Day 4

The other day I read something that I have been mulling over ever since.

This is from the piece contributed by David L. Calhoun, chairman and CEO of the Nielsen Company in Katie Couric’s The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Lives (Random House, 2011).

“…self-confidence is the most important characteristic of successful people. Self-confidence—a quiet self-confidence that is not cockiness, not conceit, not arrogance—is the key to excelling, no matter what you do in life.”

He goes on to give three suggestions for developing “your own brand of self-confidence”:

“First, you must resolve to grow intellectually, morally, technically, and professionally every day through your entire work and family life. You need to be absolutely paranoid about the currency of your knowledge, and to ask yourself every day, Am I really up to speed? Or am I stagnating intellectually, faking it or, even worse, falling behind? Am I still learning? …

“Next, get to know yourself. Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses with cool objectivity. Even as your confidence grows, you must suppress your ego; focus on your weaknesses and on ways to overcome them. What are your sources of anxiety? …

“There is one final attribute of self-confidence: knowing that you possess absolute, unbending, unimpeachable integrity. Everyone must know that—above all else—it is integrity that defines character. …”

Lots of questions for myself:

Am I really up to speed? Faking it? Am I still learning? I think I am learning, but what am I learning, and more importantly how am I applying the lessons?

What are my strengths and weaknesses?

Integrity? Do I take the easy way out sometimes?

Important not to be complacent – also important to watch that that self-confidence does not become arrogance (“you must suppress your ego”) – and to keep an open mind always.

Important to stop and reflect regularly.

Writing is a good reflective practice for me, even if I don’t always blog what I write, and even if my writing doesn’t always make sense when I read it later. (Messy, messy mind.)