Self confidence is one of the keys to personal and professional success that is part of my Common Sense Success System. I discuss it in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success, Your Success GPS and 42 Rules to Jumpstart your Professional Success.
You can become self confident by doing three things. First, choose optimism. 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. Procrastination and inaction feed fear and rob you of self confidence. Action cures fear. Third, surround yourself with positive people. Don’t let the naysayers into your life. Hang around with people who are positive about themselves, their careers and life in general.
Rodger Constandse runs a great site called Goals to Action. Yesterday, I received an e mail from him on the subject of procrastination. Check out what he has to say…
Have you ever been in a situation where you were getting ready to do something important but you somehow convinced yourself to “do it later” instead?
The truth is that we all procrastinate to some degree or another.
But when procrastination becomes a regular habit… when it becomes your natural response to dealing with important things in your life, that’s when procrastination becomes more than a minor inconvenience.
That’s when procrastination becomes a real problem: a problem that impacts your career, your work and your personal life. Procrastination not only affects how other people see and think about you, but also how you see and think about yourself. It becomes part of who you are.
Edward Young called procrastination the “thief of time” — but it’s actually worse than that because it not only steals your time, it also steals your future. It stops you from achieving important goals in your life and enjoying the level of success that you want.
The worst part about habitual procrastination is that you know that you’ll be worse off by procrastinating — but you still do it anyway. Deep down you know that you could do better and achieve more if procrastination wasn’t holding you back.
Rodger is right on here. I believe that most often procrastination is caused by fear. When I realize that I am procrastinating, I always ask myself this question, “What are you afraid of here, Bud?” Most often I find that I’m afraid of failing; that doing what I’ve been putting off may result in some kind of failure – my efforts won’t be good enough, they won’t cut it.
Once I identify the reason for my fear, it’s pretty easy for me to get over it and get on with the task at hand. In fact, I had an experience with this just yesterday. I was putting off recording some modules in for my Common Sense Success System. Once I realized I was procrastinating, and my procrastination was being caused by my fear of not doing a good job on the modules, I reviewed the slides I had developed for the modules and saw they were very good. That gave me the confidence to put on the headset and start recording. My fear of not being up to the task was manifesting itself in my procrastination. Once I figured this out, it was easy for me to get on with the task.
This works for me. If you don’t think it will work for you, you might want to try Rodger’s procrastination elimination training. You can check it out at http://www.goalstoaction.com/sale/. I don’t have an affiliate relationship with Rodger. I’m suggesting this to you because I’ve seen his stuff and I know it works – and I want you to succeed in creating the successful life and career you want and deserve.
The common sense point here is simple. Successful people are self confident. Self confident people are optimistic. They face their fears and act. They surround themselves with positive people. Procrastination is the manifestation of fear. When you find yourself procrastinating on any task, identify what you fear about that task. Once you identify your fear, you’ll find that you can put it behind you and get on with the job at hand. Procrastination and fear are the enemies of self confidence and success. Face them head on, and you’ll not only build your confidence, you’ll succeed in your life and career.
That’s my take on procrastination, fear and self confidence. What’s yours? Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us – and your best advice for beating procrastination and fear. As always, thanks for reading. I appreciate it.
Bud
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