Confidence
Confidence is a prized trait in both the personal and professional world and something I get to work with people on a daily basis. But what is it and how can you improve it? Read on for some tips.
The first thing to mention is that confidence is about an ability to be able do something, it’s external focused as opposed to self esteem, which is internal and based on your thoughts or opinion of yourself.
Confidence is transitional, which means you might be confident in lots of areas of your life barr one and yet make statements like: “I haven’t got any confidence.”
To improve your confidence, consider the following tips:
- Get clear about what you want to be confident in and be specific, ie “I want to be able to speak up in the team meeting on Monday and get 3 important points across”
- Write it down – this helps you to see if it’s what you really want, makes it real and allows you to adjust it if it isn’t.
- Write what you want, not what you don’t want. Apparently the brain can’t process ‘Not’ or ‘Don’t’, and you will think about or visualise the negative and then make that happen as Derren Brown shows in the link.
- Break down the steps into manageable chunks.
- Learn from the past, what’s gone wrong before or stopped you from speaking up? What can you do differently this time so you get a new or different outcome?
- Make a plan
- Take action and then practise what works and change what doesn’t. Building confidence can be quick for some and slow for others, be patient with yourself, work with your natural style, learn from any mistakes and always do something different until you find what works for you. If you need any help with any area of confidence, do get in touch with me and also take a look at my online programme which will build your confidence over a period of weeks. It’s half price until this Friday so worth taking a look at. https://pamlidford.co.uk/products/confidence-courses/lost-confidence-want-back/
