“Low self-confidence isn’t a life sentence. Self-confidence can be learned, practiced, and mastered–just like any other skill. Once you master it, everything in your life will change for the better.”

Barrie Davenport (Author, Building Confidence)

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”

Thomas Jefferson (3rd United States President)

“He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.”

Lao Tzu (Author, Tao Te Ching)

 

The line to get into the Musée d’Orsay in Paris was 300 people long.

It was wrapped around the entire museum.

I hate long lines.

With a passion.

Almost as much as I hate guided tours.

There’s something about being herded around like a cow that I just don’t like.

What a horrible day.

I decided to ditch the line.

Just like I ditched waiting in line to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

But then I remembered a small piece of Advice a friend gave me earlier that year…

“If one door is blocked, try another.”

There had to be another way to get into this museum.

I circled behind the building past where the line finally ended and saw a guy swipe an ID card and walk into an unmarked door.  

I ran up and caught the door. 

Then, before it closed, I burst into a small room full of security guards and museum officials.

Someone to my right yelled at me in French and when I looked over I saw three security guards glaring at me.

Uh oh.

I walked up to them and started smiling and begging in my best broken French.

They started laughing and pointing at me.

I smiled and said “please” like a goon.

They shook their heads.

I stood there with a dumb look on my face until one of them pulled out an ID card and put a sticker on it and pointed to an entrance.

What just happened?

I had no idea but I rushed into the museum before they changed their mind.

It turned out that the small back room I had sneaked into was the press room.

It was where art critics and such went to get into the museum.

The ID card the officials gave me was a press pass.

The pass allowed me to skip every single line in the museum.

It ended up being a great day.  

The Value Of Leadership Advice Over Unsolicited Opinions

You can’t solve a personal problem with someone else’s answer.

Most people, when faced with adversity, run to their friends and families to ask for help.

What should I do?

What do I really want?

Who am I?

These questions can’t be answered by other people.

They must be answered by you and you alone. 

The problem is you’ve been conditioned to value other people’s unsolicited opinions.

You’ve been trained to listen to everything other people say.

This is a mistake.

Instead, you should carefully choose who you listen to.

As a Leader, you should carefully seek out valuable advice.

There is wisdom to be gained from others, but it has to be filtered out from the masses. 

Look—there’s a lot of negative information out there.

There’s a lot of negative advice.

This advice is harmful.

Studies reported by Stanford University News show that exposure to negative opinions lasting 30 minutes or more peels away neurons in your hippocampus, the part of your brain responsible for problem-solving.

Negative opinions literally rot your brain.

Positive advice, on the other hand, can make you smarter.

In fact, studies reported in Scientific American show that merely asking for positive advice can make you look smarter.

The key is that it’s your responsibility to decipher good advice from bad advice.

It’s up to you to figure out which pieces of advice are valuable, and which pieces are harmful.

5 Leadership Tips For Building A Confident Mindset

Acting like a leader is easy.

Actually being a leader is much harder.

Being a real leader means thinking about things differently than those around you.

Instead of obsessing over what value you can get, you need to focus on what value you can give.

Instead of working to get all the credit, you need to work to give out credit to others.

Instead of blindingly consuming information, you must carefully choose the information you consume.

Are you passively listening to other people’s useless opinions?

Or are you seeking out wisdom and strong advice?

The latter will ensure that your development as a confident leader continues.

Here are 5 leadership tips on how to change your mindset for success and build self-confidence…

1. If somebody doesn’t like you just the way you are, show them the door.

There are people in life who will never like you.

NEVER.

The end.

No matter what you do for these people, they will resent you.

They will subtly try to drag you down.

They will play the victim and try to make you feel guilty.

They will poke holes in your dreams.

On and on.

Forget these people.

Quit begging and pleading for them to like you.

Quit groveling.

Instead, focus on the people who already like you.

Focus on the billions of other people in the world who haven’t met you yet and might like you too.

If someone doesn’t like you exactly the way you are, drop them.

Get surgical and cut them out of your life forever.

There’s no use in trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.

Compromising on who you are at your core will just make others like you less anyway.

You’ll like yourself less too.

2. Other people have good ideas too.

You should never listen to other people’s Unsolicited Opinions about your life.

But you should listen to their ideas.

It’s easy to see other people’s ideas as competition for your own ideas.

It’s easy to think that if someone else has a good idea, that it means your ideas are bad.

This kind of thinking is very limited.

Quit ramming your ideas down other people’s throats all day.

Quit externalizing every single thought that comes into your head.

Instead, start paying attention.

Start listening to the ideas of others instead of just waiting for your turn to talk.

You might learn something new that allows you to reach your goals faster. 

3. No one plays a villain in their own lives.

Any time you spend trying to hold up a mirror to show someone they’re wrong is a complete waste of time.

It’s a waste of time because no one will ever see themselves as a bad person.

Sure, they might see that they’ve made a mistake.

They might see that they’ve hurt you.

But they’ll never see that they unjustly hurt you.

They’ll never see themselves as inherently unjust.

They’ll never see themselves as evil.

Most importantly, they will never admit to being evil.

So let it go. 

Quit wasting your time trying to get a confession.

Besides, what’s on the other end of a confession?

A few good feelings?

Sure, you might feel good that you won an argument or got someone to confess to something, but these feelings are not going to bring you close to achieving your goals.

These feelings aren’t going to make the other person like you more.

Instead, your bickering is going to build up resentment and create obstacles.

It’s not worth it.

4. Everyone overestimates what they can do in days but underestimates what they can do in years.

It’s easy to think that working hard for a few days in a row will bring about dramatic changes.

But great things never happen in a few days.

In fact, it’s almost impossible to see improvement in anything in a few days.

This is why so many people start going to the gym and quit three days later when they don’t see results.

Or why thousands of people start businesses and personal projects each year only to give up a few weeks in.

On the other hand, working steadily towards a big goal for one to two years, or even six to twelve months can lead to great things.

People have built entire empires in one to two years.

Startups have disrupted billion dollar industries in one to two years.

In years, anything is possible.

In days, barely anything is possible.

Stop thinking your big breakthrough is going to happen tomorrow.

Instead, treat tomorrow as the start of a big breakthrough that will come after creating strong habits and sticking with these habits for a year or more.

The key is disciplining your mind to stick with something for more than a day.

Quit being a flake.

Show some fortitude.

Show some stick-to-it-iveness.

5. You can’t always control what happens to you but you can always control how you respond to it.

Life is not what happens to you, it’s how you handle what happens to you.

Bad things happen for no reason.

Bad people do bad things.

These things are not your fault.

But how you handle them is.

The reason so many people have a hard time taking responsibility for themselves is because they’ve experienced Pain.

Someone or something did them wrong and it’s not their fault.

This is a very limiting belief.

Look—life is full of pain.

But this is a good thing.

The problem with life is not that there’s pain, it’s that you expect there not to be pain.

But pain is a gift.

Pain creates happiness.

Pain creates ambition.

You can’t always control pain, or when or how it happens. 

But you can always control how you respond to pain.

By taking responsibility for the good or bad in your life, you put yourself back in the driver’s seat.

Now, you have the power to make things better.

Now, you have the power to change your mindset and grow.

The best way to living the life you want is to listen to yourself. At the same time, you should be open-minded enough to listen to other people’s ideas. Never stop learning from others. Don’t blindly follow unsolicited advice but learn to be a perpetual student. Learn to constantly improve. Realize that by following strong habits over the course of months and years, you can make big things happen. By choosing to respond to obstacles in a positive and productive way, you will live a bold, successful, more self-confident life. Until next time, live like a lion.

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