Hi Joe,

> To me, confidence is knowing that you can do
> something. The more you prove to yourself
> that
> you can do something, the easier it gets,
> because
> you have the experiance and convidence.
> Helplessness is the cycle going in the
> opposite
> direction. You don't know what to do and
> then
> nothing you do works, and pretty soon you're
> totally convinced that nothing will
> work...and
> other people, picking up on this, agree.
> There is or was a site www.buildfreedom.com
> and one of the articles was on overcoming
> the
> feeling of helplessness. Something about the
> cognitive links being broken.
> If I do x, I will get y result gets messed
> up
> so you're not sure if I do x, will I get y
> or z.
> And the solution is to start with something
> simple
> that you can do and get results immediately
> and
> then build with regards to complexity and
> length
> of time involved...good old delayed
> gratification.

Thanks.... Very interesting comments.... Thanks also for the link to the Build Freedom web site -- interesting site!

> By the way, since 80% of our communication
> is non-verbal, it's easy to see why if one acts
> confidently, one can achieve a lot. Confidence
> games, cults, etc are all predicated on the fact.

Yes, "con-man" really stands for "confidence man," of course. I've come across some strange stories of people who, it seems are addicted to "conning" people, and routinely pass themselves off as lawyers, doctors, or other professionals, when they have no qualifications. Sometimes they keep this up for years! I guess this is one side of having a lot of "confidence" (or at least appearing to)....

Well, I guess that's taking it too far, but it's still interesting to know about, and in a way it really proves the point of the importance of confidence (and not to misuse it)!

- Dien