Listen to episode 94 of the Inspirational Living podcast: How to Be Self-Confident (Overcoming the Confidence Gap). Edited and adapted from Psychology & Higher Life by William McKeever, published in 1905. Self-Development Podcast Excerpt: The self-confident person, of necessity, believes in other people. Old as I am, it stirs me up to put forth greater effort to have people believe in me. The ordinary little child will do their utmost to come up to the standard fixed for them by the expressed opinions of their elders. The self-reliant person, therefore, is a benefactor of his or her associates. It is such an easy matter to drift down to the level of a gossip, and later to that of a defamer of character, and finally to that of the chronic misanthrope. If one goes about looking for the meanness in other people's character, you can surely find it. But so can you find the good — more of it than you can enumerate in a lifetime. Happy indeed is the individual who has formed the habit of looking for the good. And so in every clime, we find the stalwart, self-reliant character, who, in the language of the statesman might say: "Master of human destinies am I: Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait." Another of the great promoters of self-confidence, as well as of long life and happiness, is love. Everyone should by all means fall in love with something or somebody, or, better yet, with everybody...