The Second Pillar: The Secret to Building Unstoppable Self-Confidence

This pillar has fundamental importance in all areas of your life. Self-confidence gives you the edge on the competition to land you the dream job, find the love of your life, negotiate a better price for a used car, and succeed in school as well as in life.

“People would rather have someone who is strong
and wrong than someone who’s weak and right.”
-Bill Clinton

We gravitate toward people who demonstrate strong self-confidence: we immediately see them as more attractive, more successful, more charismatic, and so forth. But how do you develop self- confidence? What is it? Where does it come from?

Self-confidence is simply defined as the realistic self-belief in one’s own judgment, ability, power, and so forth. How can you make sure no matter what happens in your life, your self-confidence is built on an indestructible foundation?

The secret to self-confidence is attaching your worth to something that never changes.

This pillar is the true foundation for never losing your belief in your abilities and what you can achieve. In our society, we’re taught our self-confidence is based on short-lived things.

We are made to believe we are only as good we look. If you’re beautiful, then you should have confidence. If you’re smart, popular, athletic, or rich, then you are allowed to have self-confidence. This idea gets perpetuated by celebrities, gossip magazines, music videos, and really everything in the media. And it is the worst bunch of crap I’ve ever heard.

Nothing can be further from the truth.

At some point, someone will always be smarter than you, better looking than you, faster than you, or stronger than you. When your self-confidence is based on something so trivial as outward appearance, it is extremely easy to shatter it.

The truth is that someone may be better than you at a specific thing, but that doesn’t make that person better than you as a person. If you judged how good a lion is based on a dolphin’s abilities, the lion would seem pretty inferior. It can’t swim as fast, it can’t jump in and out of water, and it can’t hold its breath for long periods of time.

So then why is the lion the king? A lion judged as a dolphin is inferior, and a dolphin judged as a lion is equally inferior. It’s comparing apples to oranges.

I see this all the time when I speak at high schools. A student will come in wearing the newest Nikes and feel like he is the king of the world. “Look at me, I’m good because I have these sneakers.” And then somebody comes by with a more exclusive pair plus a hot shirt, jeans, and chain. BAM! The first student’s self-confidence goes down the drain. Then it becomes a game you can never win, because you always have to keep up with what’s new and hot. In addition to being foolish, it’s VERY expensive.

Arel Moodie is widely known as America's Top Young Speaker. He has spoken to over 65,000 students in 39 states and 2 countries on the topics of student success, student leadership and student entrepreneurship. He is a leading authority on helping students of this generation succeed in school and in life. He is also the best selling author of the book Your Starting Point For Student Success. To find out more about Arel's book, go to www.startingpointbook.com. To find out more about Arel's speaking please go to www.arelmoodie.com.