Self confidence is one of the keys to career and life success that I discuss in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success, Your Success GPS and 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success. If you want to become self confident you need to do three things. First, become an optimist. Believe in your heart of hearts that today will be better than yesterday and that tomorrow will be better than today. Second, face your fears and act. Fear creates procrastination and inaction. Action leads to success and confidence. Third, surround yourself with positive people. Positive people energize you. Negative people are a drain on your energy.
On Monday and Tuesday of this week, I blogged about the just released movie, Julie and Julia. It’s a film with two stories in one. The first is the story of how Julia Child became JULIA CHILD and the second is about a young woman Julie Powell who decided to prepare every one of the 524 recipes in Julia Child’s famous cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blog about her experience. It’s a great movie with a good cast that says a lot about personal and professional success.
Today I’d like to revisit Julie and Julia one last time to make a point about self confidence. Both Julia Child and Julie Powell surrounded themselves with positive people They had loving, supportive spouses and a small circle of friends who believed in them and encouraged them through the tough times.
In yesterday’s post, I focused on the fact that you have to commit to taking personal responsibility for your own success. You have to take setbacks in stride, and learn from them. That’s true. Although from personal experience, I can tell you that it’s easier to commit to taking personal responsibility for your success when you have supportive people in your corner.
I’ve dedicated every one of my books to Cathy, my wife. I choose to do this because Cathy is very loving and supportive. She helps me through the ups and downs of being a self employed speaker, coach, author and blogger. And, believe me, there have been quite a few ups as well as downs over the past 20 years.
I also have a close group of friends who believe in me, what I do and what I have to say. These friends help me celebrate my victories and learn from my defeats.
The common sense point here is simple. Successful people are self confident. Self confident people surround themselves with positive, supportive people. If you want to build your self confidence find people who are positive and going places. Hold on tight to them. It’s easy to do this when you are a positive, upbeat person yourself. In this case, similar – not opposites – attract. Do your best to jettison the negative people in your life. Sometimes this is difficult because these people are in your family. Do your best to minimize your interactions with negative people. When you absolutely must interact with them, realize that they choose to live a negative, complaining existence. You don’t have to.
That’s my take on Julie and Julia, and the importance of positive people in building your self confidence. What’s yours? Please take a minute to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us. As always, thanks for reading.
Bud
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