The power of confidence- A lesson from Special 26

Saw 'Special 26' yesterday.

Good movie, with few unwanted songs in between.

Don't worry, I am not going to pen a review here. What I wanted to point out was a single line of dialogue (and plenty of scenes before the dialogue which corroborate it).

To bring you up to speed, the movie is about some white collar criminals who pose as CBI/Income tax  agents, raid the homes and shops of politicians and rich people who have plenty of black money, and disappear into the night.

Towards the end of the film, CBI officer Wasim Khan (Manoj Bajpai at his best) who is close to catching these people, tells the future target of the group - a startled jewellery shop owner - "why are you afraid of CBI? have you committed a crime? have you done anything illegal? no right? these criminals feed on these apprehension of yours."

I think it is less about the apprehension and more the behaviour which causes the apprehension.

The criminals are so confident about themselves that hardly anyone questions their credentials.

In fact, they walk in on an actual CBI raid but manage to talk their way through.

Confidence.

And here we are, thinking twice about asking for directions from the stranger next to us, because we think he might consider us stupid.

We keep quiet in meetings where dumb and dumber ideas get executed, while we hold on to our million $ maker because we are afraid someone might ridicule it.

There is no way of knowing if we succeed unless we step out and do our thing. We might fail, but there is at least 50% chance of success.

Not doing anything is, by far, the surest way to mediocrity.