Quick: Who’s the twenty-ninth president of the United States?
Remember
back when you were in school and the teacher would stand at the front of the room and ask questions just like that, ostensibly
to catch those who hadn’t read their assignment? But really, more than anything else, she was trying to eliminate
those who had read the assignment. She was trying to figure out which students she didn’t
need to call on again.
As a student, if you were like me, the one thing you didn’t
want was to be called on, ever. And if you were called on, please dear Alesh, let her embarrass me quickly
and not keep asking me all these stupid questions. But she always kept right on asking. Until I discovered
the answer.
What I discovered was confidence. Even if I answered correctly,
but without confidence – you know, that questioning tone in my voice, hesitation, or even declaring that I wasn’t
sure – it all meant the same thing to the teacher: I didn’t know. She wasn’t going to let me
off the hook if she thought I had made a lucky guess. It wasn’t good enough to be right; I had to be right with
confidence. And then I discovered the coolest thing of all: I could be wrong with confidence, too. The only
thing that mattered was the confidence. My secret: I acted like I wanted to be called on, even volunteered, and
then I answered with confidence. No hesitation. No stammering. No questioning lilt to my voice. And
never – never ever ever – did I state that I might be wrong. I knew I was right, by golly. And if
I weren’t… it sounded like I had just made a silly blunder. I had read the assignment, but I just got confused.
It was time to move on to some other student. Oh, it didn’t always work. She might call on me again.
But without hesitation, I knew that answer, too. Barney Rubble could’ve been the 29th President
for all I cared. But I cared with confidence.
And from that lesson I discovered
that the secret to almost everything in life is confidence. You can walk into the zoo and ride out on an elephant if
you have confidence.
Picture this: You’re in a chorus line on stage in front
of 2,000 people. You don’t want to be there, but that’s the sort of thing that can happen when you go to
National Conferences. The one thing you don’t want above everything else is to look stupid. Now who do you
think is going to stand out more? The guy who is kicking his leg as high as everybody else, or the one who doesn’t
hardly kick at all because he’s embarrassed? It was a trick question. You don’t really need to answer
it. It’s all about confidence.
Try selling a used car without confidence.
Try not getting suckered in to buying a car you didn’t really want without confidence. Try getting a job without
confidence.
One of the keys to confidence is never putting
yourself down. Why should you? There are always others who are willing to do it for you. Let them.
Then you can use your time for better things, like finding elephant chow.
Don’t
apologize for a meal nobody has tasted yet. Telling me that the chicken won’t be very good is a sure way to pique
my appetite. (That was sarcasm.) When I taught speech, if I had a student declare that a speech wasn’t going
to be very good, I deducted points before she ever began. Heck, you tell me something is going to suck, then I’m
going to believe you. If you tell me a paper is not going to be very good, or that you may have made some mistakes,
or you’re not sure if you did it right – hey! You just made my grading easier. Now I know what I’m
looking for. And I already know that when I find it, it will be bad. And here’s the thing. It may
not have been bad at all. It may have been one of those marginal things, something that, depending on how one sees it,
could either be good or bad. I’m likely to lean whichever way you’ve already pushed me. If you say
it’s bad, it’s bad.
Picture this: You’re walking down a hallway
and somebody yells, “Hey, stupid!” Whatever you do, don’t turn around. Just keep right on walking,
because it couldn’t possibly be you. If, on the other hand, somebody yells, “Hey, good looking!”
Then turn around. Assume it is you. And if it’s not… it was an honest mistake.
But…
but… but… wouldn’t that be… dishonest? I mean, what if I really know that my paper sucks?
I cut corners, I plagiarized the entire third page, and I mispelled misspelled. Should I lie? Well, I suppose
that’s up to you. But why is there a moral dilemma here at all? Why do you need to say anything?
Being honest doesn’t mean that you have to say everything that pops into your brain. Remember when your mother
told you that if you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all? A smart lady was your mother.
She wasn’t just talking about what you might say to others.
Is there such
a thing as over-confidence? Hell, no. Ok… maybe. You may want to give it some serious thought if
its anything that has a lot to do with gravity. You might want to tone your confidence down if it involves a tight wire,
200 feet of freefall, and no net. Being confident that you can dodge bullets, swallow swords, or leap from one moving
car to another while finishing your fourteenth adult beverage of the evening may not only be one of the worst ideas you’ve
ever had, it may be your last. And therein lies the difference. You can still have really bad ideas, with or without
confidence. You can still think up things you really shouldn’t do. Things that are incompatible with life.
However, if you’re going to do them anyway, why not do them with confidence? With a little flair? If you’re
going to ride a surfboard over Niagara Falls anyway, you might is well be hanging ten with your chest out and a smile on your
face when you do. Go ahead and flash that thumbs up. It’ll make a great picture for the wake.
By the way: It’s William G. Harding. Now, quickly: What’s the “G”
stand for?
