‘OF all the traps and pitfalls of life, lack of self-confidence is the deadliest and the hardest to overcome, for it is a pit designed and dug by our own hands, summed up in the phrase “It is no use, I can’t do it”’— Maxwell Maltz.
Self-confidence or self-esteem is applied faith.
To have self-confidence or self-esteem is to develop your positive belief or faith at action level in God, in yourself; in other people; in your own ability to succeed in your life; and in the opportunities of your country, continent and world at large.
With self-confidence, you will be able to look for the good in and expect the best from every situation in your life.
Colin Turner defines self-confidence as, ‘the ability to rise above negative feelings, failure and mistakes.
Believe in yourself actively…Confidence comes from belief.
Work on your inner world to strengthen your outer world.
Your inner world creates your outer world.
Be yourself and you will be respected for it. You will be remembered for it.
Believe in yourself, your individuality and purpose’.
We all have our in-born self-confidence and tremendous power.
However, as Robert Kiyosaki observes, the one thing that holds all of us is self-doubt: the false perception of lack of self-confidence.
Remember that your mind does not differentiate between what is real and what is imagined as long as it is mixed with your belief and conviction.
It proceeds to transform your any predominant thought mixed with your belief and conviction into its equivalent physical reality.
Norman Vincent Peale says ‘Believe in yourself. Have faith in your abilities. ..With sound self-confidence, you can succeed.
A sense of inferiority and inadequacy interferes with the attainment of your hopes, but self-confidence leads to self-realisation and successful achievement.
Believe in yourself and release your inner powers.
Develop a tremendous faith in God and that will give you a humble yet soundly realistic faith in yourself’.
For example, at four years old Muhammad Ali already had all the self-confidence that he needed. His father had taught him two important lessons:
(1) Be the best at whatever you do, and (2) overcome that which you fear.
At four, Ali started to imagine and visualize winning the world heavyweight boxing championship. His mother Odessa Clay recalls that ‘By the time he was four, he had all the confidence in the world. Everything he did seemed different as a child. He had confidence in himself and that gave me confidence in him. He started boxing when he was 12, and we would sit at night, and he would tell me how someday he was going to be champion of the world. The important thing was that he had a belief in God’.
One of Ali’s fiercest boxing opponents George Foreman agrees, ‘Ali put God ahead of everything’.
Gary Smith of Sports Illustrated says that ‘Ali fought for God’ and Bill Russell also says that ‘Ali has an absolute and sincere faith’.
Remember that faith alone is as dead as action alone to make you succeed. It takes both faith and action to succeed.
Proverbs 10:22 says ‘It is the Lord’s blessing that makes you wealthy. Hard work can make you no richer’.
Thomas Hauser writes that ‘In 1960 just before Ali went to Rome, Italy, for the Olympic Games, he was saying, “My name is Cassius Clay; I am going to the Olympics; I am going to be the next heavyweight
champion of the world”.
Ali held center stage for 20 years and fought through the terms of seven presidents.
He was black and proud of it at a time when many black Americans were running from their colour’.
In March 1963, the founder of Ebony Magazine African-American John Johnson said about Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, that ‘Cassius Marcellus Clay is a blast furnace of racial pride. He is a pride that would never mask itself with skin lighters and processed hair, a pride scorched with memories of a million little burns’.
Schopenhauer observes that ‘We give away three quarters of our lives to be like other people.
Muhammad Ali won a Gold Medal at the Rome Olympics and 10 years later in 1964, from the time he started boxing, he won the world boxing heavyweight championship after beating the formidable champion Sonny Liston, another African-American.
Bryant Gumble recalls that ‘Ali was supremely talented and enormously confident’.
One of the greatest displays of Ali’s talent, supreme self-confidence, skill and experience was given on October 30, 1974 in Zambia’s neighbouring country Zaire then, and now Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), when he fought against George Foreman to regain the world boxing championship for the second time.
Ali inspired the local African audience just as much as the local African audience inspired Ali with its local African warrior chant ‘Ali, Bomaye! Meaning, ‘Ali, kill him!’
At 10 seconds before the end of round eight, Ali knocked down George Foremen. The audience went electric!
I was in secondary school then and I remember vividly how many Zambians, like many other people all over the world, followed closely on Radio and television this epic Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire dubbed ‘Rumble in the Jungle’.
In 1980, when Muhammad Ali retired from boxing, he had an impressive record of 61 total fights; 56 wins, 37 knockouts, and only five losses.
In addition, Ali became the first world heavyweight boxing champion to win the championship three times from 1964 to 1967 after beating Sonny Liston, 1974 to 1978 after beating George Foreman and 1978 to 1979 after beating Leon Spinks.
The major factors behind Ali’s success include his strong belief in God, well-developed sense of mind, ambition, purpose, talent and goal that he loved to pursue, and his ability to be the best at whatever he did by confronting what he feared.
Ali himself says that ‘Champions are not made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them — a desire, a dream, a vision.
‘He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life…I am not afraid to be what I want to be…The hardest part of training is loneliness…It is lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges and I believed in myself.
I was confident and I trained hard…I took myself as far as I could go, and then God took me the rest of my way.
Being a gifted person, being one of the best in the world at what you do is a great feeling. I am so great, I impress myself…It is the heart, soul and mind that count’.
Muhammad Ali once told Huston Horn of Sports Illustrated that ‘One of these days, they are liable to make the house I grew up in a national shrine’.
Ali’s advice, applicable in any field, is that be in good shape spiritually, mentally and physically; believe in yourself and be extremely self-confident all the time; be scientific (have a scheme, strategy or plan of action for your success); know your field more than anyone else; use speed to your advantage; time your opponent (by having extra fuel in your tank); move (to look for chances and opportunities), stay out of range (by paying attention to the moves of your opponent); and keep distance, if necessary (by being ahead of your opponent through your self-improvement).
All self-confident people believe that something in them (divinity, talent, creativity and application) is superior to any circumstance.
Be self-confident to succeed in your life.
(The author is a motivational mentor and consultant in Positive Mindset Change)
Email: positivemindpower1511@yahoo.com.