With greater confidence in yourself and your abilities, you will set bigger goals, make bigger plans and commi... — Brian Tracy

With greater confidence in yourself and your abilities, you will set bigger goals, make bigger plans and commit yourself to achieving objectives that today you only dream about.

Author: Brian Tracy

Insight: Most people think confidence comes after success—that you prove yourself first, then feel sure of yourself. But it actually works backward. When you genuinely believe you can do something, you stop playing small without even realizing it. You naturally aim higher because the ceiling in your mind has moved up. Someone confident about public speaking volunteers to lead meetings; someone who doubts themselves finds reasons to sit quietly in the corner. The tricky part is that bigger goals aren't just about ambition or greed. They're about what you're actually willing to attempt. Right now, there are things you want—a career shift, a creative project, a difficult conversation—that you've written off as unrealistic. But you haven't written them off because they're impossible; you've written them off because you don't quite believe in yourself yet. Confidence shifts what feels possible from fantasy into something you'd genuinely plan for and fight toward. The real insight here is that confidence isn't arrogance or delusion. It's the difference between dreaming about something in the shower and actually opening the laptop to make it happen. It's what turns vague wishes into actual commitments with dates and checkpoints. And those commitments? That's where the real changes start.

Source: Maximum Achievement, p. 40, 1993