Confidence Is a Bitch

Confidence is what make people believe in you, in your vision, in your future success. Without confidence, it’s hard for people to believe. That’s completely rational: if you don’t believe in what you’re saying, how can you ask to others to believe in it?!

All the greatest entrepreneurs and leaders use their confidence to gather people around problems and opportunities, guiding them to create something new, something amazing, and something that no one else has ever achieved.

That’s great, because if smart people with deep knowledge of their market/space use confidence it’s a good tool. However, as soon as someone who’s not that smart or with scarce knowledge about the space he’s into, this tool transforms itself in cockiness, arrogance and failure to learn. That will finally lead you to auto destruction, misery, hunger, apocalypse, etc. Maybe too much? But we’ve understood the point.

The problem here is that when you’re confident and sure about something, you stop to seek other opinions and to listen to critics to your plan.

What to do about it?

I’ve repeated this error at different times, and I continue to do it, despite all my efforts to avoid it.
Lately I’ve found a technique that seems to work. Continue to be confident about what you’re saying, but keeping to welcome negative feedback and constructive critics.

When someone make you a critic, just reply something like “That’s interesting, I believe that this thing work this other way, but I’ll dig deeper into the topic and I’ll let you know in few days. Ok?”.
This way, you’ll force yourself to consider the opinion of other people, think about it when you’re alone, so without your pride at stake.
This helps me to reevaluate my ideas, without making me feel insecure.

Now,

what do you think about it? I’ll consider every comment in the comment box.
Else, if you don’t agree, you can slap me in the face. In this case, I’ll get back to you in just tens of a second.