Unlocking the Power of Confidence: A Journey of Taking Actions and Overcoming Challenges
What is confidence?
I would like to say
“Confidence is the key to success, confidence can be built by taking actions.”
But the question is how?
I didn’t learn anywhere how to get confidence and it’s not available in the market, right?
We cannot purchase confidence from the market. In my 39 years of life I didn’t learn how to get confidence outside. Nobody teaches us in our schools, colleges and in the corporate world. No one talks about it. Everyone is busy in their life and everyone has their own story of life. If you want to share your story with anyone, no one is ready to listen to your story before you finish he/she starts their own story. This is the real fact of life.
I am an introverted kind of person. I am always happy with myself, not in a crowd. I remember all the incidents from my childhood. How I started interacting with people, how I started my career and how I started taking decisions in my life.
When I was in my 3rd standard in my village school. I remember an incident where I tried to build my confidence. There was an occasion of 26th January our national festival Republic Day. A group song preparation was going on for the occasion but no one was ready to lead that. I remember the song was
“Bapu Ke Sapno Ka Ye Kya Ho Gya,
Seeta Roti Fire Ram Kahan So Gya!!”
My teacher encouraged me, Imtiyaz , you have to do it but I was not ready for it. Then he told their story that my teacher also gave me this challenge and I was also not ready like you. But then I showed courage and confidence. I did it in the first attempt and I have confidence in you that you can also do it.
I remember what my teacher said to me.
“To build confidence you have to take action.”
Immediately I took action and I did that very well in the first attempt too like my teacher did. My teacher was very happy for me. After that on every occasion I started participating in cultural activities.
But after primary education I have to go to the next village for secondary education. It was a new school and there were many students there. I stopped participating there. But after some time I realized this is not good. I should not stop participating in activities and I started again with prayer and shlok in my school. I was the one who lead the students with the prayer and shlok as
“Tum Hi Ho Mata Pita Tumhi Ho, Tumhi Ho Bandhu Shakha Tumhi Ho. ”
And the Shlok
“Om Bhur Bhu Wasya Tat Savitur Varenyam Bhargo Devasya Dhimahi Dhiyo Yonah Procho Dyath.”
When I started participating in activities my confidence level started increasing. I participated in one of the school essay writing and art activities. I got a prize in both the activities.
When we take action and achieve success those moments are automatically logged in our memory. Then the next time whenever we have to do the same kind of things our mind goes into the memory and tries to find any such kind of incident from our previous memory.
Computers are invented based on how a human system works. Obviously there are various types of search filters and indexing there. Based on the search results our mind makes a decision whether we can do it or not. If we have taken any action previously and we were successful in that. Then it gives us a signal that you can do it otherwise demotivates us that you can’t as I don’t have any such success story in memory previously. We are slaves of our mind and accept that and we fail.
After 12th standard I joined a BCA course and went to Alwar, a small city in Rajasthan. I was a Hindi medium student but there was no option of hindi in BCA. I got back in all subjects in my first semester. We were three friends who joined the BCA course. They all are ready to give up. They would be more than happy if I also give up so that it’s easy for them to justify to their families. But I denied their proposal and told them that I will try again. If you want to go, you can go but I can’t. I have to succeed no matter what.
I passed my next semester with good marks. I showed confidence with my actions and I succeeded.
After BCA completion I came to Delhi without knowledge of software development. I joined my friend Rajpal. He was already learning PHP. I also started. Within 2 months I learned the CRUD operations.
How?
Because I was consistently taking actions day and night. I worked 15–16 hours on a daily basis. I still remember how I felt at that time. Although I struggled a lot, those were amazing days of my life. I can never forget those days of my life.
To get my first job I struggled a lot.
Why?
First, I did not pass out from a good college.
Second, My english was terrible because I was from a Hindi medium school.
Third, My confidence was low due to my poor english.
But I never give up, instead I try again and again with more actions. I switched my company whenever I thought. I switched 3 companies back to back after every 6–7 months. But it was not a good practice. I was not aware of that and now in every interview the HR started cross questions like
Why are you switching your companies so frequently?
Then I think about the stability in the next organization where I stayed 3.5 years. It was my first product based company and a startup. I worked there with full energy because all the things were new for me such as new environment, new company, new product, new team and new things to learn.
One thing I learned while working in a corporate job is that if you can’t take action, you can’t grow in your personal and professional life. I meet different types of people during my career. I observed most of the people do not want to take action.
For example, suppose there is a task which is assigned to you. There is no perfect measurement to measure how much time the task will take in completion, right?
Sometimes it takes more than that but most of the time the task is completed before the given time or we can say that everyone commits maximum time to complete not minimum. So, most of the time the task is completed before the given date and time.
Now, what will be your action?
You will sit and wait for your next task or you will inform your senior and will ask for the next task.
Now, it depends on you, right?
You want to take action or not.
Most of the people think why should I inform them in advance. Otherwise he/she will give me one more task. Let’s sit and do our own stuff. Next day I will inform and start on a new task.
This is a lazy and poor mindset kind of thinking. That kind of person not only avoids taking actions in professional life but also in personal life as well. If we avoid taking actions our confidence level automatically decreases what I observed in my career and life.
I never sit free. Whenever my tasks are completed I immediately inform my seniors to get another one. By doing this
First, you are developing a faith for you in the eyes of your seniors.
Second, you are building your confidence by taking actions.
Third, you are not waiting for the next day so your productivity automatically increases and you are able to complete your next day task before its deadline. You have built a success cycle to complete your tasks on time and you never fail in it until or unless you break this success cycle.
I always maintained this success cycle in my career and life. As I grew and my experience increased I started taking more actions. Now I was able to talk confidently with my seniors or bosses and started contributing my thoughts on how things should be and how we can improve a particular product or service.
I earned respect in the eyes of my CEO and management. They started believing in me and my work. They started giving more responsibilities to me. I am always committed and dedicated to my roles and responsibilities in my life and career.
Few people are afraid to take responsibilities that’s the reason there is a separate designation created as Individual Contributor.
Why do people want to do the same type of work again and again? I don’t know.
You couldn’t agree with my thinking but I am against this new role Individual Contributor.
Would you like to know why?
Because
This makes people lazy and stops them from taking new roles and responsibilities.
This stops them from building confidence and decreases the confidence level that’s why they do the same thing again and again in their career.
They are afraid to take on extra responsibilities like team handling and how to interact with different people.
They want to avoid conflicts between the people and different teams.
Basically they don’t want to take the leadership responsibilities and want to keep continuing their own work only.
Yes, I can agree with you that only one thing is that at least they can do their work only. This is only a single reason why they want to opt this Individual Contributor role. Apart from that there are many cons as I mentioned above but still people want to continue with this role. I am against this role because this stops people from taking ownership, leadership, confidence building and growing holistically in their career.
To build confidence, start taking more actions. When we take actions we see the results whether it’s positive or negative and at least we get a direction what to do next. But if we just think about taking actions, we are feeding our fear and the confidence level automatically decreases.
So, I think
“Taking 10 imperfect actions is better than spending 10 days thinking about a perfect plan.”
Because if we are thinking 10 days for a perfect solution then taking actions what happens if after 10 days there are some other kind of issues.
But if we are continuously taking actions it’s okay if it’s wrong but at least we get to know about the next challenge. After solving the issues one by one our solution would be refined.
The solution for which we were thinking for the last 10 days we can’t say perfect because still there are possibilities of errors or bugs.
By the way this is one of the chapter of my book “Startup Journey: How to Build, Grow and Scale a Product?”
If you want a copy of this book, the book is available on
Amazon.in — Click here
Amazon.com — Click here
Conclusion
In conclusion, confidence is not a commodity that can be bought or taught in the traditional sense. It’s a quality that’s cultivated through a personal journey of taking actions, overcoming challenges, and continuously learning from experiences. Imtiyaz’s life story serves as a testament to the transformative power of confidence. From leading a group song as a young student to excelling in the world of software development and leadership, his journey is a testament to the idea that taking imperfect actions is often more valuable than waiting for the perfect plan.
