Choose Confidence

“People die of fright and live of confidence.” – Thoreau

I think Thoreau, among other things, was speaking of courage here.

Confidence is what results when courage (being afraid, but taking a reasonable risk anyway) is combined with purpose (the energy that comes from knowing what we want and why we want it).

Is courage blindly rushing ahead whenever one is afraid or fearful? Certainly not; but, if we’re honest with ourselves, rarely are the things that scare us truly scary.

I submit that when we move forward, confidently, we are truly living. And to exist in fear is to not actually live (and to, in effect, die… ).

Similar Posts

  • The Privilege of Pressure

    “Pressure is a privilege.” – Larry Fitzgerald I have two things to say about this quote: 1) I have a list of people I want to meet and Larry Fitzgerald is on it. I saw him interviewed on a Sunday pre-game program one time and was very impressed by his philosophy, hard work and desire…

  • Success Is A Science

    “Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.” – Oscar Wilde Success is assembling certain components of thought and action in a certain order. “Failure” is what you get when you have the wrong components, or the wrong order, or both. Either way, you get results. Just keep tweaking until…

  • What is Wisdom?

    On one level, wisdom is nothing more than the ability to take your own advice. – Sam Harris In this construction, wisdom is not some universal thing, applicable to everyone, but ideas and practices that if applied to one’s life are helpful or useful. What is wisdom for you may not be for me. But…

  • The Power of Visualization (and why it’s hard at first)

    Picture yourself in your mind’s eye as having already achieved your goal. See yourself doing the things you will be doing when you’ve reached your goal. – Earl Nightingale Funny thing about the mind: turns out it can’t really tell the difference between something that has actually happened and something vividly imagined. Studies have shown that…

  • The Default Want

    We say we want things, but there’s a way to determine what we really want. Look at what we have. Whatever it is we are creating in our lives is what we want. *  *  * That said, in the absence of clear and authentic desires and goals, we have a default want. One that…