Confidence empowers you. Confidence leads you to success in your professional as well as personal life. It puts you in a league where you are bound to make it big. The question then is—what is the source of confidence? How does one get confident in life? Is there a way to acquire it and have it forever? Can we follow a process or a model and get confident at the end of the journey?
Well, let me caution you at the outset that I am no expert on this topic but I have observed and worked with confident people very closely in the last 2 decades of my term in the corporate sector. I have first-hand experience with the concepts that I am sharing with you. They have worked for me and I am sure you too will be able to see some merit in the points I am making.
There are two primary sources of Confidence – Wealth and Knowledge.
The world recognizes and pays attention to the wealthy and knowledgeable ones. The interesting thing is that wealth and knowledge bring confidence and power. The more you have it, the more powerful and confident you become. When knowledge and wealth become your assets, you attract like-minded people and great company. Your circle of influence becomes of your choosing. You choose the people you want around you, the people you want to work with and the people you want as friends. To have that ability and that power is a great source of confidence. Yes, there will always be the mischief mongers, but that is not the focus of my subject today.
When you are a rich source of wealth and knowledge, people want to be in your company, they want to be around you and they want to work with you.
When wealth and knowledge adorn your ways, life becomes smooth. While the challenges that life throws at you remain a constant, the handling of the problems becomes easy. You no longer struggle for the basics of life and you operate at a different level of abundance. People admire you and want to follow you.
If you have both, wealth and knowledge, you are truly blessed. While one doesn’t guarantee the other, they both are independently very powerful. But when put together, the combination is life-changing.
Knowledge has the power to make you wealthy but wealth may not necessarily make you knowledgeable. You can become smart with money but you may not be knowledgeable just as an outcome of being wealthy. Wealth can be created with hard work and can also be inherited. Knowledge on the other hand can’t be inherited and it can only be acquired.
In my professional life, I have seen people making loads of money by working hard but I have seen them grow only by acquiring knowledge. Knowledge creates value, which is more sustainable and long term in nature.
Allow me to explain.
I was on a flight from Vishakhapatnam to Mumbai last year. My co-passenger happened to be a successful businessman with his businesses spread across 3 countries. He was friendly and I was curious, and we got talking. When he got to know that I was from Financial Services, we started to talk about money and how it’s never enough. He spoke about his son completing his class 12th who was now keen to join an Engineering College. He had kept aside a huge amount of money for his college admission, in case he didn’t make it on merit. I was curious that since the gentleman had such a successful business and the son was the only child, he would ultimately run and inherit the business. So would it be wise to put that kind of money for a college degree? That money could be invested in the business and the returns could be far superior.
The man’s reply was a lesson of a lifetime for me. He said, “Sandeep, businesses can become redundant at any moment. One bad phase in life and this money can become your enemy and people can rob you of it. Your car and bungalow can be taken away with one stroke of bad luck, but education and knowledge are yours to own for life. No one can rob you of it. So, I want to invest money in my son’s education and learning. With knowledge by his side, I am sure he can sail through any phase of life and create all the wealth he can.”
When all is lost, it is our education; the knowledge and experiences we have gained in life, that get us back on our feet. This is a sturdy and proven way for professionals like us who come from a middle-class background to get wealthy. You can’t go wrong on this path of creating wealth through the acquisition of knowledge. It may be longer and tougher but in the end, it would be worth it because it has the potential to create sustainable success. I also believe that hustle and indulgence will make you a happy person.
I am wishing all of you a very knowledgeable and wealthy confident life ahead.
Sandeep Mishra