Drawing confidence from past achievements
Personal confidence and self-esteem are very important for one to succeed in life. Without them, you will lack the energy and drive to pursue big ides. Without them you will lack the courage to even initiate your big ideas. Without them, you will quickly give up on an idea once you meet the first block. That is why we all need to constantly check that we have adequate confidence and self-esteem. At any point in time when either of them or both seem to be under threat of escaping, we need to quickly restore the measure.
One best way of boosting personal confidence and self-esteem is by recalling one’s past great achievements. I was recently chatting with a friend of mine. He is a very successful commercial executive. He was narrating to me how a feat of the mid 1980s when he was in secondary school has constantly kept his personal confidence and self-esteem over the three decades!
He was in Form One at the time and he was the representative of his class on his school’s Quiz team. Their team was very good and they worked very hard. In fact, they reached the finals. At the time of the semi-finals or the actual finals, there was a critical point that his team needed to win. The Quiz Master asked a tricky mathematical question to the Form Three student who unfortunately missed the question. The Quiz Master crossed the question to the next school and there too no correct answer was given. Please note at in this round they had three schools competing.
The question was reverted back to the original school now open to the team for a single point. Immediately, there were two hands up—from my friend who was in Form One at the time and also from the team’s captain who was obviously in Form Four. The Quiz Master got interested to see a Form One student courageously wanting to attempt a question which his Form Three team mate had failed to answer earlier on. In fact two other form three students had also failed to answer. And so, rather than asking the Form Four student to attempt the question, the Quiz Master said “I see two hands up, from a Form One student and the team’s Captain—Form Four student. I will give the chance to the Form 1 student.”
My friend recalls how the whole audience was in total silence to see how the Form 1 student was going to mess up on a question they expected the Form Four student to smash as he sought to propel the team into winning. My friend said he was very aware of the stakes and knew that if he failed to answer the question correctly, it would have been regarded as near betrayal. And so, he answered the question slowly and very calmly. He recalls how as he was answering the question, the Quiz Master was nodding along in agreement and that encouraged him to keep going—the question was on factorisation. As he would open and close his brackets for the mathematical expression, the Quiz Master was solidly with him and excited.
At the end, the Quiz Master said: “Correct– One point!” My friend got a standing ovation from the audience. A Form One student answered a tough and tricky mathematical question which three Form Three students had failed to answer correctly. And on top of that, that was the single point they needed to get the score that put them forward. Thirty years on, my friend still remembers that great feat of his. It is one of his great achievements that he turns to any time his personal confidence or self-esteem is under threat and it works.
As we journey on in life, keep banking some great achievements so that any time in the future when your personal confidence or self-esteem is under threat of escaping, your turn your memories to the past achievements for restoration of your courage. Even now, it is important that you did your past achievements so that any time you need to boost your courage, you can simply recall one or several of your past great achievements. Good luck!
