Choose Confidence

ByMatthew

“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

  • What Are We?

    ByMatthew

    I had a thought the other day and wanted to share the notes I feverishly scribbled down, along with a couple further thoughts. Here’s what I came up with (un-edited): We are spiritual beings with a body. We experience the world through our body – our senses. We think, that is how we move our spirit…

  • Design or Default?

    ByMatthew

    Any regular reader of this blog knows how much I love Seth Godin’s ideas (and generosity thereof). Here is yet another of Seth’s brilliant posts that I am compelled to share and comment on (you can find the original post here): Can and should Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. The…

  • What Are You? Really?

    ByMatthew

    I don’t normally “quote” such lengthy bits, but I wanted to share the following (from an e-mail I received from Dave Booda) to 1) get you thinking and 2) ask you some questions. ***** I’d like to share some good news. You are not loved. You are not safe. You are not whole. You are not…

  • You. Must. Start.

    ByMatthew

    You don’t have to be great to start. But you have to start to be great. – Zig Ziglar Zig’s down-home (often ‘aww-shucks’) words are f’ing genius. So often he can say in a sentence (and not a long one at that) what others take paragraphs or pages to say. His words above are your…

  • What Is Risk, Really?

    ByMatthew

    “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.” – Warren Buffett There are many things we are not prepared for, that we will never encounter. There are, however, many things that we can reasonably expect to encounter, that we could prepare for, that we ignore (for whatever reason… ). Some examples: Divorce is (generally) a…