Ballz of Steel

HOW TO WIN

How to win - Ballz Magazine
Written by Hope Stewart

David, a 10th semester man at college, participated in the nation’s biggest case solving competition. He went there to compete with people that were just two to three semesters away from their graduation. In the first round, he created a presentation for the second time in his life. He went to the second round, the semi-finals, defeating 600 seniors in the first round with that presentation. In this round, he delivered the second presentation of his life. He couldn’t go to the finals for just 1 point. David had confidence, and thus, he could do it.

We all prepare for it; we stay up through nights, we endure stress that is far away from our limited reachability, we forget ourselves. But when the time comes, do all of us achieve success? No, only a few does, and they can do it only because they had faith in what they learned, and they believed themselves.

People believe that the ones that achieve success has talent, and that success gives them confidence. It’s wrong. Confidence is not that at all. Talent is the abstract that gets you skills, and then by believing these skills, by believing that you can achieve success with them, you achieve success. Confidence empowers you. It makes you say that you don’t care if someone is better than you; all you care about is defeating him/her. Confidence is about owning it. Having confidence, you don’t care if someone rejects you; because if they do so, you know that you can handle it. You are free. You appreciate yourself. It’s the time when you know your self-worth, and you accept it, you dive in with it, and you try your best, you aim for success, and you achieve it.

Do you remember that time in exam hall when you sort of cheated by asking the guy sitting beside you the answer. It was different from the one you had derived. You checked your solution again and again. It seemed that you were right. You took the risk, and, you went with your one. In the end, getting out of that exam hall, you checked your book and found out that you were actually right. Yes, you got that answer right because you were confident. You believed in yourself. What if you had gone with your friend’s answer? Even though you had the talent to derive the answer yourself, you would have gone wrong and lost the marks. That’s what confidence does. It sanctifies you according to a religion that you built to lead your life. You don’t stay depressed anymore. You don’t feel anxious. You don’t suffer from low self-esteem.

It’s foolish to think that you lose nothing when you attempt to accomplish something, and then fail at it. The internal loss is unexplainable. The moment you think that you may lose, you’ve already lost. It may be hard, and then it may become harder than you expected it to be. Don’t break. You can still do it. People have done it before. Now it’s your time. Believe in yourself and aim for only and only success.

Then again, there’s the Dunning-Kruger effect. This happens when you live in an illusion, you mistakenly assume something that is not right and stick to it, or you intentionally commit an action that is outright wrong. It happens when you’re being overconfident, when you’re being biased, when you know the facts, and still you choose to ignore them. This is deemed madness, and this can harm you.

If you draw a straight-line to measure confidence with a middle point that says zero with positive values in the right and negative values in the left, the middle point is the optimum level of success. The values in the right gradually determine the level of Dunning-Kruger effect, and the values in the left gradually determine how much confidence you lack. That middle value, the optimum one, defines the ideal amount of confidence, and it can get you anywhere as long as you have it.

Even then, a research, led by University of Edinburgh and University of California-San Diego, regarding overconfidence, found that even if you constantly believe or commit something that is wrong, however, you still choose to pursue that, you can prove that you are right. Yes, even being overconfident sometimes helps. However, saying ‘sometimes’ is actually exaggerating it. It’s really rare, and you should never give into that.

There are thousands of ways to gain confidence. Someone will say that if you exercise every day, you’ll be confident about your body, or if you study regularly, you’ll be confident about your grades. Don’t follow them. Confidence is self-belief. Yes, you have to work hard and gain the best preparation possible to survive anything. But that just makes you qualified for it. Confidence enables you to win it.

 

 

 

About the author

Hope Stewart