Barrie Davenport [Davenport - Confidence Hacks: 99 Small Actions to Massively Boost Your Confidence

"Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence.
Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear."

~ Norman Vincent Peale

Action is the cure for low confidence. Unfortunately, low confidence has a tendency to immobilize us. When you doubt yourself and your abilities, the last thing you want to do is put yourself out there to fall flat on your face. It's much easier to remain in the safe confines of the status quo and not expose yourself to the possibility of failure or rejection.

There's a reason your confidence has taken a hit. It could be a legitimate reason, like recently getting fired or suffering from acute shyness. Or it could be some relatively minor event from the past that no longer applies to youbut it has grown to monstrous proportions in your mind, and you keep feeding this monster with negative thoughts.

Either way, your immediate or distant past doesn't define you now or your future potential. Change and growth are always possible when you're motivated and determined, regardless of your past, your personality, or your self-perceptions. If you want to be confident, you can beif you're willing to take action. And not just one action or a few actions, but repeated actions until fear and doubt no longer have a grip on you.

All success begins with thought and culminates in action. It is possible action will result in failure, but inaction always leads to nothingguaranteed. An essential component of confidence is the ability to be comfortable with the uncertainty of action and the sting of failure. Failure will happen on occasion. Sometimes it happens many times.

Abraham Lincoln had two business ventures fail, lost eight different elections, and had a complete nervous breakdown before becoming president. Thomas Edison, who has 1,093 US patents to his name, was told by a teacher that he was too stupid to learn anything. He performed nearly 10,000 failed experiments before creating the first successful light bulb. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team for a "lack of skill." Even after becoming a pro, he says he missed more than 9,000 shots, lost almost 300 games, and missed the game-winning shots twenty-six times.

More than likely, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, and Michael Jordan went through periods of low self-confidence. But instead of letting failure completely derail them, they tried again and again and again. They took action and learned from their failures, re-calibrated their efforts, and eventually claimed success. Failure is a temporary state, fraught with potential and opportunitybut only if you get up off the ground, dust yourself off, and start moving again.

The fear of failure and rejection is the only thing standing between you and confidence. The only way to beat that fear is to take action on the very thing you that holds you back. It doesn't take much action in the beginning. Small, manageable actions in the direction of your goals and dreams are enough to get the ball rolling. Every successful small action will give you an immediate boost of confidence to try again. Even setbacks can show you the value of action and reinforce your ability to break through inertia and fear.

I've created this book to help you take small and manageable actions to jumpstart your confidence in ten different areas of your life. You may not lack confidence in all of these areas, but the actions can further cement your existing confidence and provide skills you can utilize for related situations that arise in the future. You never know when you might step into the quicksand of insecurity and doubt and need some tools to help pull you out.

I encourage you to read through the entire book once, making notes about the ideas and actions that apply to you and your difficulties with confidence. Then go back to these specific areas, prioritize them, and begin working through the recommended Action Steps . You may find the actions for one area help boost your confidence in another.

As Abraham Lincoln reminds, "You can have anything you wantif you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose." If confidence is your purpose, offer no more power or energy to thoughts and behaviors of self-doubt and fear. Take action now, and become the person you want to be.