A story goes like this. A business executive, who was deep in debt, was seated in a park bench when an old man approached him. Soon they started chatting and after listening to the pathetic life story of the executive, the old man decided to help him. He gave the executive a cheque for $5, 00,000 and told him to meet him at the same place exactly after one year and walked away. The executive saw that the cheque was signed by John D Rockefeller, the richest man on earth during those times. This gave him enormous confidence and he decided to keep aside the cheque as he can use it whenever he wants to. With renewed passion and vigour he started to work and became hugely successful in no time. After one year, the executive came back to the same park to return the cheque. The old man was there waiting for him. As he was about to give back the cheque, a nurse appeared and grabbed the old man telling him that "This man always manages to escape from the rest home and tells people that he is John D Rockefeller". The executive stood there stunned for a moment and soon realized that it was not the money, real or imagined, that turned his life around, but his new found confidence that gave him the power to achieve anything he went after. That is the Power of Confidence!!!

Confidence is the self belief and the realization of one's capabilities. It is recognition of the potential within us. Without confidence, potential is like an ice berg. The major portion of it will remain within us, never blossoming to fruition. It is our belief, our faith and our awareness which often instills in us an enduring confidence which encapsulates out persona. It is how our conscience reciprocates when confronted with a difficult scenario that determines the self confidence. If it ricochets every time with the slogan, "YES. I Can Do this", then it explicates the volume of self confidence that one possess. Doctors often confess that it is easy to cure terminally ill patients who are illiterate and poor than those who are literate and rich. In the former case they have so much confidence in the doctor and in the medicines which they take that even a vitamin tablet is sometimes enough to give them a new life.

Confidence can do wonders. If we take into account the entire gamut of its variants, Self Confidence has got precedence. Belief in our own potential, having a strong proclivity towards ethics and values, owning a compassionate heart and having the presence of mind to do good to others goes a long way in the road towards self actualization. Confidence just doesn't mean saying "Yes" all the time, but rather it also means knowing our own limitations and having the self assurance to say "NO" when it is required. We all often need to do a self analysis and weigh our positives and negatives. There should be a reference point of our own potential which we must be aware of. No matter what the world say or if we get failures galore, we must not lose our self confidence as we know what we are capable of. This kind of positive thinking can change our lives for ever.

So how confident can we be in life? If you ask a swimmer to swim in the sea, he will happily do so. But if you ask him to swim in a sea infested with sharks, he is most likely to run away from the proposition. Life poses you with many such difficult situations. It depends on the individual to either take the challenge head on or to scamper from the scene. Those who are confident of their abilities may take on the sharks and exorcise the impending doom, but those who are half hearted in their attempts may perish.

Believe in yourself and give your best in what you are good at, no matter how challenging the task is.

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