…

“…And if you see you lack self confidence, you will make mistakes through sheer fumbling. If you do have self confidence you may get carried away doing the entirely the wrong thing. You have to regard yourself as a cloud, in the flesh, because you see clouds never makes mistakes. Did you ever see a cloud that was misshapen? Did you ever see a badly designed wave? Heh, no they always do the right thing! But if you treat yourself for awhile as a cloud, a wave, you realize that you can’t make a mistake, whatever you do. Because even if you do something that seems to be totally disastrous, it will all come out in the wash somehow or other. Then through this capacity you will develop a kind of confidence, and through confidence you will be able to trust your own intuition.”