800-CEO-READ Blog

Have confidence?

Side note: If you missed John's first two entries of the day, check them out here and here.

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I think any growing organization or career-achiever will have an inherent advantage, but they did not necessarily start off with it—though they may have developed it along the way as one success leads to another. Clearly, aggressive opportunists will find an edge on the competition. And smart leaders attract smart subordinates, if only out of curiosity to see where this guy is headed. Make no small plans, advises real estate mogul Sam Zell, a billionaire who typifies the aggressive opportunist and has owned or controlled companies across a broad variety of sectors. But I would say almost all achievers have this advantage: they believe in themselves and in what they’re doing. The fact is that most people aren’t going to wake up some day and be the chief executive of an international company or own millions of square feet of real estate in 20 American cities. But we can all pursue our goals with confidence, and confidence is something that these people all have in abundance. You don’t always need a ton of money to get things done—though usually it helps—and you don’t have to have established connections or an Ivy League education or flowing locks of silver hair. But if you have the confidence in yourself and what you’re doing and where you’re headed, you can and will succeed. WE can all work on our confidence, so several interviews explore how that can happen.