Confidence – the Difference Between Success and Failure?

We often here the phrase mindset determines outcome.

Which is a great idea but it’s not 100% true.

I have always had a strong mindset about becoming the MVP of the National Basketball Association, but as a 54 year old, 5 foot 6 inch tall person – which for the NBA would be classed as very very short – I am not sure that the mindset thing is going to work.

Confidence doesn’t guarantee success!

However I would say that a lack of confidence pretty much guarantees failure. This is because of how our confidence impacts they way we think and how we act and react.

If we believe that we will fail, when things go wrong, we just shrug our shoulders and say I told you that was going to happen. We accept the failure, we see it as inevitable, and consequently do not take any action to turn things around.

We allow ourselves to fail with little or no fight.

If we believe that we are going to be successful, then when things start to go awry we are much more likely to look for solutions, solutions that we believe already exist, because our confidence tells us there is a way to be successful.

We refuse to accept failure, we look to go down fighting.

It’s this act of choosing to look, choosing to try that has the biggest impact on the outcome.  Woody Allen says ‘Eighty percent of success is showing up‘.  I agree with him. When we show up, when we try, and this is when the magic can happen.

If we don’t try then failure is guaranteed, but if we do try who knows, we may just surprise everyone.

History and sports are littered with tales of surprising victories where the underdog has managed to defeat the favourite, because they had the confidence, and the belief that they could be victorious.

But here lies one of the challenges with confidence, too often the favourite in these situations were often over confident, and over confidence can result in failure just as much as a lack of confidence.

When we are over confident, we can believe that success is guaranteed and that we can achieve this with minimal effort. But success nearly always required hard work. Nothing is ever just gifted to us, or at least not that frequently.

The right level of confidence ensures that we carry out the right level of preparation, that we have the right level of commitment, and that we have the right level of determination to succeed.

All of which means – we’re well prepared, we will start hard and are prepared to finish hard  – and when you do that you absolutely give yourself a great chance of success!

So whilst mindset does’t determine outcome, confidence can be the difference between success and failure!

If you want to know more about how to boost your confidence in order to boost your chance of success then email me at gordon@leadership-principles.com.