Self-confidence is repeatedly seen as a catalyst of progress or one of its key hindrances. When you start research on the topic, you get overloaded by articles, videos and books claiming confidence is about the complete acceptance of oneself, including your strengths and weaknesses. About trusting and believing in yourself. About getting socially validated or appreciated or admitting your mistakes.
But as nice as this sounds, it this it? Is this enough?
In my experience, to truly end the “I can’t. I just don’t have the (self)confidence to do it” coming out on autopilot, one needs to question and often change his/her perspective of what self-confidence really means (for him/her), dive into proper preparation and then take courageous action.
How did I change my perspective about self-confidence?
- Self-confidence is not a thing you have or not, it’s a process…and usually a life-long learning process. It is not only about addressing and letting go of your fears or reminding yourself that failing is OK. It is about understanding you will not become more self-confident when repeating a “I am confident” affirmation or by simply listing your past successes. To really keep developing a strong self-confidence, you need to take action, after proper preparation, continuously.
- Self-confidence is not a one-off fix to your negative feelings…as being self-confident doesn’t mean you will never ever experience the feelings of fear, anxiousness or nervousness…or that your inner critic, your inner voice, would suddenly disappear. Self-confidence is about learning to use the negative feelings more skillfully and not allowing them to stop you, form going ahead.
- Self-confidence is an excuse…agreeing with Buddhist perspective seeing low self-confidence as laziness. It sees confidence as something one can work on, develop and boost. Therefore people who blame their poor-confidence for not achieving whatever they want to achieve, are simply seen as being lazy, not taking action and just using the “low self-confidence” as an excuse.
So what are some self-confidence boosters that I experienced working?
#1 DEFINE CONFIDENCE FOR YOURSELF
Remove the vagueness of the word and dissect it into what does is mean, for you, first. What would you like to be able to do? What are you “missing”? Is it: to present in front of people? Improve the pitch of your voice to better deliver your message? Improve your selling ability?… Describe in detail: How would a super-confident you look like? What would you do, say, wear etc.?
#2 OPTIONS OF GETTING THERE
Do your due diligence and identify ways of getting to your desired confident state, spotting a person (if in your inner circle or outside) who masters it. A role-model, who you can shadow and copy, replicating the validated steps, that work, to achieve the result you want. Diving right into action unprepared or engaging in scattered actions leads to increased chances of failure. Moreover, if you burn yourself once, you will be reluctant to try again.
#3 CHUNK IT DOWN
If you aim to build self-confidence of Tony Robbins or Simon Sinek, you need to understand they went through a process too. Also their journey was a series of baby steps. You need to define such roadmap to success, defining your baby steps to take, rather than setting discouraging and hard-to achieve goals for yourself. Chunk your goal down into small actionable baby steps This allow you to feel accomplished and making progress which you then should celebrate.
#4 TAKE ACTION, LEARN & ADAPT
Last but not least, its action time! You need to practice getting out of your comfort zone, executing your defined baby steps, getting closer and closer towards mastery. It’s crucial to evaluate the results you are achieving regularly in order to spot areas for improvement or tweaking. Don’t repeat doing something that brings you nowhere of course. Continuously keep learning from your actions and engage in continuous adaptation.
YOUR TURN!
Stop making low self-confidence an excuse blocking your progress. Stop hoping one day, you will finally wake up, being “lucky” to get over the doubt and fear, ignoring the critical voice inside your head, and take action to develop a stronger self-confidence. One, that would allow you to achieve your dreams.
So are you ready?
Question your perspective about self-confidence and start defining what self-confidence boosters you desire today!
