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Confidence Yes, Overconfidence No
able to cope with the severity of their winter, whereas
the severe cold of that region proved to be fatal for
Napoleon’s army. The extreme cold accompanied by
hailstorms caused most of the French soldiers to perish
even before entering Moscow.
The same happened with Adolf Hitler, the dictator
of Germany. It was his belief that he was destined for
success. He thought he was invincible. Deluded by this
obsession, he invaded Russia in the winter of 1941. His
army too was caught up in a hailstorm and was crushed
at Stalingrad. Over-confidence generally leads people
into misadventures, which can be fatal to both nation
and individuals. In this world, no one is so strong as to
court disaster with impunity.
According to the divine scheme of life, any
achievement is a result of two factors – one’s personal
planning and support by the external world. The share
of personal planning is less than fifty per cent while the
share of outside factors is more than fifty per cent. It
is this fact which makes over-confidence untenable in
this world. People, thanks to their obsessions, take into
account only their own planning, generally ignoring
external factors. Unable to foresee future developments,
they indulge in unrealistic thinking, which eventually
proves fatal. Most of the people who are prone to this
kind of thinking risk being failures.
I know an educated person who was in a good
government job but then, because of his political
ambitions, he resigned from service and threw himself
into the arena of politics. This adventure proved to be
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