Confidence is Something You Give Yourself

South Philadephia is an old Irish and Italian area with blocks upon blocks of little townhouses and Mom and Pop shops. Italian restaurants, Irish pubs, shops of all kinds and still hearing italian spoken in the streets makes it a colorful place to spend time.

I was there taking voice lessons from Enrico di Giuseppe, a tenor who spent his career in New York at the City Opera and the Metropolitan Opera. I had even had a voice lesson with him years earlier while he was teaching at Julliard. He was a great guy and a lot of fun to hang out with.

We were driving through town one day and were listening to Pavarotti singing one of his last performances of Tosca at the Met. He was singing with his usual excellence and those high notes were just sailing.

I always had high notes, but never like I had wanted them, and Enrico was helping me with that, because he had an awesome top.

I said, if I could just get high notes to ring like they should I would be doing very well. What am I missing?

He said, ”Tim, you must be confident.”

I answered, ”I will be confident when I get good at it.”

”No! That is the wrong way around. You don’t get confidence once you can do something, confidence is something you have that gives you the ability to do it.!”

That really got my attention. It turns out that that is true. Confidence isn’t about faith or belief really, but about strength in knowing that you are great and can do anything you choose.

Give yourself confidence even before you know what you are doing, because without it, you are weak and vulnerable. Go confidently into your future!

Somehow we are told to be quiet and to have the posture of humility. Well, this may be easy for others to look at, but it doesn’t serve yourself very well. Don’t hide under a cover of false humility, and have the courage to be seen as confident.

You have what it takes, as long as you don’t take away what you should already have, confidence!