I am a young person, not long out of school, filled with ambition, creative ideas, and a burning desire to achieve a lot of things in my life, but one thing holds me back: fear of blowing it. How can I get some nerve?
You don’t really need “nerve” exactly – you need self-confidence. Without it, you’re going nowhere – but you seem to know that already.
Look, only you know why and how self-confidence has eluded you so far. Perhaps you weren’t born with much, as there does indeed seem to be a genetic component to it. But by far, self-confidence is a developed trait. Some people get it at their mother’s knee, where they first hear the happy news that their every bright comment qualifies them for the Nobel Prize, or that they’re taller, more clever, and certainly better looking than every other child on the block. Others get it from great grades that set them apart, or sports at school, whether they score goals or get elected captain.
But there are no rules about where self-confidence begins. We know a 27-year-old entrepreneur from Slovenia who “picked up” self-confidence by watching his father struggle to launch a little machine tool company in 1991, literally just days after they won independence from Yugoslavia. Today, this gutsy young man, fresh off an M.B.A. in the United States, is in the midst of launching a global technology company of his own and sees no limits to his future.
We also know a successful New York mutual fund manager who got his first big dose of self-confidence as an adolescent, when he learned to pilot a small boat alone and spent a summer reeling in bluefish and striped bass in the rough seas of Cape Cod Bay. “After that,” he told us, “I thought I could do anything.”
Could he? Absolutely not. Through his long career, this mutual fund manager would tell you he has “blown it” many times. He started a communications company his senior year in college, grew it to 100 employees and $40 million in sales, then lost it in a painful, protracted legal battle with a former partner. Several years later, he tried to start a consulting firm that survived six months. But if those incidents spawned fear, this entrepreneur’s deep reservoir of self-confidence overcame it every time.
You need to start creating that kind of reservoir for yourself, even if it is from scratch.
How? Not with grandiose plans concocted to catapult you into fame and fortune and quash your fear of failure once and for all. Too many people believe that one big, public success will solve their self-confidence problems forever.
That only happens in the movies.
In real life, the opposite strategy is what works. Call it the “small victories” approach.
To begin, set a realistic goal, be it at work or home. Keep this goal attainable and contained; don’t over-extend your expectations of yourself the first time out.
Then achieve that goal and feel good. You should.
Next, set a slightly larger goal, something somewhat bolder and enough of a stretch to put you slightly out of your comfort zone. Achieve that goal and feel even better. And so forth until you’re in a slow and steady forward march, building self-confidence step-by-step.
And it will build. One of us (Jack) delivered his first speech 40-odd years ago. It was a panic-inducing, awkward, heavily rehearsed event, practiced in front of the mirror for weeks in advance in hopes of keeping his stammer in check, and then read from carefully typed sheets with all the ease of a man in a straight-jacket. The actual talk took just fifteen minutes – however, they were (reportedly) the longest ever lived.
But there’s nothing more effective than tackling a challenge incrementally, growing and learning each time. After delivering speeches for decades in front of all kinds of audiences, today, for Jack, answering questions in front of thousands of people without notes is the opposite of nerve-wracking; it’s fun.
Now, without doubt, you will screw up along the way as you try to build your self-confidence. Not every one of Jack’s speeches was better than the one before it, and it was a long time before giving them became fully enjoyable. But when your small victory turns out to be a small defeat, do not revert to fear mode. Go deep into that reservoir, understand what went wrong, set another goal, and start again.
The process won’t really ever end. As time goes on, your goals will just keep getting bigger and bigger. And failure, which will also continue to occur on occasion, will come to feel like less and less of a thing to fear.
In time, you will discover that all failing really does is teach you something you needed to know – so you can regroup and stretch again, with ever more…nerve.
This question and answer originally appeared in Business Week magazine on May 08, 2006.
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