Your Inner CEO: Confidence, True or False?

Whether it’s a Fortune 100 company or your
own Inner Corporation, confidence and optimism
are the two most important qualities of a successful
executive or entrepreneur. Optimism deserves its
own blog, which I’ll be posting soon. Right now I
want to define confidence and show why it’s so
important. I also want to make a sharp distinction
between real confidence and self-aggrandizing
egotism. Don’t get those confused in other people
or in yourself.

You may have confidence or you may lack it – but either way, other people are going to agree with you. If you’re down on yourself, they probably will be too. When you project confidence and self-assurance, they’ll feel good about you. And always remember: people want to feel good about you. Confidence is just the ability to make that easy for them. It’s the power to let other people feel the same way about you that you feel about yourself.

Egotism is so often mistaken for genuine confidence. Confidence doesn’t mean that you’re going to succeed. It doesn’t even mean that you have succeeded in the past, as evidenced by your gold watch or your big car. Real confidence means acceptance of the fact that nothing is certain in life, with one exception: you are certain that you’ll do your best.

Confidence is also the ability to recognize your limitations without becoming preoccupied by them. Egotism, on the other hand, is an unrealistic inflation of who you are and what you can do. Egotistic people ignore the possibility of anything but success. So when setbacks occur, they’re taken by surprise and have a very hard time recovering.

One marker of confidence is reserve energy. It’s the ability to keep trying even when you’ve tried and failed. But another element of confidence is the power to see when it’s time to let go and try something else. Both those qualities are rare, and the second may be even more unusual than the first.

 Lots of people sing in the shower or even in self-produced YouTube videos, but only a few will sing for the Metropolitan Opera. Danger arises when the difference between the Met and the shower starts to blur. You might not think this happens very often, but people’s egos can be very powerful. Yes, it’s admirable to shoot a thousand free throws in the backyard in hopes of playing professional basketball --- but if you’re five feet six, be realistic. Know when to exchange impractical dreams for more feasible ones. That’s not the same as surrender. It’s just advancing in another direction. You can’t achieve an objective that you’ve never imagined. But you should also be accepting of the fact that not every single dream can be achieved.

It’s ironic that the thinking patterns of ego-driven people and those with low confidence are two sides of the same coin. Both are absolutely sure of themselves, but in opposite directions. Some people are sure they can do anything, others are sure they can do nothing. Real confidence isn’t a matter of knowing the future. It’s a matter of knowing yourself.