For me, the Memorial Day weekend is more than a US holiday and the unofficial start of summer. Memorial Day weekend is always the middle weekend of the French Open — one of the four tennis majors. If you read this blog with any regularity, you know that I often find career advice in sporting events. This year’s French Open presents another opportunity to connect career success with sports.
One of the biggest upsets so far this year was Kim Clijsters loss in the second round to Arantxa Rus, the 114th ranked player in the world. Kim Clijsters was seeded second in this year’s French Open. She won the two previous tennis majors, the 2011 Australian Open and 2010 US Open. If I were a betting man, I would have bet heavily on her to beat Arantxa Rus.
Last week Kim Clijsters lost two match points and 11 of the last 12 games to Arantxa Rus. After the match she said..
“I starting doubting a little bit. When you start doubting yourself on any surface – but for me definitely on clay – it’s the wrong attitude to have.”
In other words, Kim Clijsters was eliminated from this year’s French Open because she lost her confidence. Arantxa Rus, on the hand gained confidence as the match went on. Kim Clijsters said, “She obviously starting building up more confidence, started playing a lot better, and was really putting me on my back foot all the time.”
Confidence is important in sports. It’s also important if you want to create the life and career success you want and deserve.
There are five keys to building the self confidence that will help you create the life and career success you want and deserve…
First, you have to become an optimist. Optimism is the key to self confidence. If you aren’t optimistic about your chances of creating your career success, you will never do it. Optimism is a choice. Optimistic people believe that today will be better than yesterday and tomorrow will be better yet. Choose optimism and you’ll be on your way to being more self confident and creating your life and career success.
Second, you have to face your fears and act. We’re all afraid sometime. If you want to become a career success, you have to overcome your fear of failure and move forward. I find that procrastination is the physical manifestation of fear. The next time you find yourself procrastinating ask yourself a simple question, “What am I afraid of here?” Once you identify your fear, do something. Take action. The worst thing that will happen is that you’ll learn what not do in similar situations in the future.
Third, surround yourself with positive people. Positive people will help you become more self confident and help you on your way to career success. Avoid negative people. As Tweet 50 in my career advice book Success Tweets says, “Jettison the negative people in your life. They are energy black holes. They will suck you dry; but only if you let them.” Cynics are negative people. They may seem to be good company at first because they are witty. However, in the long run, you’ll find that they humor usually comes at the expense of others. They are negative people in disguise and will drag you down if you spend too much time with them.
Fourth, find a mentor to help you on your way to life and career success. Mentors are positive people by definition. They are willing to give of themselves to help others create their life and career success. You can learn a lot from your mentors. But I think the best thing you can learn is how to deal with setbacks and disappointments and keep moving forward in a self confident manner.
Fifth, become a mentor. It’s never too early to become a mentor. There is always somebody who needs to learn what you already know. You never learn something as well when you teach it to others. Becoming a mentor will help you cystalize the career success lessons in your experiences. This will help you build your self confidence. Also, as you watch the people you help grow and move toward their career success, your self esteem – and self confidence – will grow.
The career success coach point here is simple common sense. If you want to create the life and career success you deserve, you need to be self confident. There are five keys to building your self confidence: 1) choose optimism; 2) face your fears and act; 3) surround yourself with positive people; 4) work with a mentor; and 5) mentor others. If all else fails, follow the career advice in Tweet 52 in Success Tweets. “Identify the self confident people you know. Pay attention to how they act and carry themselves. Watch what they do. Act like them.”
That’s my career advice on self confidence. What do you think? Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment. As always, thanks for reading my daily thoughts on life and career success. I value you and I appreciate you.
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Bud
PS: If you haven’t already done so, you can download a free copy of my latest career success book Success Tweets Explained. It’s a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail. Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy. You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.
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