Confidence is the most important characteristic you can ever have, not only during school to ward off bullies, but all through life. It does not matter how smart you are or how high your grades are.

You can have five PhDs and be the smartest person on the face of the earth. But if you don’t have confidence, you will not be able to effectively communicate nor interact with people. Your social/people skills will be lacking and you won’t get anywhere in life.

Whether you choose to believe this, the reality is that other people really do have control over whether we succeed or fail in life. Other people are the gatekeepers to our success and if you think otherwise, you are only fooling yourself.

I’ll give you a few examples: You can’t get that high position you want without being selected for the job by another person- the interviewer, who could be the owner of the company, an HR manager, or supervisor.

Even during school, although the vast majority of teachers and professors are honest and grade students fairly regardless of how they may feel about the individual, it’s still not unheard of for a student to receive a failing grade solely because the instructor didn’t like them. It does happen, though not often.

Confidence= great people skills= charm= great friends and connections= success!!! Great people skills will always trump smarts, good grades, high marks, and college degrees! Always!

Confidence, or lack thereof, is something that people notice right away when they meet you for the first time. When you walk into a job interview and meet your interviewer, he is going to notice right away whether you are confident in yourself and if you’re not, chances are very unlikely that you will get hired for that esteemed position that you have been coveting. The reason for this is that if you’re not confident in yourself, how then can you expect others to be confident in you?

Make no mistake about it. Confidence is the number one ingredient in all areas of your life. It’s the first trait that potential employers look for and not only potential employers but also prospective associates, prospective customers, friends, and dates. Whether or not you are confident is something that everyone looks at unless they are so low on confidence themselves that they can’t afford to be the least bit selective.

This is why you must never let a bully take away your confidence. If another person has already taken it away, you must fight like crazy to get it back. You do this by surrounding yourself with people who love you and lift you up, doing the things you enjoy and are good at, showing off your talents, taking care of yourself, and taking pride in yourself and in your appearance. Only then will you begin to see your own worth.

If a person steals your confidence, they also steal your potential for success and happy life. In short, they steal your future. Bullies are confidence thieves! Never surrender your confidence to anyone! This brings me back to Ralph Waldo Emerson. He said it best when he made this quote:

“If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.”

How right he was!