What can you do about those fear-faith whisperings? Here’s what I did. I decided that a good way to build self-confidence and courage would be to simply tune out the whisperings of fear, just play hard of hearing and refuse to listen to every negative thought or word that came my way.
In building confidence and faith in yourself there is no such thing as “do it later”. Today decide what you’re going to do tomorrow. Today is what counts. Put out of your mind the fears, weaknesses and confidence destroying thoughts of a week ago, a month ago, a year ago. Today is the day you must decide you’ll let your mind—faith—control your body. Today is the day you banish fear forever. But, you ask, how?
FIVE RULES TO GET RID OF FEAR
1. Believe in yourself. Self-confidence starts with belief in yourself. Remember those seven powerful words: You can if you think you can. Repeat them aloud. Let them soak into your system. Then, do this: Add just two more words below them—and these are from my own experience—I will. You will if you think you will.
2. Associate with confident people. Stay away from negative, fearful people. I made it a rule to associate only with those who did not fear the future and were self confident. By doing so I reinforced my own self confidence. Remember, confidence breeds confidence.
3. Tune up your confidence machine. Confidence is the muscle that lets you tackle risk-taking and win. Muscles need to be developed through exercise or working out. Your confidence muscle—your self assurance can be developed and it begins with believing in yourself.
4. Be the master of your ship. Henry Ford said that all confident people gained their courage by facing their fears instead of running away from them. You must learn to do the same. Face your self doubts squarely and say, “Am I bigger than they are or are they bigger than I?” Be the captain of your ship.
5. Keep busy. In a busy person fear and self doubt can find little room to dwell.
Fear and faith. Failure and success. Have faith in yourself, faith in others, faith in your abilities and faith in your future. Refuse to listen to the whisperings of fear—turn up the volume on the whisperings of
faith and believe in yourself! Faith is said to be the assurance of things hoped for. I like to put a Girard spin on that. I believe that hoping will never get you anywhere, nor will wishing or expecting. Put your faith in planning, not wishing. Only that kind of faith will get you to the top.
Faith can be a positive factor in your life, and therefore a positive factor in your business and all other actions you undertake to get to the top—and, more important, to stay there. If you have faith in yourself, faith that you can be what you want to be, then do something about it. Faith, when exercised, carried me through the early disappointments in my life. It sustained me when I was down, so broke that I hardly knew where to turn, and it rewarded me when I took the steps that carried me to the top. As faith worked, and still works for me, so it can work for you. And remember, the number one rule is to have faith in yourself the greatest product in the world, an individual who has no counter part anywhere!
