Do you have complete confidence in you and what you do?
Or do you sometimes lack confidence in some of your abilities, feel anxious or nervous in certain situations? And when feeling this way, do you try the fake it until you make it tactic? It doesn’t have to be that way.
Confidence to push ourselves to the edge of our full potential is something that we can all develop. There are multiple techniques you can employ to help build your confidence naturally and find true self-belief.
Techniques to use
- Remember your confidence. Go back to times when you have felt confident in similar situations in the past. What was happening at that time which helped you feel confident? Often, we can recreate these things if we are aware of them. For example, I know that there are certain places I can sit in a room during meetings which give me greater visibility of what’s going on and which allows me to better manage my presence and impact.
- Visualise how you want it to be so that you’ve already played it out in your own mind. The brain doesn’t really distinguish between what is imagined and what is real and so visualising is a powerful way to set yourself up so that you’re not walking into a situation that you’re not familiar with – i.e. you’ve already rehearsed it.
- Accept that you belong there. Very rarely in life are we there just to make up the numbers and so being clear on why you are in the situation and what you are there to add is critical. For example, I’ll often sit in a room full of finance experts recognising that I don’t have the same expertise, but this is the very reason I’m in the room…because I have expertise that they don’t have.
- Relive your successes. Go through all the times you have achieved or overcome something in your life. Remind yourself of how capable you are. Use others to help you remind yourself of these successes as too often they get buried in our long-term memory.
- Check your beliefs are sound. As I have spoken about before, look back on your story to check if you are holding on to beliefs that could be stunting your confidence. Often with a simple reframe, these beliefs can be transformed into mindsets that help rather than hinder us.
If you can build true self-belief, then you have a solid foundation. Confidence can fluctuate but if your self-belief is robust there are some quick fixes or tricks to pull yourself back on track. For those moments when your confidence feels shaky or when you need a quick boost for an upcoming occasion, there are some simple actions to take.
Quick fixes:
- Prepare yourself! Similar, to the visualise technique but this is about arming yourself with a script of what you are going to tell people about you if they ask. One of our clients is a strong outgoing person but situations like conferences with lots of new people turned a normally confident person into someone that wants to avoid the situation. She had a tendency to be self-depreciating and awkward when asked about herself, but by getting her to prepare notes on her story, her background, work highlights etc she now knows exactly what she is going to say, and the anxiety is reduced significantly.
- Deflect! If the pressure on you is too much, take control and ask the questions, drive the conversation. Again, have a bank of questions you can always fall back on and never forget the classic a long-term CEO always told me he lived by was “who, what, where, when, why” and you will never run dry.
- Rationalise your feelings! The more insecure we feel about something the larger the issues and worries become. However, benchmarking them to other similar situations helps us see we are being disproportionate in our approach. In times when you have that promotion interview or huge speech to deliver, I always tell myself I’m not performing heart surgery, nobody’s life is in my hands, and no one will die if this doesn’t go to plan… obviously this analogy won’t work for heart surgeons!
- Honesty! Once upon a time it was seen as weakness to show how you are really feeling, but this is no longer the case, as people respond to honesty with understanding and sometimes relief. Example from Louise, our Communications Manager, “I once had a senior manager that was so amazing at the core responsibilities of her role, and she taught me so much but one day she honesty voiced to me that the finance side made her anxious. I was immediately able to alleviate her of her worries as finance is a strength of mine plus it gave me the opportunity to show my worth by implementing a new process which added value to the business. Trust and mutually learning made us a brilliant team.”
- Finally remember… there are others around you also lacking confidence or feeling anxious too, so you are not alone. We are all just human.
In conclusion, we want to dispel the idea of ‘fake it till you make it’. This concept is flawed as it too often drives you deeper into anxiety rather than confidence. To replace this we encourage you to find your true self-belief in what you have to offer and then the confidence will come organically. It doesn’t matter who you are, there will always be situations when confidence is knocked, but it doesn’t have to impact your life if you can work on a strong self-belief foundation and use a few tricks to help find it.
Support
If you would like some guidance to help build your self belief please contact me. I’m always happy to offer help, email rob@tplwordpresshost-wwwwogs665.live-website.com.