What's Stopping You Being More Confident?

INTRODUCTION

‘Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right,’ said US industrialist Henry Ford. This pithy maxim from the man that brought motoring to the masses observes the gulf that exists between high and low confidence, and the fact the resultant potential outcomes are so different the term ‘chalk and cheese’ seems inadequate. Venus and Mars, more like, though even here we’re comparing two rocky and distant planets. How about Switzerland and Somalia, with the self-doubters condemned to life in a self-generated failed and piratical state?

Yet Ford’s statement makes the stakes higher still. Far from being declared a failed state, the under-confident are being written off as such. Their poor self-beliefs mean they remain the personal ...