We’ve all seen it—the guy with medium good looks and so-so talent who walks into a room with swagger to spare and commands the whole place. People perk up. They listen and follow. He’s an instant leader, and he’s not wasting any emotional bandwidth worrying what anyone in that room thinks of him. He’s not dithering about things he can’t control. He knows who he is, and he’s owning it.

Self-confidence isn’t just a nice virtue. It’s imperative for:

Making Decisions

Wishy-washy confidence can paralyze you, but a fulfilled life is about making bold decisions and moving forward with conviction.

Getting What You Want out of Life

Have you ever shied away from trying something new because you were afraid you’d fail? A lack of confidence keeps you trapped in a small box when there’s so much more of life to explore. Confidence can remove the barriers to achieving those things that are most important to you.

Accepting Yourself

As Russell says, “Creating an attractive character isn’t about becoming someone you’re not…it’s about becoming more of who you really are.”

There’s magic in becoming comfortable in your own skin, in accepting yourself—strengths, weaknesses, and all. There’s a freeing beauty to falling in love with yourself.

More than people value perfection, they value authenticity and vulnerability. Confidence allows you to embrace your full self without feeling ashamed of the weak parts. It helps you grant yourself grace to improve on your own terms.

Being Resilient

Life is a rollercoaster; resilience is the key to enjoying the ride. When you are self-confident, you can rise above the inevitable ups and downs of life because you don’t live in fear of failure or difficulty. A criticism here or a failure there won’t send you into a spiral because your self-confidence is anchored in a deep-down belief in yourself that no one can take from you.

Communicating Better

Those who were watching television in the ‘70s likely heard this slogan from EF Hutton commercials: “When EF Hutton talks, people listen.”

If you want people to listen to you, you have to communicate in a way that shows you’re worth listening to. You can do this through body language and the clear and deliberate way you share what’s on your mind. What you have to say is important; confidence will convey that to everyone around you.

Leading Others

Leading isn’t about doing a great thing; it’s empowering others to do that great thing. People like an inspiring vision they can rally around. They like someone to lead the way, and they like to hear that they’re doing a good job as they go.

But you can see how a lack of confidence can get in the way of leadership. It could cause you to second-guess yourself, dither about decisions, dance around problems rather than hitting them head-on, procrastinate, worry too much about what others think, feel too self-conscious to connect well with others, and lack the moxie to take risks that could benefit your organization.

On the other hand, picture a person who is confident in their abilities, their decisions, and the future of your organization. Picture someone who’s not afraid to “fail forward.” That person can create unstoppable momentum–and that person can be you.

It’s a myth that you have to be born confident. Self-confidence isn’t a personality trait; it’s an attribute to develop—if you’re hungry enough to master it.

Confidence comes from changing the way you talk to yourself and the priority you put on your own well-being. It comes from embracing a growth mindset instead of expecting impossible perfection from yourself at every turn.

Confidence comes from celebrating your achievements instead of dwelling on your failures. It comes from showing gratitude, and, above all, it comes from practice. You learn the concepts, you put them in motion repeatedly, you fail, you get back up, and you get more and more confident as you go. It’s a process, and it’s within anyone’s reach.

There’s no mold you have to fit into to be confident. You don’t have to be a raging extrovert or the life of the party. Consider that Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Mahatma Gandhi were introverted, and they managed to lead with confidence and leave a giant mark on humanity.

Russell Brunson has a crazy kind of passion for books that build self-confidence. Over the years, he has read and listened to this literature with a blazing fervor, vetting a massive body of works to find the most valuable content.

He has also spent a fortune acquiring many of these self-confidence-building guides for his Atlas Research Center. When you join the Secrets of Success Movement, you get access to the most life-changing concepts from these books. Let’s explore a few of them:

“Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill

“I know I have the ability to achieve the object of my definite purpose in life; therefore, I demand of myself persistent, continuous action toward its attainment, and I here and now promise to render such action.” (Affirmation #1 from Hill’s Self-confidence Formula)

“Think and Grow Rich” was written in the aftermath of the Great Depression, helping people triumph over the poverty that decimated the country and, along with it, countless dreams. Hill’s book became the essential guide for those looking to turn things around—to burst the shackles of poverty and achieve wealth they could only fantasize about in the dark heart of the Depression.

This transformation required confidence, but Hill’s target audience had been beaten down by life for the past decade. His book gives a detailed escape route from tough times and powerlessness with his five-step Self-Confidence Formula.

This formula helps readers build their self-confidence with a tried-and-true slate of positive affirmations, a guide to the art of visualizing goals, and the tinder to keep the fire to achieve blazing. Hill’s book is as transformative today as it was nearly a century ago.

“The Strangest Secret” by Earl Nightingale

“Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become reality.”

You might call this book the granddaddy of all self-help audio programs. It started as a recorded speech in the 1950s and helped kick off the genre of self-improvement audiobooks.

Nightingale owned an insurance agency and was in the practice of delivering weekly motivational speeches for his staff. When he realized he would miss a scheduled speech due to a vacation, he recorded the speech that spawned “The Strangest Secret” and arranged to have it played for his team.

His employees went wild for the speech and told their friends…and they told their friends. Soon, over one million recordings of the speech were sold, and Nightingale won the first Gold Record awarded for the spoken word.

Nightingale’s book galvanized a mighty audience for the concepts of positive thinking and the law of attraction. It laid bare the indisputable connection between self-confidence and our thoughts. Through affirmations, visualization, daily planning, and consistent action, Nightingale helps readers take control of their thoughts and harness them to build unwavering self-confidence.

“Iron Will” by Orison Swett Marden

“The world takes us at our own valuation. It believes in the man who believes in himself, but it has little use for the timid man, the one who is never certain of himself; who cannot rely on his own judgment, who craves advice from others, and is afraid to go ahead on his own account.”

If you lived in the early 1900s and wanted someone to inspire you to a better way of living, you would have looked to Marden. He was the premier self-improvement leader of his time, and his legacy has woven its way through the decades up to the present. If you like Dale Carnegie, Zig Ziglar, Stephen Covey, or Tony Robbins, you’ll love Marden because they have all drawn inspiration from him.

Marden’s classic book “The Iron Will” is a powerful treatise on the importance of willpower and mental discipline. Marden leads out with an unshakeable belief in himself that is contagious. He asserts that if you don’t know who you are, the world will tell you, and the results might not be pretty.

In his self-confidence-building book, Marden will teach you to create life on your own terms, proactively informing the world that you are just what it needs. (Spoiler alert: They’ll believe you!)

“The Master Key System” by Charles F. Haanel

“Learn to keep the door shut, keep out of your mind, out of your office, and out of your world, every element that seeks admittance with no definite helpful end in view.”

More than just a book, Haanel’s work is a system with 24 lessons and accompanying exercises that build on each other. Haanel’s book teaches readers to harmonize the conscious and subconscious minds so that they work together to further a person’s ideals and ambitions. It explores the laws of concentration and attraction and helps readers leverage them for their benefit.

Haanel helps free the reader of the “debris” of limiting thoughts that clutter up their mind and limit self-confidence. He helps readers take inventory of their self-sabotaging assumptions, biases, and beliefs and clean them out like they’d de-junk an overcrowded room. This allows self-confidence to soar, unencumbered by negativity.