Confidence

I used to think that I would be the last person who should be writing about confidence. I used to be shy and self-conscious, and was always worried about how others perceived me. I often second-guessed myself. As a college intern, I was so shy and unsure that it would take me an hour to muster up the confidence to make one quick phone call to another company.

I also thought that I'd be the last person who should be owning my own business, since that requires getting out there and finding clients on my own. It requires actually talking to strangers and, within an hour, proving to them that I am the best person for their project.

But accidents do happen. And in the same accidental way that I wound up owning a business, I also stumbled onto finding my confidence.

Confidence, to me, happened over time. Confidence is the result of years of honing my skills to the point where I knew myself well enough to be able to answer any question with authority and a definite "yes", or if necessary, a definite "no". Most importantly, when I didn't know an answer, I was confident enough to say "I don't know."

What I learned was people, including clients, prefer simple, straightforward answers. They like passion and conviction, and they can sense when I am telling the absolute truth, or when I'm fidgeting around trying to look for a good enough answer because I wasn't really sure.

The more I focused on simplifying my idea and the process, the better the projects turned out. The more I defined myself and what I do, the more confident I got.

But in order to define myself, I had to know my stuff, and that takes work.

By "work", I mean researching the market that I'm in. It means putting extra time into knowing my strengths and limitations. It means being honest with myself, what I'm capable of, and how I should be improving myself.

All of this "work" takes time. In fact, it takes so much time that, in addition to everything else that needs to get done on a daily basis, there's no time left for fidgeting around. There's time to be self-aware but no time to be self-conscious. There's time for productivity but no time for wasteful doubt.

After everything is said and done, there's only time for what really matters. And this is where I get my confidence--doing all that I can to do what needs to get done, being honest with myself in the process, and being simple and straightforward with my clients.

Other people may have other definitions for confidence, but this is mine. And I am confident in that answer.