CONFIDENCE TRICKS
- oliviablaney
- Aug 17, 2023
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 22, 2023
How often have you heard yourself say "I can't do...", or "I'm bad at...". I hear it a lot from clients. Most of the time, the activities they are referring to fall under the list of the top 10 things that people don't feel confident about (tap on/scroll the photos below for the full list).
Below are simple techniques that can help you feel more confident across all of the top 10 themes. There is strong overlap with some other posts, in particular, imposter syndrome (post) and perfectionism (post).
Clarify what it would give you if you were more confident. Where would it get you? How would you feel? How would your relationships change? How would it help you reach your goals? Write it down and store it somewhere that you can refer back to, in order to motivate you to make the changes you need to.
Acknowledge the daily wins. So often people focus on the things they could have done better, which can be helpful from a learning perspective, as long as you are also:
Balancing that by looking at the things that went well. Listing 5 things you did well each day helps embed this as a thinking habit.
Avoiding generalising and internalising things that haven't gone well or which aren't so great. For example, if you sent an email that didn't land well, that doesn't mean that you are bad at writing emails (or bad at your job, or bad at life etc etc), all that means is that you sent an email that didn't land well. Reflect on what led it to not landing well and how you could adjust those small things in future. And then move on.
Internalise all your wins. Spend some time thinking through your past successes, and what it was about you that made those things successful. Sometimes people find this difficult, they find it easier to identify what others did well. In those cases, it can be helpful to reflect on what your friends or colleagues would say about what you did well (and spend some time actively trying to acknowledge and agree with those comments).
Take care of yourself. Its a lot easier to control spiralling negative thoughts if you are eating well, sleeping well, and not drinking.
Reframe negative self talk. Change the "I can't" to "I haven't managed to yet". Rather than "I can't do anything right", change it to "I can do better next time by doing...". Balance out any opportunities for improvement with positives, for example, "I am currently not great at stage presence, but I'm great at articulating my points and engaging the audience". A coach can be an independent source to help you identifying and changing the way you talk to yourself.
Don't compare yourself to others. Most of the time, it doesn't end well.
Act as if. Often, people talk about "fake it until you make it". But creating a disconnect between who you authentically are and who you are pretending to be can create all sorts of psychological issues. Instead, its better to "act as if" - which means thinking about what it would look like if you were more confident, and then do those things. What would you do if you were more confident? Sign up to a new class? Go travelling? Push for promotion? Take the first step on those things now. A coach can help you hold yourself accountable to ensure that you not only complete those first steps, but also the second, third, fourth.... and final steps.
Spend time with positive people. Don't feed the negative thoughts in your mind by spending time with others who think negatively. Start to draw boundaries with those who are negative, bit by bit, until you get to a point where they don't have an impact on your mindset.
Focus on what you can control. I used to facilitate meetings which included some strong characters. I'd prep an agenda, create detailed materials, and how I was going to frame things for a week, only for me to get into meetings and have those strong, loud characters to spend all the time talking about something else that had just come up that morning. All my work would be wasted and I'd take it personally, as though I hadn't done a good enough job at prepping. But the thing is, I couldn't control what those characters were going to do - I had no way of fortune-telling that something else would be top of mind for them, nor any way to force my well-crafted agenda onto them. The thing I could control was how I responded to it all - so I learnt to get stuck back into the conversation (the part that I can control) and not let the wasted work bother me.
Confidence isn't something that you can change overnight, it takes small sustained changes day on day. But you can shift your confidence in any area of your life if you make the effort over time. Take the first step now.
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