A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

SELF-CONFIDENCE MUST BE BUILT STEP-BY-STEP ■ 37
Fortunately, there is a way of resolving this issue not available to the
chicken: you can have a smaller success before a larger one. And a little
success counts just as much as a big success as far as building self-confidence
and knowing that you will succeed in the future.
Successful bodybuilder, movie star, and more recently, Governor of
California, Arnold Schwarzenegger described how his confidence began
to develop while in high school after he started bodybuilding. “Before
long people began looking at me as a special person. Partly this was the
result of my own changing attitude about myself. I was growing, getting
bigger, gaining confidence. I was given consideration I had never received
before. . . .” 5 Bodybuilding is a good analogy to increasing self-confidence
through increasingly greater successes. No matter how weak he is at the
start, a bodybuilder begins to exercise <strong>with</strong> a weight he can handle easily.
Then as he grows stronger and his self-confidence increases at the same
time, more and more weight is added.
This is not a new concept. Milo of Croton was the most famous athlete
of the ancient world. It was said that he was able to lift and carry a fullgrown
bull on his back. How did he become capable of performing such a
feat? He started <strong>with</strong> a newborn calf and lifted and carried it every day
until it was fully grown.
So that’s the first lesson in developing your self-confidence: accept
responsibility and start to do small things. It’s a long way from simply being
willing to engage accomplished adults in conversation to confronting a senior
boss who seems to hold all the power. But by starting small and performing
more and more challenging tasks of different types, you can build
up your confidence step-by-step, as <strong>Drucker</strong> did. Then you can do most
anything else you choose, like another immigrant from Austria, who
arrived in the U.S. penniless and uneducated, became a wealthy, famous
movie star, and eventually was elected Governor of California.
Four More Ways to Develop Self-Confidence
Here are four additional ways I’ve found of implementing <strong>Drucker</strong>’s “hidden
lesson” of approaching situations armed <strong>with</strong> self-confidence based
on past success:
■ Become an uncrowned performer.
■ Develop your expertise.