“The secret of confidence is focusing on what you can control, not on what you can’t.” – Mira Kirshenbaum
Self-confidence is the key to emotional energy.
Without confidence, everything can feel like an uphill battle or an impossible hurdle.
Instead of a bounce in your step, or springing to action, you drag your feet, or you expect the worst. Just imagine the energy you would get if you knew you couldn’t fail.
In the book, The Emotional Energy Factor: The Secrets High-Energy People Use to Beat Emotional Fatigue, Mira Kirshenbaum writes about the secret of confident people.
Confident People Focus on What They Can Control
There is a way. But you have to focus on the right thing. In the case of confidence, knowing what to focus on is more than half the battle.
It’s everything!
If you ever feel a loss of confidence or find yourself in the No-Confidence Trap, you need to know how to break out of it. To break out of it, you need to first understand how it works.
Basically, you lose your confidence when you focus on the wrong things. People that lack confidence focus on the outcomes. They focus on the times they struck out, their mistakes, their failures, and disasters.
Basically, they focus on the things they can’t control. Confident people on the other hand, focus on what they can control, such as taking action or giving their best.
This one little distinction is the key to building your unshakeable confidence and getting back on the saddle again.
Confidence is the Holy Grail
When it comes to energy, confidence is the key.
Kirshenbaum writes:
“In people’s lifelong journey to improve themselves, confidence is the Holy Grail. With it, you can walk on water.
Without it, you’re soggy toast. That’s why we all want it.
What gives you more emotional energy than confidence, than knowing that you can step up to the challenge and win?”
With great confidence, comes great results. But it’s the journey and how you approach things that makes the difference.
“Why Try?”
When you don’t have any confidence, you will be emotionally drained. You’ll expect things to go wrong, and they will, and this will suck you down.
Kirshenbaum writes:
“Loss of confidence is devastating for our emotional energy. Without confidence, the two most horrible words in the English language take hold of us: ‘Why try?’
These words are horrible because they’re the beginning of doom for any enterprise we care about, including love.”
Losing your confidence is one way to feel emotionally drained, as if you can’t win.
Focus on What You Control
Rather than focus on the end-results, focus on the effort you put in and the attitude you choose when you face your challenges. These are the things you can control.
Kirshenbaum writes:
“The secret of confident people is that they focus on what they know they can do and then they do that in the best way they can.
And they don’t worry about the outcome. The batter steps up to the plate. All he can do is keep his eye on the ball and do his best.
That’s what all the good hitters do.”
Key Takeaways
Here are my key takeaways:
- A loss of confidence drains you emotionally. Without confidence you can’t see a way out or you approach things half-heartedly. When you approach things half-heartedly, you lose. It’s a downward spiral.
- You can break the No-Confidence Trap if you know how. The No-Confidence Trap is a vicious cycle: You can’t win without confidence and you can’t get confidence without winning. However, it’s easy to break out of the No-Confidence Trap, if you know how.
- Focus on what you control. Don’t focus on outcomes. You can’t control the outcomes for a situation. To build your confidence, you have to focus on what you control, not on what you can’t. This is the sure-fire way to break out of the No-Confidence Trap and build or rebuild your confidence.
If you want to improve your energy and your confidence, then focus on what you control.
Don’t fall into the No-Confidence Trap. If you’re asking yourself, “Why try?”, it’s because you’re focusing on the outcomes instead of what you can control.
Don’t focus on outcomes.
Focus on your actions.
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