“It’s such a fine line between stupid, and uh…”
“Clever.”
“Yeah, and clever.”
– David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel in Spinal Tap, perhaps the most accurate movie about the music business ever made.
There’s also a fine line between confidence and stupidity.
Confidence Is:
- A must: you cannot succeed without confidence in who you are, what you do, how you do it and why you’re doing it.
- Sensed: don’t underestimate people’s intuition about things like confidence. They will know whether you have it or not, and they will react accordingly.
- Directing: the fact that people will react accordingly means that confidence will ultimately direct the course of your life. Scary? Yes. But don’t worry because confidence is also:
- Learned and nurtured: make sure you do both.
Stupidity
Sadly, what most people think represents confidence is in fact stupidity.
- Telling everyone how amazing you are is not confidence.
- Seeking and hogging the spotlight is not confidence.
- Knowing it all is not confidence, telling everyone that you know it all is even worse.
The line between confidence and stupidity is humility.
Humility
“Recognizing the limits of one’s talents, ability, or authority; and, not reaching for what is beyond one’s grasp” – Wikipedia.
This definition of humility means:
- You know who you are, what you do, how you do it and why you’re doing it.
- You know who you’re not, what you can’t do, and why you don’t do it.
- You reach for what is within your grasp, but nothing more.
How do you know these things? Learning and nurturing.
How do you reach for what is within your grasp? With confidence.
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