Are people successful because they are confident or are they confident because they are successful?

Question

Success and confidence are basically the same thing. Bobby Fisher was confident because he almost always won paying chess. In the National championship Georgia was confident because they are the best and expected to win. Katelyn Tuohy was confident, especially in high school because she always won by large margins.

An ugly guy is not confident, because no girl wants him and when he asks, he is always rejected. And, if by chance he had confidence it wouldn't help. In fact his confidence would be creepy and would upset people even more..

abc3643 · Accepted Answer

Sometimes success is commensurate with luck. https://rishikeshs.com/ovarian-lottery/    
 The Ovarian Lottery: A Thought Experiment Ovarian Lottery is a thought experiment popularized by Warren Buffet. It stresses the importance of luck and the influence of when/where we are born in this world on our life outcomes. I will let Warren Buffet explain the concept of The Ovarian Lottery: In short:  “The womb from which you emerge determines your fate to an enormous degree for most of the seven billion people in the world,” - Warren Buffet https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-on-the-ovarian-lottery-2013-12  " My political views were formed by this process. Just imagine that it is 24 hours before you are born. A genie comes and says to you in the womb, “You look like an extraordinarily responsible, intelligent, potential human being. [You're] going to emerge in 24 hours and it is an enormous responsibility I am going to assign to you — determination of the political, economic and social system into which you are going to emerge. You set the rules, any political system, democracy, parliamentary, anything you wish — you can set the economic structure, communistic, capitalistic, set anything in motion and I guarantee you that when you emerge this world will exist for you, your children and grandchildren. What’s the catch? One catch — just before you emerge you have to go through a huge bucket with 7 billion slips, one for each human. Dip your hand in and that is what you get — you could be born intelligent or not intelligent, born healthy or disabled, born black or white, born in the US or in Bangladesh, etc. You have no idea which slip you will get. Not knowing which slip you are going to get, how would you design the world? Do you want men to push around females? It’s a 50/50 chance you get female. If you think about the political world, you want a system that gets what people want. You want more and more output because you’ll have more wealth to share around. The US is a great system, turns out $50,000 GDP per capita, 6 times the amount when I was born in just one lifetime. But not knowing what slip you get, you want a system that once it produces output, you don’t want anyone to be left behind. You want to incentivize the top performers, don’t want equality in results, but do want something that those who get the bad tickets still have a decent life. You also don’t want fear in people’s minds — fear of lack of money in old age, fear of cost of health care. I call this the “Ovarian Lottery.” My sisters didn’t get the same ticket. Expectations for them were that they would marry well, or if they work, would work as a nurse, teacher, etc. If you are designing the world knowing 50/50 male or female, you don’t want this type of world for women — you could get female. Design your world this way; this should be your philosophy. I look at Forbes 400, look at their figures and see how it’s gone up in the last 30 years. Americans at the bottom are also improving, and that is great, but we don’t want that degree of inequality. Only governments can correct that. Right way to look at it is the standpoint of how you would view the world if you didn’t know who you would be. If you’re not willing to gamble with your slip out of 100 random slips, you are lucky! The top 1% of 7 billion people. Everyone is wired differently. You can’t say you do everything yourself. We all have teachers, and people before us who led us to where we are. We can’t let people fall too far behind. You all definitely got good slips."

RavVid · Accepted Answer

I think it is a bit of both Adaeva. The guy who took the Americas Cup of you yanks said "In West Australia there are fewer people to tell you why you can't do something". Check wikipedia on America's Cup.

I think that is a major statement. Bond thought he could do it and didn't listen to people who thought he couldn't... and ended the record sports winning streak of 132 years.

In my far more minor way I was similarly blessed. I went to a country elementary and was one of the top students. That enabled my ego. Before I even went to primary school my sister helped me out because she was bad at the times tables. When my father was going through the times tables, she was obviously struggling so I helped her out with the answers. She was pretty pissed off with a preschool bro helping her out by the way. Helped my ego though.

Eventually I started working for a big-little company or a little-big company. I had some great ideas... and for some god knows reason that still escapes me they let me work on them. A big company wouldn't have let me.

I have done some crazy IT shit. I am still surprised I was allowed to do it but I was. The application manager was confident in me, my technical manger was confident in me, I was confident that it could be theoretically done.

Having got some crazy shit to work, i thought of more crazy shit that could be done. With runs on the board I was allowed to.

So I think

1. It is having the ego to think you can and not to listen to people who tell you can't or to people who tell you can do it easily either
2. It is also a matter of building confidence in others that you can.
3. Success breeds confidence in yourself and in others you need to support you that you can.

Once you have done something it is easy to do it again. It is a bit of a sugar hit to go for something more crazy.

OfMiceandMen · Answer

Success doesn't necessarily make you confident, as there is always someone who is more successful than you are.

Confidence is a state of mind that you attain once your finally okay with you and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks or says. To me having a fancy car, house, etc, doesn't make you confident. A lot of people figure that's the answer - the more you have, more you can gloat about it, the more confident you are. There's lots of rich successful people out there that are the unhappiest people on the planet and their confidence is shot. Social media glorifies these people, but, often they aren't as happy as you think.

I think confidence comes with experience and knowing yourself. The more time you spend in this world learning from past mistakes, the more confident you get.

At some point, you somewhat stop giving a crap what everyone else is doing or has to say about you and just enjoying the simple things in life.

The most confident people out there are the ones that can see past the gold/silver lining and not let other people bring them down.

I think stay positive and confident, because I surround myself with good people that do not complain about life/work - all the time, and bring me down with them.

Telekinetic-Potato · Answer

Confidence comes from believing in yourself. Believing in yourself comes from building up self dicipline and having a plan. You also need to have a "win" every once in a while.

When you build up skills, and work towards your goals, eventually you gain a better understanding of how to get to your goals and what obstacles are in your way. You'll also slowly start increasing your success rate.

You only need one of these to be confident, having all three makes you a dangerous person

slatyb · Answer

No. Some highly successful people are very insecure.

Bobby Fisher's success over the board came from talent and a lot of study. Insecure people can study and learn and succeed. That may lessen their insecurity in their field, but they may still feel inadequate in other areas. I've been there, done that.

Chazmatazz269 · Answer

A bit of both with experience. A sense of confidence can be instilled in someone who hasn’t accomplished much themselves, but it’s not the same as they will develop with personal experience in success.

Nikki1989 · Answer

Not everyone can be winners.

FilmGuy93 · Answer

I feel like being confident has had a bigger impact on my success than the other way around.

stoicity · Answer

It's a good question. It's actually a feedback loop.

Fireguy17 · Answer

I think confidence helps build success.

Jennz6 · Answer

Confident that their successful

jamesgoldman · Answer

Confident because they are successful

Emanon25 · Answer

Successful because they’d confident

Guardian45 · Answer

Both. It depends on the person and the situation.

Are people successful because they are confident or are they confident because they are successful?

Most Helpful Opinions

Most Helpful Opinions

What Girls & Guys Said

Do you think confidence is a huge factor in success?

Are people successful because they are confident or are they confident because they are successful?

Most Helpful Opinions

Most Helpful Opinions

What Girls & Guys Said

Do you think confidence is a huge factor in success?

We're glad to see you liked this post.