We all remember the founder of Apple and Pixar, Steve Jobs, as one of the most revolutionary people who existed on Earth. He is the brainchild behind so many gadgets which are absolutely loved by everyone. He won the entire planet with his stunning, complex yet simple to use designs and pushed everyone around him to set new benchmarks just because of his immense self-confidence.
To quote the book Success Tweets, “Self-confidence must come from within. Outside reinforcement and strokes can help, but you have to build your own confidence.” This is what Jobs was all about.
Like others, he also met with a lot of struggles in his life but he never let the setbacks influence him. Rather, he always struck back stronger and more powerful. If you are struggling to motivate yourself, build confidence and to achieve something in life, follow these tips to build self-confidence like Steve Jobs:
1. Stay Courageous
It is through the courage to do what you believe in and to take all the risks that make you confident. It is not just enough to think of something and then let the odds be in your favor so that you can succeed. It is never like that because one has to be courageous enough to let go of negative thoughts and so-called opinions of others to climb the ladder of success.
2. Be Curious
Jobs achieved immense success in the things which he was really curious about. Do you really think that on his journey to quench his curiosity, he ever thought of confidence? Not at all because it was already embedded in his personality.
If someone is curious about something, they are not worried about failing or looking stupid while doing so. Their only concern is to find the answers to the questions and this was Jobs. Even after being fired from Apple, he still had the courage to create Pixar which is now one of the biggest animation studios. He took all the big risks but still emerged successful at the end.
3. Immense Focus
According to Jobs, this helps in reducing the focus to only those things which are important and eliminates the unnecessary attention which is given to extras. Extreme focus was ingrained in his personality and he would get into trouble with his friends and family for ignoring things like legal issues, medical appointments etc. but he would never shift his focus until he was done.
4. Take Responsibility
It is by taking responsibility of all your actions irrespective of the results that you can gain immense confidence. Jobs never gave up if there was something wrong with any of his gadgets. He would always devise a way to get rid of the problem and present something better to the world.
Image: theverge.com
5. Have Vision with Passion
His vision was never limited as he was one of those people who would think of the biggest breakthroughs but would go into all the minute details too. In the year 2000, he thought that the personal computer should be the hub for storing all the content and by 2010, he had given a successor strategy too. His new strategy was that the hub would transform into the cloud and thus, Apple built huge server farms to upload and sync all the data.
6. Become Insanely Ambitious
Jobs was very clear about what he wanted from the very start. He mentioned once that his goal was to change the world, influence it, and to leave a mark behind him.
When the iPhone was still in the trial run, Jobs found that the plastic display could scratch easily so he wanted the front to be of glass. In the 1960s, Corning had developed a chemical process called Gorilla glass which was highly resistant to scratches. Jobs called Weeks who was the CEO of Corning’s and ordered a huge shipment of the Gorilla glass to be delivered within 6 months.
Image: entrepreneur.com
The company had stopped making the glass and transitioned to LCD displays so Weeks refused. Jobs persisted and after some strong negotiation convinced Corning’s to carry out the order. Weeks ordered the managers to move to Gorilla Glass immediately and they delivered the shipment within 6 months.
7. Perseverance
The kind of perseverance in Job’s personality is remarkable. He had the ability to foresee the future because he was sure that his ideas will revolutionize the industry and they surely did. Only if a person is dead sure that his success is a fact of life, can he have the perseverance similar to Jobs.
8. Being Bossy
Most of the people do not regard it a good trait but it actually helps in staying true to your dreams. If Jobs ever allowed the opinions of others to influence his decisions, he would never have been able to provide the wonderful inventions to the world like iPhone, iPad etc. It was his dismissal of others’ suggestions and what they think that finally led him to become such a powerful inventor giving the people some of the finest gadgets.
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”
This can only be followed if one has enough confidence to work on the matters and achieve something by giving the world so much in return.