You want to know the secret to success?  It’s really not that hard.  Success comes with confidence, with the belief that you’re good enough, you can do it and you deserve it.  Success comes with a deep seated belief that you are a good and worthy individual.  That’s it right there, the whole secret to succeeding.  The rest is hard work but if you don’t have that little bit, you’re not going to be successful.

Want An Example?

Ever see those guys at the bar who never have the courage to go talk to a girl?  They’re scared, of failing, of humiliation, of shame, of embarrassment.  They’re afraid of these things because they don’t think they’re good enough, they don’t believe in themselves.  So they never take a chance which means they’ll never succeed.

How about the people at work who never get a raise or promotion?  Again, a lot of it is confidence.  Those people don’t believe they’ll get a raise or promotion so they never ask for it.  They’re afraid of being turned down, of being told they’re not worth it, so they never go for it and therefore they never succeed.

It Applies Everywhere

No matter what you’re trying to do, confidence in yourself is step one, because without confidence, you’re not really going to try anything.  Sure, you’ll put together the project plan and the to do list, you’ll tell yourself that you’re going to start tomorrow or next week and you’ll assign yourself some big goals but you’ll never really go for it.  You’ll never really commit yourself to this goal because you’re afraid of what failure means.

What Does Failure Mean?

Which brings us to the real question, what does failure mean?  If you’re the guy (or girl) at the bar, what does it mean to go up to someone else, try to strike up a conversation and then fail?  The answer is, absolutely nothing.  There is nothing embarrassing about this, there is nothing humiliating.  You tried, you dared, you believed in yourself.  You should be overjoyed, even if you did fail.

The funny thing is, in most cases failure has almost no consequences.  Approaching that person at the bar and failing means nothing to you in the long term.  Talking to your boss honestly about a promotion has virtually zero risk.  The worst that will happen, assuming you were polite and reasonable about it, is they will tell you “not this year because…” or “if you really want this you should…” and at least then you’ll know.  At which point you can make an intelligent decision about your future.

Which is a funny thing for me to say because I used to be the worst coward when it came to taking chances.  I was scared of everything, from asking women out to asking for a raise at work.  I wanted people to tell me what to do because I was too afraid of failure.  I would sit there at the bar rehearsing lines in my head, going over possible scenarios, imagining successful outcomes and then I would convince myself to not approach that pretty girl.  At work, I would draw up project plans for my career, figure out amazing projects I could work on independently and imagine all the accolades and promotions I would reap when I was successful.  Except I never went ahead and did any of these things.  I procrastinated and imagined my success in my head but did nothing else.   I didn’t believe in myself.  I didn’t think I was smart, good, capable, intelligent or whatever other word you want to use.  I thought I was a loser, not good enough, not worthy and so on and so forth and I was afraid this would all become obvious when I really tried to do something.  This is what I mean by “the secret to being successful is liking and believing in yourself.”

Like Yourself!

Like yourself, appreciate yourself for who you are, believe that you are intelligent and funny and smart and sexy and good looking and capable of doing anything you put your mind to.  Believe that you are worthy of success and able to achieve it.  Know that if you fail that’s fine.  You’ll dust yourself off, pick yourself up and be perfectly fine.  Understand that if you fall, you’re strong enough to get right back up and always believe in yourself, like yourself and know that you are capable of success.

How Do I Get There?

So how do you get to that point?  How do you get to the point where you know you’re great and capable of success?  Well, that’s the hard part.  You have to try and try and then try again.  The good news is that each time you try and fail it gets easier to try again.  Each time you approach that person you’re attracted to you’ll increase in confidence.  Yes, this works even if you fail because once you fail you’ll see that you’re perfectly fine and that life goes on.  You’ll see that you’re capable of handling a little failure and you might even like yourself a bit more because trying and failing is better than standing in the corner and never trying at all.

I did this the hard way.  I failed big.  I went through a divorce and some bad career moves and a lot of horrible choices.  However, when I finally came out the other side of this bad time, I found out I was stronger than ever.  I had faced my worst fears and found them to be rather meaningless.  From the darkest time of my life, I discovered that I’m a really great guy with a lot of good qualities and that I can handle pretty much anything thrown my way.  Since then I’ve taken numerous chances and dared things I never would have before.  Some have succeeded and some have failed but I’ve enjoyed all the experiences and I’ve lived my life to a much fuller degree than I ever did hiding in that corner.

For you it doesn’t have to be that dramatic.  Find something small, a little challenge that will be your first step towards self confidence and self liking.  Walk outside and make a point of looking at everyone you pass by, catching their eye, smiling and saying hello.  Then work your way up to engaging your next door neighbor in a bit of meaningless conversation now and then.  Go out with friends and start random conversations with people you meet at the bar or at the gym.  It’s all about the confidence, which is all about how much you like and believe in yourself.  Challenge yourself to do the things that scare you, try out new things every day and always know that you’re fine, you’re going to be ok.  And always remember to tell yourself that you’re a good person.  Remind yourself that you’re good enough and gosh darn it, people like you!  :)  I know, it sounds totally corny and silly, but it works.  You really are worthy of success and people do really like you, you just need to remember this a bit more often.

Common Sense Caveat!

By the way, there is a fine line between arrogance and confidence, between daring to try and being stupid.  Daring to try is getting on a plane and trying sky diving after 8 hours of training and with an instructor standing by, being stupid is jumping from a plane and thinking you’ll learn to fly by the time you hit the ground.  While I am a big advocate of self confidence building by daring and trying new things, I would also urge people to use common sense and good judgment.  Again, confidence is talking to your boss and having a conversation with them about a possible promotion or what you need to do in order to get one.  Arrogance is walking in to your boss’s office and saying “listen here chump!  Promote me or I’m blowing this popsicle stand!”  One is smart, the other is stupid.  I’ll leave it up to you to decide which is which