Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings. There’s a marvelous essay that Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote on self-reliance. He said, “There will come a time in everybody’s unfoldment when they’ll realize that envy is ignorance. Imitation is suicide.” To envy someone else is to say, I believe you got something going for you that I haven’t got going for me, and I’m going to envy you. If they’ve done it, that’s positive proof you can do it. You can’t be like anybody else. Nobody can be like you. You are unique. There’s nothing in the whole universe that’s like you. You are a unique part of the whole scheme of things.

There’s a beautiful poem that I put in two different places in the Born Rich book that said, “Every single blade of grass, and every flake of snow, is just a wee bit different. There’s no two alike, you know. From something small, like grains of sand, to each gigantic star, each one was made with this in mind to be just what they are. How foolish then, to imitate and how useless to pretend, when each one of us comes from a mind whose ideas never end. There’ll only be just one of me to show what I can do. And likewise, you should be really proud that there’s only one of you.”

We got to get rid of this idea we can’t do anything. You can do anything you want, anything you can think of. And we’re going to find that our confidence comes with knowledge. The more we learn, the more confident we become. Like you’ll hear people say they don’t have any confidence. That’s not true. They do have confidence, maybe not in a particular area. They’re confident they can drive their car, they’re confident they can get dressed, they’re confident they can put their makeup on or shave. So to say they don’t have any confidence, it’s not an accurate statement.

Well, how do we become confident? By gathering more information. And I’ll tell you something else. If you don’t keep gathering information, your confidence will start to wane. You’ll start to lose it. You’ve got to keep gathering information. You want your confidence to get stronger and stronger and stronger. The more you study this material that we’re giving you, the more confident you’re going to become.