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The Confidence Journey - 019: Confidence and dominance

“Always be yourself–express yourself, have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.” –Bruce Lee


We can be ourselves or imitate someone we like, but the thing with imitating somebody else is that you don't become someone else, you just become unrecognized. You are known for your values, traits and other factors that make up your personality. You cannot be successful by just trying to be someone. Your authenticity is your signature, when you try to take on someone else's signature it becomes forgery. And forgery is a crime. Everybody has a space to express themselves, but nobody finds enough space that is the problem, so we have to make space. We need confidence as our biggest trait and shield to express ourselves for others to listen to us. We have to look and feel strong in our thoughts, opinions and actions. We have to be believable and when we sound weak, we have got no chance to survive in a competitive world that we are part of. We have to be ourselves, and enhance our skills. We don't have to find the best personality according to us and duplicate it, would people go for the original or the duplicate? The world would not see anything new when you duplicate, and the world wants to see something new and creative. People are hungry for newer, better, fun initiatives, where they can learn, better themselves and at the same time have fun. Confidence can be a door to opportunities, learning, better understanding, better quality of life as a whole but it cannot be a few things. Confidence cannot be dominance, or asserting power on others, it is rather making people understand or correcting your understanding or simply finding a middle ground. confidence cannot be overpowering others but rather a team work or a greater goal, the goal can be both personal and professional but the growth will be collective. Confidence cannot be violence or getting things done in your own way or stubbornness, confidence is about achieving something, in creating something, in paving way for something, in total confidence cannot be associated with any kind of negativity, it should be always associated with positivity. Confidence should be used for achieving, attaining, ambitions,helping, getting help, learning, teaching, understanding , being understood, it should be used with openness and keeping the overall quality of the outcome expected in mind. Your confidence should not lack a good purpose, because when it does it can either turn weak or bitter and further bitterness can turn into stubbornness , from there it goes all negative. We need to understand one thing clearly, when things don't go your way, it is not the time to question yourself. It is the time where you put in more effort, to workhard, to think about alternate ways to achieve it. Our purpose should be unshaken, it should be strong. But how we attain it, should be righteous and through a positive channel for the success and happiness to sustain. When you are hit with a failure, that is when you need to hold on to confidence than ever, if you loose belief in yourself, you loose your courage. As a coin has two sides, so does the outcome of your actions, it can be success or failure. And a confident person should not go down easily with a single/ couple of failures. Because our whole life is a big trial, everyday we get to be a better version of ourselves,everyday we get to learn more about ourselves hence our capacity, accommodating mentality/ acceptance and adaptability should increase, we should be flexible. We should be able to expand like an elastic but stay grounded at the same time. Failures and success should be able to humble us. We should have urges, or feelings, or emotions from time to time to remind us that we are all human, but we should rise above that because we need to be better. When we discuss about confidence and dominance, we need to understand that even though they are two distinct words, there is also only a thin line between them . Hence it is very important to know How to identify, self correct and carry on!


Differentiating between confidence and dominance, confidence is born from a positive self image, where we believe in our-self. Confident people are always comfortable with themselves and their skills. Confident people are clear, assertive but also polite. They also do not believe in pulling others down. They listen and understand others, which is a main part of conversing with people. They respect everyone's view point. Dominance on the other-hand is a form of disrespect where you show your power or control situations or people without taking into consideration what others feel. Dominant individuals are rude and imposing themselves on others. With dominant individuals conversations can turn sour or impolite quickly, which can be quiet unproductive. Balance is always important in our life, and the balance between showing confidence and non-offensive authority to dominance is very important, because if the scale tips a little further, a great leadership quality which is confidence can turn into a non professional trait, dominance. To embrace this balance we need to practice humility,consider that there is always scope for self improvement, need to develop emotional intelligence,self awareness is of utmost importance, Need to give ear to others perspectives, the openness is very important in any discussions or conversations, actively listening, and empowering others to give out their best, and also as part of smooth people interactions comes conflict resolution which is not just an internal task but also an external one as well, you will have your team,client teams and many other vendor teams, coordinating and bringing together everyone is one of the biggest challenge which is also a very beautiful task.


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