Does it sometimes appear like everyone around you is confident and sure of themselves? Chances are, they have doubts just like you. So, what did they discovered about how to be confident?
They know that confidence is not something you have, it’s something you create from within yourself. Being confident is nothing more than holding a firm belief in yourself around your capabilities. It’s the feeling of certainty that you can accomplish whatever you set your mind to. Confidence comes from within, and you can find ways to be more confident at any time.
That’s not to say learning how to be more confident will solve all your problems, as it doesn’t. Everyone, including me, has bad days or moments that upset them.
Being confident also doesn’t mean you’re completely sure of yourself at all times. For me, whenever I start a new a new project or venture, I always feel my confidence wobble slightly. It’s about the unknown which often leads to some apprehension which is a natural function of our survival mechanisms.
Creating confidence is not about knowing it all; it’s about trusting that no matter what happens in a particular situation, you’ll be able to handle it and learn from the outcome. There really is, no such things as failure, ONLY FEEDBACK!!
Why is Confidence Important?
Developing self-confidence is important in every part of your life, but there are some situations where it’s crucial, especially so at times where you feel like giving up or putting off. If you’re a leader, whether that’s in business, finance, sport etc., and in a position that requires being convincing and trustworthy, being confident is a prerequisite. No one will follow a leader who comes across as unsure of themselves. A lack of confidence can seriously impact your ability to put to together a strong winning team and guide them to achieving your collective goals.
Even if you’re not in a leadership role, confidence is vital to being a team player across various situations. Whether you’re in a sales position or recruitment position, you need to be able to present a confident face during client interactions. Being confident helps you to make instant connections and build relationships that will help you and your company succeed.
Knowing how to be confident in yourself is also important beyond the workplace, too. Learning how to be more confident can help you to attract a partner who you can build a healthy relationship with.
The 3 Pillars to Confidence
If you want to learn how to be more confident, you must be willing to change your state. This is essentially your mood at any given time of the day. Your mood is directly influenced by how you evaluate and feel about yourself at that specific point in time.
The great news is that you can change your state at any time, no matter where you are or what’s going on around you, as long as you know how to do it.
1. Body Language
Do you want to become more confident? Then just act like it! Physiology is the key when learning how to be confident and mastering the body language of confidence can place you on the path to success. Take a moment now and just think of someone you know who comes across extremely confident. Most likely, when you first met them, you probably became aware they were confident before they even started speaking. You realised they were self-assured due to the way they carried themselves and moved. They made good eye contact, gave a firm handshake, and stood tall and proud.
Now take a quick inventory of your own body. What’s your posture like? How are you breathing? We all get in negative states, which can lead to slouching, hanging your head and shallow breathing. You have the POWER to change how you’re feeling by simply controlling the way your body moves and the way you present yourself.
2. Positivity
Thinking positive can manifest itself in several ways. First, change your focus – because “Where you’re attention goes, you’re energy flows,” Instead of placing you’re attention on all the ways something could go wrong, instead place your attention on all the ways it could go right. Think about how you’re going to nail your presentation and how pleased your co-workers will be to hear it. What you place your attention on becomes your reality.
Replace negative words with positive ones and start seeing the bright side of situations. By changing your attention and focus, internally and externally, you’re actually changing your physiological state. And by changing your state, you’ll change your life.
3. A Growth Mindset
What do you think being confident consists of? You may think that confidence only stems from prior success and that you can only know how to be confident in yourself after you’ve become super successful. This sort of core belief severely limits you. Confidence doesn’t come from your outward achievements – it comes from within.
Being confident means that if you do fail, you can pick yourself back up and try again instead of throwing in the towel. Once you start taking actionable steps toward your goal of being confident, your beliefs will gradually start to solidify. It’s time to adopt a growth mindset and start believing that you can learn how to be more confident.
How to be More Confident
What do those 3 pillars have in common? They are all about becoming the master of your emotions. You have to change your perspective and your mindset, and choose to be confident. Now that can sometimes be easier said than done – but below are 6 specific actions you can take that will help you apply these pillars to being confident.
1. Overcome Your Limiting Beliefs
To truly learn how to be confident, you need get comfortable in your own skin first and learn to love yourself first. When you practice self-love, you’ll have confidence no matter what happens in life, because that confidence will come from within.
Yet many people never learn how to fall in love with themselves and instead develop a lack of confidence early in life. For lots of people, these beliefs were formulated early on in life, especially so if they grew up in households where love was perceived as being conditional to behaviour.
They unconsciously adopt limiting beliefs about what they are capable of or what type of relationship they deserve. This leads to self-sabotage and reinforcement of these beliefs – and overcoming them is the first step to total confidence.
2. Assess Your Top Human Needs
Another vital step toward knowing how to be confident in yourself is to determine what drives your decisions. We all have Six Human Needs: certainty, significance, variety, love/connection, growth and contribution.
We value one of these needs more than the others, and it affects every decision we make in life. It can even affect our confidence. If your top need is certainty, you may feel unsure in unfamiliar situations. If your top need is significance, you’ll start feeling insecure if you don’t get the recognition you need.
3. Improve Your Self-Talk
Our words create our emotions, and our emotions create our world. If we’re not feeling confident, it’s a result of the stories we tell ourselves – and the words we use to tell them.
How do you talk to yourself in your own mind? The self-talk you use, otherwise known as your inner monologue, has an important effect on your confidence. Catch yourself when you are thinking negatively and engaging in negative self-talk and replace it with positives you like about yourself.
4. Practise Gratitude
Practicing gratitude is key to living a happy life. Stop thinking of your body as existing only to look at – or worse, for others to look at. Your body is more than a vessel or a painting to be admired. Think about all the things your body does for you. When you take a minute to appreciate all the things your body lets you do, it will start to feel more like a gift than a burden.
5. Change Your Physiology
The quickest way to become more confident is to radically change your physiology. Stand up straight. Square your shoulders and open up your chest. Breathe deeply. Maintain brisk, purposeful strides when you walk to cover more ground. Maintaining a posture like this makes you feel stronger and where your body goes, your mind follows.
Just as changing our thoughts can directly change our posture, likewise, changing our posture can directly change our thoughts. The whole system works on an interchangeable system of both feedback and feed forward systems.
6. Vizualise Your Goals
Positive visualization is a powerful tool to wield on the road to understanding how to become more confident. When you visualize something over and over again, your mind begins to believe that it has already happened. When the situation finally arises – you’re making that presentation, asking for a raise or confronting a co-worker – your brain thinks, “I got this,” as it’s already seen it happen over and over aging. That’s confidence.
Visualize a specific situation at work. Think of yourself succeeding and do your best to minimize any thoughts of failure. Remember that you get what you place your attention and focus on.
DITCH THE SELF DOUBT AND ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS FASTER
Discovering how to be confident in yourself isn’t an overnight process – it takes time. By shifting how you physically present yourself and what you focus on mentally, you can create confidence that will help drive you toward your goals.
Neil Dolan MSc (clin.psych.), BSc (Psych), Dip Hyp, Dip NLP, CP Coach, MBPsS