Have you ever heard of the phrase, "your thoughts become reality"? Well in the true sense, your thoughts do become reality.

When we think about a place we want to be in or a position we want to reach, we get a feeling. That feeling reinforces our body to take the proper decision in a subconscious level to make our thoughts into a reality

Now, you may think how can we do anything subconsciously? We clearly don't need to consciously know what we're doing in order for us to make a decision. We go through certain experiences in our lives and those experiences are registered in our subconcious mind, hence, it influences our behavior. For example, racism is actually programmed in the subconcious mind of a racist by the people they are surrounded by. If you look at Hollywood, back in the days, a lot of bad guys were either Black or Muslim and so that was registered in the minds of Americans.

So now, you want to program your subconcious mind to influence yourself to reach a point in your life or get something you desire. The way to do it is to repeat to yourself with full belief that you want it and you will work for it. Another good way is by "scripting"; write your desire and use so many words to describe your desire to bring about that good feeling, and you will surprised how well things go for you.

Gaining confidence is not a challenging task. Confidence is a characteristic that is extremely attractive, especially to the female gender. Confidence can take you further than you can ever imagine. For example, if you were to be interviewed for a job, a person who is confident, can easily get a job, but don't mix confidence wiht arrogance, because there is a fine line between them. For people who need confidence here are ways that could help you gain confidence.

Education

Ralph Waldo Emerson said "there is no knowledge that is not power" and he's right; power is knowledge. By educating yourself via reading current events, or going to college, you are setting yourself to gain the abilities to be more aware of what's going on in the world. By being aware of the current events, you are accumulating information to raise your ability to know and talk about interesting information. A person who shows confidence regardless of how ignorant others are, gains a lot of brownie points for the audiences.

Traveling

Meet someone who travels a lot; you will see that person has confidence. By traveling, you are going out of your comfort zone and meeting new and interesting people. By traveling to new places and meeting new people you expand your horizon and gain an insight of getting to know new things you have never known before. Let's be honest, someone who stays home all day isn't that interesting; they are boring and uneasy to talk to. When you travel, you see new things to enrich your mind, you see places that you probably could never imagine.

Meet New People

By meeting new people who learn about their experiences and you learn. Everyone has a different perspective in life, they may know things that you may not know. By talking to others you learn how others are and you learning their side of the story gain confidence by doing so. Also, by meeting new people you may make mistakes in terms of talking, and by making those mistakes, you learn from those mistakes, which is part of growing up and developing. You learn other people's stories and you unintentionally you develop your personality to be interesting and confident. Don't stay with your ethnic group or linguistic group, go out and meet people who you normally would not hang out with.

I wrote the following for a paper but it basically sums up how networking is a must in order to gain social power.

First let’s define power; according to McShane and Glinow, “power is the capacity of a person, team, or organization to influence others” (p. 300). So let’s say you want something done and you want someone else to do some work, if you have power then that person will be obliged to do work for you. But power doesn’t come simply; it could take a while to gain that power. Networking, in order to increase a person’s power can come from expanding a person’s career circle or social circle. “Networking provides a way for you to gain contact with those in positions of power you might not normally have access to in the normal course of your life.” (Minor, T. L., 1997). By getting to know more and more people, one has opportunities to gain knowledge, skills, and experiences. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “there is no knowledge that is not power”. Knowledge, the most important factor, gained can dictate a person decision; these decisions can help a person influence others. Skills can be gained over time from working with others; these skills help in helping a person improve in their field or other field of work. Experiences with other people, bad experiences especially, helps someone gain knowledge and skills, so that person can avoid making the same mistakes and make better decisions. For example, a person who stays home and doesn’t network will have a very hard time developing speaking skills. Let’s look at a party for example; whenever we go to parties, the person who has the highest network connections and has the greatest speaking skills is the one who everyone listens to. At the party, no one will give attention to the person who is unsocial or the one with least network connection because he or she wouldn’t know that many people.

So networking overall helps someone gain knowledge. But networking gives immense amount of benefits. Networking in career search gives an individual boost. “By regularly attending business and social events, people will begin to recognize you. This can you help to build your reputation as a knowledgeable, reliable and supportive person by offering useful information or tips to people who need it.” I’m in the medical field and one of the things that my teaching doctors tell me that in order to get good residencies, one of the best things is to have good connections. In the medical field, networking is highly emphasized in clinical clerkships. We are taught that if a doctor recognizes a student, based on a strong communication with the student, the doctor will favor that student for granting him or her a residency position. Another way to network in my career is to do volunteering in hospitals. By volunteering in the hospitals doctors will notice the volunteer and with time there will interaction with doctors. And by the same process, the doctor will recognize and favor that student for residency.

References

Five Benefits of Networking. (2013, February 12). Small Business BC. Retrieved January 26, 2014, from http://www.smallbusinessbc.ca/starting-a-business/five-benefits-networking

McShane, Steven Lattimore, and Mary Ann Young Glinow. Organizational behavior: emerging knowledge and practice for the real world. 5th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2010. Print.

Minor, T. L. (1997, Jan 31). Networking for professional power. Hispanic Engineer and Information Technology, 12, 12. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy.davenport.edu/docview/218153959?accountid=40195