Confidence is a crazy thing. In order to be truly successful, you need it. Yet, there are times when confidence is the thing that sets you up for failure.
When you are successful, it’s easy to get into a confidence rut. This rut can breed laziness and eventually failure. When you have a history of being successful, it is easy to lean too heavily on those successes as you move forward. You’ve always been able to rely on your ability to hit the goal, even going in ill prepared. This behavior, which we have all practiced at some point, can set you up for massive failure if you get into the rut of relying too heavily on your confidence.
From a fighter who doesn’t prepare for his opponent and just relies upon a big knockout punch to a college kid who has passed a few tests by not studying and decides to just continue this practice-confidence can be a weakness. Ability, although it has opened doors in the past, can be your worst enemy.
Sometimes your abilities and previous successes can be the catalyst of failure. When you can win at a high level and with the consolidation of many jobs, your success provides new challenges and opportunities. Many of us are doing more today than we did 5 years ago and our titles haven’t really changed. Because of our success, we are given more to do and the expectations grow with each of those new challenges. Many of us do not know when to say “no” or fear that if we say “no”, they’ll find someone else who is willing to take on the new challenges (and eventually replace you for les money). More often than not, it is our confidence that makes us take on these new duties and challenges. Our ability gives us a fighting chance, but sometimes the tasks or titles are truly meant to be performed by multiple people. Someone has to fail first in order for others to realize this.
You have to be careful about this and realize that there are only so many hours in the day and there is eventually a success threshold. I have seen successful and capable managers rendered almost useless and ineffective by the weight of additional duties. Brilliant people, who were leaders in their field, stretched so thin that they become mediocre or fail by the height of the bar of expectations. “Hey, this guy is great! Lets quadruple his workload and just expect him to be just as great”. Sure, it’s flattering they think so highly of you, but with all that responsibility come all of the blame.
Labron James and Michael Jordan can’t pass the ball to themselves and score 100 points per game while playing against 5 other people. Imagine how different their stories would be if the team recruited terrible players around them, just assuming that their abilities alone would always carry the rest of the team. ( Example: Jordan playing for Washington).
I don’t mean to be discouraging at all. I,like you, want to do more and be greater than I am. I have never said no to “more”. I take pride in the fact that I can handle more than most people and I work on ways to bulletproof myself from my confidence. Yet, even if you have that same attitude, you have to do a gut check and focus on putting yourself in winning situations. Taking on the impossible is exciting and the payoff could be huge, but realize that the percentages are against you. You SHOULD challenge the impossible from time to time, but if you do this too often, your legacy will be that of someone who had more losses than wins-regardless of how talented you are.
At the end of the day, very few people in this world get a statue erected in their honor. Winners want to be the most important asset to any team and do things that others have never done. This is what sets them apart. Don’t be blinded by your abilities or let your past track record of success interfere with your future growth. Don’t let your confidence, the thing that helped get you here, be the thing that ends up leading to your demise. Don’t let others decide your threshold of success. You decide when to say yes or no, because at the end of the day, you know yourself better than anyone else.
