Career Success: Tweet #47

I subscribe to Sharon Melnick’s online newsletter.  In a recent post, she made several interesting points about confidence.

• Confidence will help you be flexible.  You will consider all alternatives and options.
• Confidence will help you follow through on ideas that you might otherwise talk yourself out of.
• Confidence will help you be persistent – and hold on to your vision for your life.

She’s right.  Confidence is the foundation of all success.  Without it, you will have a difficult time succeeding.  To build your self-confidence, you have to be optimistic, face your fears and surround yourself with positive people.

Fear is a great confidence and success killer.  Elbert Hubbard, the author of “A Message to Garcia” one of the best essays on personal responsibility ever written, has some great things to say about facing your fears.

“The greatest mistake you can make is continually fearing that you will make one.”

Read that again.  Those 14 words are powerful!  They are some fundamental career advice.

If you let your fear of making a mistake stop you from taking action, you will never take any action and your fear will ruin your life and any chance of creating the career success you want and deserve.

In 1988 I was ready to start my career success coach and speaking business.  I was afraid.  I was worried that I wouldn’t succeed.  I had always worked for large companies.  I wasn’t sure I knew exactly what to do to run a successful career success coach business.  Nevertheless, I looked my fear in the eye, quit my job and moved forward.  Twenty-two years later, I’m still at it.  My fears were unfounded – but they were real.  I’m glad I faced them and acted.

Fear is persistent.  It doesn’t go away.  It will wait for one of your weak moments and then it will strike.  If you let it get the best of you, you’ll never move forward.

Fear most often manifests itself in procrastination.  When I find myself procrastinating, I always ask myself, “What are you afraid of here, Bud?”  Identifying what I fear always help me defeat it.  Once I identify what I am afraid of, I can take positive steps to move forward through my fear and on to success.

Make a list of your doubts and fears.  Decide what you can do to overcome them.  Then act.  Take at least one positive action – no matter how small – every day to overcome your doubts and fears.  Even if these actions don’t work out as well as you hope, you will be on the road to overcoming your fears and creating the life and career success you want and deserve.

Remember, procrastination feeds fear, and action cures it.  The choice is up to you.  I choose action.  My best career advice says you should, too.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people are self-confident.  Self-confident people don’t let their fears get in the way of their success.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 47 in Success Tweets.  “Act.  Feel the fear and do it anyway.  That’s the definition of courage, and a great way to build your self-confidence.”  Identify your fears, and then do what you need to do to move past them.  Action is the great antidote to fear.  It puts inertia on your side.  Once you are moving forward, you are likely to continue moving forward.  It’s the first step that is the hardest – and scariest.  If you want to beat your fears, you need to take the first step – act, and then keep on going.