What I Learnt From My Pastor in 14 Days
The story of how to be confident
Introduction
Relationships are important in life. Nobody is meant to be an island. We are created to connect to people. The people you connect with are meant to supply to you as you are meant to supply to them too. The degree of supply we make to the relationships in our lives will not always be the same. That is, the degree of impact I am making in someone’s life is not necessarily the same degree of impact I am getting from the person. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It can’t always be the same.
However, there’s something crucial for us to know about relationships. Relationships are not meant to destroy you or to drain you of your value. So, I am extremely careful in choosing the relationships in my life. I rate relationships in my life by what it can teach me, not what it can pay me. You should do the same too. Someone once said, “friendship is by choice not by force”.
Rate relationships in your life by what it can teach you, not by what it can pay you.
Many years ago, I did the account of my life to see the areas I need to improve and the areas I’ve improved. That was when I discovered a major lesson I learnt from my Pastor. In my first 14 days of meeting him, something changed in the way I view life. This was the catalyst that I needed to transform my leadership skills. I became more audacious and it made me a better man. I learnt confidence and I want to tell you a story of how to be confident.
Great leaders are confident people. Without confidence, you can’t achieve much in life. Confidence is like the cloth we wear; a sane man only steps out of his house with his clothes on. No matter the degree of potential you have you won’t go out of your house without putting on your cloth. You will be restricted to the confine of your room. Regardless of your great ideas, if you lack confidence you will never manifest those great ideas.
I’ve seen people that are depressed and blame everybody and everything around them for their failures in life. And when I analyze their lives, truly, they are gifted but nobody is being impacted by their gifts because they lack the confidence to do what they needed to do to make an impact.
Before you rush out of this page, let me analyze this “Confidence” we are talking about so that you can know how to be confident.
How to be confident:
1. Develop your sense of worthiness.
There must be a strong sense of worthiness in you. You have to be sure of your identity. This should be your first assignment before any other thing. If you don’t settle this part, every other thing I will mention here will be an illusion to you. Do you believe in yourself that you can add value to others? You should have this mindset even if your present result falls short of it, it just means you need to improve on it. Denis Waitley said, “see performance as a reflection of your value but not a measure of it”. He also said that “you must feel worthy of the best, but not worthier than the rest.”
2. Associate with confident people
It is a universal law that your association will determine your outlook in life. In a way that we can’t explain we always find out that there are some traits in us that we can link to our parents. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of the book, “The Outliers” said, “Personal explanation don’t work, people don’t rise from nothing, we do owe something to parentage and patronage.” The first thing you should do is to look for people in your circle that are confident and begin to associate more with them. Confidence is contagious. And if in your search you find yourself in a relationship that wants to kill your confidence, walk out of such a relationship. People that are not secured doesn’t want confident people around them so they try to bully you.
It is a universal law that your association will determine your outlook in life
3. Be a doer
This is the part where you need to come out of that shell. Stop over-analyzing matter and just do it. There will never be a perfect time to do it (Whatever that “IT” is), so whether you think you are ready or not, just do it. People who are afraid of failure are likely to fail in their task of average difficulty. You should subscribe to success motivation and not fear motivation when you want to take any action. My Pastor is a doer; he pushed me to be a doer and it awakens the confidence in me.
You should subscribe to success motivation and not fear motivation when you want to take any action
In 1945, Masaru Ibuka decided to start a company in the ruins of Japan. He rented a room in Tokyo. He started with seven employees and $1,600 in his savings. For weeks they tried to figure out what kind of business they should enter. That was the beginning of Sony corporation (From the book: “Empire of the mind” by Denis Waitley). The more you act, the more you increase in confidence.
4. Look for an opportunity to help people
You don’t need to have billions for you to start helping people. I’ve noticed that there are always people around us that we can help to the degree in which we have the ability. It has been designed into every human being that helping others boost your confidence. I can’t give a detail explanation of how this happens but I’ve experienced it, I’ve heard the stories of other people who have experienced it too and I know that it will work for you.
Helping people unlocks your confidence
5. Be ambitious
Confident people are ambitious. Don’t be deceived by the incorrect perspective that it is wrong to be ambitious. People that are not ambitious in life always degenerate or plateau. Give your passion something to feed on regularly, that is the way it won’t relapse. People that are not driven in life cannot be confident to do anything. Success is in phases and you can’t be done until you leave this world. Don’t lie on contentment. Contentment is not retiring to your corner while your bones and muscles are still working, contentment is being thankful where you are on your way to the next phase. Keep on acting on your next idea till you get to a point that nothing scares you again. Your confidence is as a rock.
Success is in phases and you can’t be done until you leave this world.
Let me leave you with the word of Robert Schuller, “Do not take care, people who do gets nowhere, but take charge and take control.” You can take charge of your life today by being confident.
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