A couple of years ago, I was at the airport just waiting to pick up my luggage after a long haul flight. People were milling around the conveyor belt while it stubbornly refused to start.

I looked around and saw an older gentleman whining loudly about the sorry state of the airport. By the time he was thirty seconds into his rant, a few more people had joined in.

A little distance away, a man was busy working while he had literally perched his laptop on the flat handle of the trolley while waiting for his luggage.

The older gentleman was still whining, still annoyed, was still complaining into thin air as he waited.

The other man who was dealing with the same situation was taking the time to do something important.

One is transforming a bad situation into a worse one.

The other is accepting of the situation and is making the most of it.

Which person do you think is more confident in their lives?

I bet it’s easy to sympathize with the older gentleman. He hadn’t done anything wrong after all. He was simply dissatisfied with the situation.

But if you look on the other side, simply becoming at ease with the reality had the opposite effect.

When we receive a pushback from reality and forces beyond our control throw a wrench in our plans, there’s no better way to deal with it than accept it, move on, and try to make the best out of it.

Instead, our instincts tell us to lash out.

We become agitated in a subconscious effort to rectify the situation.

And when our psyche fails to come up with a solution, we fall into the trap of rejection.

Our rejection of the situation leads to us rejecting the obvious — our natural inclination to adapt.

If only we could simply force ourselves to relax, say it’s okay and make better decisions like the person with the laptop.

If only we could adapt and not just appear but become more confident even in the lowest of circumstances.

Every decision we make has either a good or a bad outcome.

Whether it’s life, work, relationships or business, we make a ton of decisions and expect some kind of favourable result from them.

When a result doesn’t go according to those expectations, it chips away at our confidence.

The negative result makes us think that we’re suddenly weaker than before. As if we didn’t deserve even the great successes we’ve had.

The real reason for this downward spiral of confidence is however somewhere deep within ourselves.

There sitting in the corner of our psyche is a need for getting it right every single time.

A necessity to always be a step ahead, a burning desire to never look failure in the eye.

This hard dependency on success is damaging to our mental well-being.

Let’s call it for what it is in reality — our fear of failure. Our fear of looking bad.

Great leaders in any field understand this and use it to their advantage.

They let go of their need for good results and instead focus only on the work. If it works, good. If it doesn’t, try again.

It’s that mentality that builds an unlimited well of confidence within ourselves.

It’s the attitude to always look at the future.

It’s not the unending need to expect better, it’s the unending determination to do better that generates confidence.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that our life experiences are unique.

They are dynamic, ever-evolving and are nurtured under completely unique circumstances and finding the right advice to listen to can be a pain.

Any productivity video we watch and any self-improvement article we read needs to be modularized into a set of pieces that suit our individual life.

Taking blanket advice from the internet can be infinitely more harmful because when it doesn’t work, it’ll crush our confidence.

And remember, the internet is a master in making it seem as if everybody else is doing great.

When it reality, it’s the complete opposite.

Context is important. If there’s a person in our life that knows us, we’re much better served in taking their advice.

And guess what, if that doesn’t work, we’ll be able to provide and receive feedback that takes us a step closer in making that advice work for us. This builds our confidence.

The by-product of those habits is confidence.