From the confident teacher, whose guidance we rely on, to the hypnotic confidence of an inspiring speaker, self-confident people have skills that everybody admires. I said it skill because I believe it can be trained. When we are born we know nothing except crying and eventually we start smiling and learning more and more things. Even for learning to smile, we should know the feeling of crying. Self Confidence is the ability or a belief to believe in yourself to accomplish any task, no matter the difficulty, no matter the disparity, no matter the adversity. We all can say this, yet so many people are eating their hearts out to find it. Sadly, people who lack self-confidence can find it more difficult to be successful. After all, most of the people get squeamish to find themselves in the project led by someone who is nervous, fumbling, and overly apologetic. Even when we apply for a job, grades are the last thing the employer wants to see. Grades also play a role, but the first thing they want from us is Self-Confidence. Without that skill, we are useless as a professional because when we lose our hope or belief in ourselves we are done for. The certitude that you can accomplish is Self-Confidence. Many of us say, “I do not have it”. I am so loner and say I will never do that, blah, blah, blah.” This is the thing that is dragging you down and behind. But, I used the word skill because I believe one can train oneself. The easiest way to build self-confidence: Repetition. Malcolm Gadwall called it a 10,000-hour rule. There is no magic button. Magic? No. It is Repetition, repetition and repetition. The problem is, we expect to be self-confident but we cannot be unless the task we are doing is not new to us. We should be in situation where we can say, “Hey, I have done this thousand times.” I completed studying statistics 25 times and when we have exam of statistics our hands will be moving faster than we could have ever imagined. I did my speech 100 times in front of a mirror and my friends and by the time when we will be on stage we will not have a single ounce of nervousness because of our ability to practice over and over again. But the problem we have with repetition is we do not have the patience to repeat things. We bail after a first bit of failure. May be some of us may try for two or four times. Definitely, after six or seven times we all will leave that task. JK Rowling took her book Harry Potter to 12 publishers and Edison tried to build a light bulb from 1000 to 10000 times. They failed more and never accepted failure. May be it should not be repetition it should be Persistence, Persistence, Persistence. We all repeat some things but few of us persist on things. Get out there and do not accept no. We all have a self-talk tape that plays in our head. If you are a guy and you are in a shopping then “Oh, I look so flappy in these pants. I do not have muscles.” In case of girls, the first thing that always comes is, “Damm! I look so fat in these pants.” As a student it was like, “Oh, Sir please do not pick me, I do not know the answer.” We look down. Right? We all have these negative self-talk in our head because there are enough people out there who are telling us that we cannot do that. Why do we need to believe that and tell our self those negative self-talk? It is a fact that thoughts influence actions. We should have our own self-affirmations. “I am the greatest!” was Muhammad Ali’s self-affirmation. We all need to have one. There is a difference between false pride and affirmation. It is just reminding yourself in the quiet moment that who you are and what do you want. We all make mistakes. Get away from those people who will tear you down and make you believe that you do not have self-confidence. There are many moments in our life when we are happy and sad. Take a paper and pen and then write a letter to yourself when you are feeling good. Congratulate yourself. The letters should be about our own things that we are proud of. There are many moments in different stages in life when we don’t feel good about who and what we are; write those in a paper and make resolution and read them again and again so that these remain in mind and remind you of what you want. Stop the self-talk, the negative self-talk. Nothing in our universe can travel faster than the speed of light and what relativity theory says is that when an object travels faster than the speed of light, it has infinite mass and to achieve the speed of light it requires infinite energy which is impossible. Similarly, you cannot be confident enough in a day or a week. It takes time and patience for the fear to walk away. Even the fastest thing in the universe takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach the earth's surface, and we are just humans. I make enough mistakes. I am the captain of my ship and master of my fate. That’s my affirmation. If I do not say it, if I do not believe it, no one else will. What is your affirmation?