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Guest post by: Judith Bardwick Become an Author

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Confidence is the liberating quality because it is the only condition that frees us from the fear of failing, the fear of being powerless or insignificant...or of being laid off. It's no fun to lose your job. But confident and non-confident people react differently to being laid off. Non-confident people tend to respond to the possibility or actuality of losing their job with counterproductive responses: They panic, they freeze, or they get very depressed. Confident people are more likely to anticipate the possibility and plan for it. Non-confident people are likely to see only a bleak future and grab for a job, even if its prospects are poor. Confident people are not likely to panic because they view the economy as cyclic and they're psychologically better able to wait and be selective about what they'll do next. Confident people's responses tend to be constructive and adaptive., whereas non-confident people's reactions are not. As the world grows more borderless and the economy more turbulent and Darwinian, the more critical it is for people to be confident.

Confidence increases when people succeed in mastering tasks they haven't mastered before, the task is the medium difficulty for them and the outcome really matters. Nothing succeeds like success. Success is the natural motivator. It increases confidence and energizes enthusiasm.

Confidence means someone is willing to handle the risk, and it is the result of striving, stretching, and (usually) succeeding. To gain confidence, people need to succeed in hitting increasing performance goals in circumstances in which there's some risk. Risk means something significantly different happens to you when you succeed and when you don't. Hitting stretch targets where there is no risk, where nothing much different happens to you if you succeed or if you fail, does not result in increased confidence because confidence is about being able to handle risk.

Two much security or prolonged protection from risk leaves people unable to handle it. It is ironic that the protection from risk that many people seek and gain in stable conditions leave those people without the experience and skills, the resilience, and the confidence to cope with borderless conditions.

Today, fleeing from challenges and trying to stay safe is a very poor blueprint for managing in reality. People need to resist the temptation to "stay safe," to continue doing what they've already learned because it's easy and they never make mistakes. Moving toward manageable challenge and risk in order to successfully grapple with difficulty and develop self-confidence is probably the single most important responsibility we have for ourselves. In borderless conditions, most people need to keep pushing themselves beyond the envelope of their comfort zone.

To rebuild a sense of control and increase confidence, people should take an active role in having manageable challenges and risks in their lives. Toward that that end they need to ask the organizations in which they work, play and learn to collaborate with them in creating stretch challenges that really matter. At the same time, parents, professors, teachers, supervisors, managers, - anyone who has responsibility for setting goals and evaluating people's performance - needs to learn how to manage to success.

With individual initiative and institutional collaboration, most people can and will reduce their anxiety level, gain control over their workload, and develop the confidence that will allow them to prefer the excitement of the borderless world over the predictability of stable conditions.

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