Successful, self confident people – whether field goal kickers, professional tennis players or you and me — realize that mistakes are part of life. Learn from your mistakes. Build on this knowledge. Commit to Point 7 of The Optimist Creed, “Promise yourself to forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievement of the future.” If you do this, you’ll be on your way to creating the life and career success you want and deserve.

That’s my career advice on lessons learned the hard way and The Optimist Creed. 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. I have created a .pdf of The Optimist Creed that you can frame and hang in your workspace. If you want a copy, send me an email with the words “Optimist Creed” in the subject line.

Successful people are self-confident. Self-confident people don’t let their fears get in the way of their success. They follow the career advice in Tweet 47 in Success Tweets. “Act. Feel the fear and do it anyway. That’s the definition of courage, and a great way to build your self-confidence.” Identify your fears, and then do what you need to do to move past them. Action is the great antidote to fear. It puts inertia on your side. Once you are moving forward, you are likely to continue moving forward. It’s the first step that is the hardest – and scariest. If you want to beat your fears, you need to take the first step – act, and then keep on going.

Build your life and career success by focusing on what you are becoming. Be confident that you will succeed. Look forward to meeting the challenges you will face. Career success is a journey, not a destination. Treat it that way. Use the career advice in Tweet 41 in Success Tweets. “Focus on what you are becoming. This helps you believe in yourself and builds your confidence.” Commit to taking personal responsibility for your life and career. Set high goals; then do whatever it takes to meet or exceed them. React positively to the setbacks, problems and negative people and events in your life. Keep at it. Don’t let a day when you come back empty handed in your quest for building a remarkable life and career get you down. Get up the next day with optimism in your heart, focused on what you are becoming and keep working.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense. We all lost a good friend this week, Steve Jobs. I began this post with a quote from George Bernard Shaw that applies to Steve Jobs. I’d like to finish with another one. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” Steve Jobs was an unreasonable man – that’s why he is iconic, and the world is a better place for him having been in it. He believed in himself and his ideas. He was incredibly self confident. All successful people are self-confident. They understand and apply the career advice in Tweet 56 in Success Tweets. “Self-confidence must come from within. Outside reinforcement and strokes can help, but you have to build your own confidence.” You can build your self-confidence by becoming an optimist, facing your fears and acting and surrounding yourself with positive people. Self-confidence is an inside job. You have to create it yourself. But once you do, you’ll find that it’s an upward spiral. Your confidence will inspire you to take on challenges. Your success in dealing with these challenges will help you become more confident – which in turn, will allow you to take on and meet even greater challenges. Just look at Steve Jobs and what he created at Apple.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense. Successful people are self-confident. Self-confident people face their fears and act. They follow the career advice in Tweet 45 in Success Tweets. “Everyone is afraid sometime. Self-confident people face their fears and act. Look your fears in the eye and do something.” Procrastination is the physical manifestation of fear. When you find yourself procrastinating, figure out what scares you about the situation. Is it fear of failure? Is it fear of success? Is it fear of rejection? Is it fear of being embarrassed? Is it fear of the unknown? Once you’ve figured out why you are afraid, do three things: admit your fear to yourself; embrace your fear; take action. Action is the antidote to fear and an important career success key.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense. You have to be self confident to create the life and career success you want and deserve. Surrounding yourself with positive people is an important confidence booster. Positive people will lift you. Negative people will drag you down. Use the 20 questions above to help you figure out exactly who the positive and negative people in your life are. Choose to hang around with positive, upbeat people and you’ll be on your way to the life and career success you want and deserve.

Brian Tracy is a great guy.  He has lots of great advice on how to create the life and career success you want and deserve.  He and I share the cover of a book called Speaking of Success.
Brian is also a generous guy.  I’m one of his subscribers.  The other day, I received an email from him in which he offered a self confidence assessment – for free.  You can access it here…
http://media.briantracy.com/downloads/pdf/TheConfidenceFactor.pdf
I suggest you not only download and complete the self confidence self assessment, I suggest that you head over to www.BrianTracy.com and subscribe.
Self …

Saturday morning I got into my car and turned on the radio.  The “Walk of Life” by Dire Straits was playing.  I thought, “How appropriate.  I’m heading off to the Women’s Vision Mentoring Walk in Denver’s City Park.”  I had a great time.  I volunteered as a mentor.  I had a chance to share my life and career success advice with the two women with whom I had been paired as we strolled around what, in my opinion, is the most beautiful of Denver’s parks.
Following the walk, all mentors and mentees were treated to a …

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.  …

I found a very cool site on a recent Monster Blog post.  It’s called DailyFeats.  Go to http://www.dailyfeats.com and sign up.  You’ll be taking advantage of the career advice in Tweet 49 in my career success book Success Tweets if you do.  “Surround yourself with positive people.  Hold them close.  They will give you energy and help you create the career success you deserve.”
DailyFeats is the online social platform where people share their positive actions — their feats. They suggest hundreds of feats you can perform, small things like eating more fruits and veggies or …