One time, a robot was asked, what do you think is the difference between you and man? The robot said, the difference is that a man has soul, but I lack it. An excellent answer a man would not give if he were the one asked. My credit goes to that robot!
What would be your answer if someone asked you that, what is the difference between a successful person and a failure? Remember the dictionary cannot give you the right answer, but common sense can give you. Without boring you, the difference between a successful person and a failure is that a successful person has CONFIDENCE meanwhile a failure has no confidence, even a trace of it.
But the uniqueness of confidence is that it does not reject someone who has once failed, and it does not also inhabit a successful person for life. When a successful person becomes reluctant on an assumption that he has owned confidence and nothing would take it away, the confidence will escape and go to someone who can nurture it best.
When a failure becomes aware that what made him fail is lack of confidence and develop confidence, believe me he will become fully successful as if he has never failed before. You may wonder how “lack of confidence” fails people! As a person, you do not know who you are until you grow confidence. With confidence, you realize yourself, you find yourself and you say I’m who I am.
You tell yourself that I must work on what to leave on earth after I’m gone. This is the time you bring your dream to life and begin chasing it. In chasing it, confidence acts as a torch lighting the way for you as you chase your dream. Confidence alone can make you achieve your dream, but when you again impregnate your mind; your next baby to deliver is called CONSISTENCY.
When your elder child ‘CONFIDENCE’ becomes sick of hard labour, the only person to support, treat and take over the work of chasing your dream is none other than your younger child ‘CONSISTENCY’. From there, you are good to go. I tell you; you are very good to go. Confidence works like a donkey, it rarely becomes tired, and you know very well that tiredness is a messenger of failure.
As you chase your dream, failure runs either behind you or by your side and when you feel tired and pause to take rest, failure strikes you and you will find it hard to rise up and chase your dream again. That’s why confidence is so important here to keep you tireless. Here, you say your dream is alive, but be so confident to realise that what makes your dream take in oxygen and give out carbon dioxide is nothing else, but consistency, your very own younger child.
So, you are guided by confidence and consistency nourishes your confidence, therefore, the only day you be waiting for is that day, that very important day you call a D-day where your dream becomes achieved and you become a celebrant. In your day-to-day life, remember that confidence and consistency can lift you from zero to hero.
Do not feel excluded if you are a female, confidence and consistency can also lift you from zero to heroine. If you want people who put gender equality in full practice, they are ‘confidence and consistency’. They have no recorded case of GBV since time immemorial. Both males and females can achieve their dreams as long as they are pulled by confidence and pushed by consistency.
When a mentor mentions CONFIDENCE, you should open your brain’s ear so wide to listen, there is life in confidence. I repeat, there is life in confidence!
The author is a medical student, University of Juba.