How Do You Build Confidence?
I’ve always beaten to the rhythm of my own drum, but if you knew me 10 years ago, you would know confident was something I definitely was not! As I have said before, I was a people-pleaser. I would make those around me happy because I thought it would make be happy. But it didn’t!
I would look at confident people in awe, wishing I could be more like them, like they had some sort of special formula that I could only hope to have…lol.
Well, in the last 10 years I’ve discovered there’s no special formula or even a ‘special few’ who are gifted with confidence. While it’s definitely naturally easier for some of us than others, we all have it within us.
Confidence is a muscle you build by doing the things you know you want to…and probably scares you most.
For a long time I thought I had to be confident before I could do the things I wanted. Well, that time came next to never so I never got to do the things I really wanted.
Then I found out the secret: competence builds confidence. All this time, I had it backwards! In order to become confident, I actually had to do the thing I wanted to first. It goes back to the old adage: practice makes perfect. If I want to be confident in something, I need to be first competent at it.
We also need to accept that fear and failure are part of the process.
The first time we do something new, it’s uncomfortable and scary. So we need to be like Nike and “just do it”.
We need to do things that scare us and keep doing them until they are normal for us.
And we’re not always going to get it right and will fail at times. This is why it’s important to focus on effort not the result initially. We eventually become competent when we consistently keep doing the right thing long enough.
As we become more competent in a certain skill, it becomes second nature to us and we are more confident in it. This is known as Conscious Competence.
As we build our confidence, it is important that we keep up the momentum. Here are 4 great ideas of things you can do:
- Confidence journal – this is a great way to keep track of new skills and celebrate successes.
- Set mini challenges that push us to be more confident. We can start small by doing things outside your comfort zone e.g. delivering a 5-minute presentation
- Replacing a negative thoughts with a positive thought because when we think good, we feel good.
- Come from a place of “YES” – we can say ‘yes’ to the things we want to do especially those things that scare us e.g. make a bucket list of fun things to do and actually do them!
Remember:
our lives don’t change until we do. It’s our choice to gain the confidence we need to live our best lives!
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