Courage and Confidence

I recently mentioned these words together to a friend, explaining that if you have both, you can do anything. I meant it. Hand in hand, you have a lot of power in life if you own them both. These are not like possessions either, they cannot be taken away from you once you have them - but the hard part is growing with your experiences so you can face each new one head on.

I didn't always have either one. It took me at least 20 years to figure out that you are truly your own worst enemy. Nobody else is more hardnosed, picky, and knowledgeable about your own shortcomings than yourself. While there ARE people out there that are shallow and ridiculous and simply go about picking on others for the sake of it, MOST people around you are thinking more about their own problems than yours.

To address courage - it isn't the absence of fear like so many people think. It is bravery in spite of it, telling yourself that what you are afraid of isn't worth the price of fear, which might be not talking to someone, not trying something new, not accomplishing a goal, etc. If people would only see that they hold themselves back from wonderful things in life and there's nothing really stopping them, can you imagine what we could do? I recall when I was expecting my daughter that SO many people would call me both brave and crazy for saying I was planning to have her naturally without drugs. I'm not brave, and I'm not crazy, and I did have her naturally. A lot of situations are truly mind over matter - if you have motivation and knowledge, then it's not scary, so therefore you are not brave because you're not afraid to begin with.

Confidence... well, this is something I wish I could buy for everyone, everyone I have met and everyone I haven't. Confident people do not quit, they might fall down but they get up again. They try new things even when odds are against them. They don't listen to negativity. Confidence also allows you to prevent yourself from being abused, used, and taken for granted. The key here I think is to have expectations to reach, but REASONABLE ones. When someone has expectations that are consistently too high, eventually they give up because they learn they can never reach them. When someone has expectations that are consistently too low, eventually they become a 'victim of their circumstances' and tell people 'I'm this way because I'm slow' or 'I'm this way because I'm poor' or 'I'm this way because I have no opportunities'. It's all hogwash! We have to stop thinking that who we are or who we can be is ever based on anybody other than ourselves.