Just try

Confidence is the most important factor in determining whether you can do something or not.  I’ve touched on this fact before, but I want to reiterate just how important this is.    You have to believe that you can do something in order to do it.   If you believe that you can do something and you fail, you’ve lost nothing; you shouldn’t even lose your confidence.   If you don’t try because you think you’ll fail, you’ve lost everything.  Let me explain.

Confidence is the ability to attempt.   You have to attempt things in your life.   There are actually very few things that you successfully accomplished on your first attempt.   I tried to think of an example, but came up empty.   You likely failed at your first attempt to walk, to open a door, to unpeel a banana, or to write a perfect sonnet.   (myself excluded on the sonnet one)   The point is that your confidence in your ability to do those simple tasks was undeterred by your failure.  As we move forward into more and more complex tasks and actions we allow our lack of confidence to stop us from even trying things.   Once that happens, we will never be able to do them.   We’ve allowed our fear of failure to rob us of the ability to ever succeed.    Once you accept that defeat, subsequent ones become easier and easier to stomach.    Try to do something difficult or scary today.