CHAPTER 2

CONFIDENCE:
CONVICTION IS CONTAGIOUS

Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.

—NORMAN VINCENT PEALE

Confidence is a trait that increases your charisma and attracts people to you. People love to follow and be influenced by others who are confident in themselves and their abilities. Most people you meet suffer in the self-confidence arena, but your high confidence will make up for their shortfall. Confidence breeds trust. Demonstrating confidence in your field, in your industry, and in your life increases the confidence of others in you. The people we admire and look up to the most are usually the type of people who know what they want and have the confidence to get it.

You must learn to communicate with great confidence and authority. The perception of confidence is critical to maintaining charisma. The higher your true confidence is, the more charisma you radiate. People read your confidence in your tone of voice, body language, and other subconscious triggers.

True confidence is a state of mind. At times in your life and in your career, your personal confidence can get smashed and needs to be rebuilt. Charismatic people can maintain confidence in all situations even if they have encountered defeats, setbacks, or unpredicted outcomes. We all have a tendency to feel insufficient or inferior at times. When you lose faith in yourself or have had failures in your life, you lose confidence through fear, which can be defined simply as magnified doubt. All worries, questions, concerns, and insecurities can ultimately be traced back to fear in one form or another.

Fear breeds doubt and doubt destroys confidence. You need to make sure that your confidence is bigger than your doubts. What does your audience really sense in you? Are you afraid to exercise confidence and charisma? The desire to overcome your fear needs to be bigger than the fear itself. While it is okay to have fear, you must be able to handle and manage that fear. When you doubt yourself and your abilities, others will doubt you and your charisma.

Other factors that can destroy confidence are:

Negative thoughts.

Indecision about purpose.

Worry.

People who lack confidence will always struggle to effectively influence others and create charisma. Even when you have confidence, you can still sometimes feel fear, tension, or uneasiness. Confidence is the ability to control these feelings. If you’re perceived as underconfident, your audience will feel that way too— about your product, about you, or about your idea. Don’t panic if you don’t feel confident at every encounter; confidence will come with time. Complete confidence takes experience, practice, and patience.

You may be wondering, “Can’t overconfidence hurt my ability to exude charisma?” Of course! You must not come across as condescending or arrogant. How can you tell the difference between confidence and cockiness? It’s all about your intention. Confidence is motivated by a sincere desire to help others and to make a difference. True confidence comes from knowing that you have the tools, resources, and ability to do the job that’s expected of you. In contrast, cockiness is driven by a need to help yourself, instead of helping others. Deep down, cockiness actually reveals insecurity—the very opposite of confidence.

Arrogant individuals seek approval and recognition for all the wrong reasons and in all the wrong ways. Arrogance makes someone self-centered, whereas confidence makes a person people-centered. Arrogance is about self and confidence is about others. Whether you say and do all the right things simply doesn’t matter. If you lack confidence, the cause is lost. Even if people like you, the lack of confidence destroys your ability to influence and have charisma.

BLIND SPOT

How you think you are coming across and how you are actually perceived are usually two completely different things. How do others really perceive you? Are you focused on them or on yourself? You think you have confidence, you feel confident, and you think you come across as confident, but you could be perceived as either arrogant, cocky, or condescending. There is a fine line between being confident and coming across as arrogant. That is the blind spot. The flip side is the lack of confidence that could trigger fear and lack of trust in those you attempt to influence. Bottom line: no confidence, no charisma.

APPLICATION

Here are some additional ways you can avoid the trap of seeming overly confident or arrogant:

Always take feedback or criticism with an open heart.

Spend more time listening than talking.

Be able to admit that you were wrong.

Don’t always attempt to prove you are right.

Ask questions to demonstrate concern.

Have someone else explain why you are credible.

EXAMPLE

In the sports world, the name of Joe Namath comes up when you hear the word confidence. He played for the New York Jets when they were part of the American Football League (AFL). They made it to the Super Bowl III to play the powerful Baltimore Colts, at a time when no one thought an AFL team could compete with a National Football League (NFL) team. The previous two Super Bowls were complete blowouts for the NFL over the AFL. The Jets were 17-point underdogs. Joe Namath was being heckled at a press conference, and then, with great confidence and authority, he said, “I guarantee we will beat the Baltimore Colts.” His confidence rallied his team to win that Super Bowl, 16–7, and Joe Namath won the MVP title. The rest is history.

CHARISMA KEY

One thing that can hurt your perception of confidence is embarrassment—from being worried about what others will think of you, about failing publicly, or about breaking a social rule. The best way to handle embarrassment is to understand that most people are sympathetic if you handle your embarrassment the right way. The studies show that those who acknowledge their embarrassment are more liked than those who deny it. You are human and embarrassment is a human emotion. Admit it, smile or laugh about it, and move on. No one does everything right, and your audience will understand if you acknowledge your mistake or your embarrassment. Even when you help someone become less embarrassed, your like-ability goes up. When you build your confidence, the chance of your being embarrassed goes down dramatically.

Today, either acknowledge your embarrassment or help someone feel less embarrassed.

Rate Your Confidence
Add your score to page 182.