Even Tom Peters says it’s normal to be confused, and why not? In an age of one technological breakthrough after another, the challenge and stress of trying to "keep up" is taking its toll. By 1995, new technology breakthroughs throughout North America arrived once every 17 minutes, along with 10 services associated with each breakthrough. Today, we witness 17 major technological breakthroughs per minute, with an associated 200 services following on their heels.

In such an environment, it is easy to feel anything but confident. After all, your ability to keep pace is all but impossible. You can remain confident, however, despite the pace of change. What do confident people do to maintain confidence independent of the frequency of change they’re exposed to? How do they maintain a sense of breathing space along the way?

Self-Confident People Radiate Power and Health
People want to be around self-confident people and to be like them. Self-confidence, fortunately, is a skill you can practice. Self-confidence is the person who walks into a job interview knowing that he or she has the skills and knowledge to handle the position being offered. Self-confidence is the woman who asks to be promoted with an assurance that the promotion is deserved based on her past work. Self-confidence comes from feeling you deserve to have and be what you want.

Why Is Self-Confidence So Important? Self-confidence is a prerequisite to success and happiness, since performance is so often based on attitude, rather than aptitude. Success or failure can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For example, if you want a promotion or a raise but are not confident that you deserve it, you are likely to let your doubts get in your way. You may be reluctant to directly approach those in charge of promotions. Or you might couch your request in a vague, indirect manner -- using terms like "maybe," "if," and "sometimes."

A confident person applying for a new job writes a cover letter that says, "I will do ... for your company" and, "I look forward to hearing from you." This implies right from the start that the applicant will be interviewed and will be hired. The less confident applicant couches the correspondence in terms of, "I could do... for your company" and, "I hope to hear from you." This, on the other hand, implies doubt. In the mind of whoever reads the letter, that doubt easily extends to the applicant's appropriateness for the job. Confidence means taking a positive approach -- an approach that rubs off on other people.

Confidence also can help increase your effectiveness through the idea of positive reinforcement. If you expect to do well at any particular endeavor -- from performing a task on the job to achieving social acceptance outside the job -- you are likely to do far better than you would if you expect mediocrity or failure. (Editorial note: This is covered extensively in Breathing Space: Living & Working at a Comfortable Pace in a Sped-Up Society.)

Teachers have known for years that students who are told they are progressing well in spelling or math tend to achieve far more than students who are told they are having problems. Doubts compromise your effectiveness, and self-doubt makes it unlikely that you can effectively market yourself. It's like trying to sell a product you don't believe in. You can't commit yourself to it wholeheartedly.

How to Become More Attractive
Self-confidence increases your attractiveness to other people, and that in turn can increase your effectiveness. So much of what we do -- at work and outside work -- is done with or through other people. When they sense you are confident, they want to be around you, support you, and even be like you. They "go to bat" for you and generally assist you in being as effective as you can be. It makes them feel good to be around someone who has a positive, enthusiastic, "can do" attitude. On the other hand, people tend to shy away from someone who is continually worried, self-doubting, and skeptical.

Peace of mind, a contentment with life, is only possible through acceptance of yourself, which will lead to acceptance of others. Many forms of destructive behavior can be traced to a lack of self-confidence. For instance, a mid-level manager at a high technology firm constantly befriended new employees, only to spread rumors about them later. This man, unsure about his own place in the company, felt it necessary to destroy the reputation of new employees. Obviously, such behavior could only destroy his own position in the long run.

Confidence seems to create a resiliency that allows you to bounce back from failures. Positive self-esteem provides a reservoir of inner strength -- a constant that is not dependent upon others and the situations you find yourself in. Conversely, a lack of self-esteem saps your energy with worries about acceptance and accomplishments, creating a downward spiral when those worries do begin to hamper your effectiveness.

Strategies for Building Self-Confidence
You are not stuck with your present degree of confidence. If you have ever found yourself thinking, "I'm just not a very confident person," you are wrong. Confidence is not handed out at birth -- it can be developed. Developing it is hard work, even lonely work. When you begin to work on becoming more self-confident, you may not even get a lot of support from others. Do it anyway; they'll come around sooner than you think.

A first step in building self-confidence is to take a good look at the roots of your lack of confidence: Where does it come from? In what situations is it more of a problem? In what situations do things seem a little better? Finding the answers to questions like these can help you dispel personal myths, emphasize positive occurrences, and begin a realistic program to build your confidence.

In my own case, I spent years convinced that I wasn't as smart as a lot of other people. Even though my record in high school was well above average, I felt that I could never compete with my truly brilliant friends. Until I was about 30 years old, I was certain that brilliant people like those I had known in high school were not at all uncommon, and that I, of course, would never quite achieve that lofty status.

I finally realized that my school friends, in an upper-middle class community in Connecticut, were not actually representative of the entire population as a whole. Simply understanding the roots of my lack of confidence -- and dispelling some myths about it -- bolstered my confidence enormously.

I find it helps to determine the exact situations in which one feels more or less confident. Don't ruminate about them, write them down; and continue by writing a plan of action for improving the situation. For example: