How would having more confidence change your life?

Imagine if you had unshakable belief in yourself. If you had more confidence, how would that change your life?

What would you be doing in your personal life, in your professional life and just for fun if you had more confidence?

What kind of things would you be saying to yourself and to others?

What would you not be doing?

What would you be earning if you had twice as much confidence as you do now?

Did you know that people who are perceived to have more confidence earn more money? Researchers have shown that people who believe in themselves are statistically likely to do better when measured against people of equal talent, skill and knowledge who always mistrust and doubt themselves.

Do you tend to doubt yourself rather than believe in yourself?

Are you always questioning your worth and downplaying your abilities?

There are 3 major myths about confidence that I want to explore.

1. The first is that confidence is a personality trait. This is absolutely not true. Confidence is not part of someone’s character by accident of birth. It easy to believe that some people were just born with more confidence, but that’s not the case.
2. If you have confidence in yourself, then you always have confidence in yourself. Again, totally not true. You don’t either have confidence or not have it. It comes and goes in different situations and stages of life. A person is often most confident when in a place of comfort, doing something they’re good at, but you can take the most accomplished confident person and put them in a different, unusual, unknown or challenging situation and cracks will show.
3. Confidence starts with belief. This is the biggest myth of all! Belief or lack of has little to do with confidence.

Here are 3 truths about confidence to replace those old, outdated myths:

• Confidence is a life skill. One you can learn, build on and improve.
• Confidence is situational. There are areas of your life where you are more confident and some where you lack confidence. The goal is to use the skill you have in those confident situations and apply it when you feel more wobbly.
• Confidence begins with action. The beauty of this is it means you now have control over it.

Confidence begins with a decision to start. What step are you willing to take in order to change your life for the better? Which area of your life do you want to improve? What abilities do you want to have greater confidence in?

What stops you? The opposite of Self Confidence; Self Doubt.

And there are 4 areas which I call ‘The Traps of Self Doubt’ that make you decide not to try to change, not to start.

• Hesitating. Hesitating can be triggered by uncertainty so you wait for things to be ‘perfect’, for you to be ‘ready’ instead of just doing it now. Or you start overthinking it, asking other people’s opinions on what you should do, trying to make someone else choose what you need to do, because then you can’t blame yourself. The only answer is action, there’s no other solution. You know what you need to do, so just do it.
• Hiding. This is triggered by fear and you start avoiding the people, calls, situations in which you need to take action. You stay silent when you have ideas, you act chicken about asking for what you deserve and what you want from someone. You put things off, procrastinate, and don’t talk to the people who could help you do better. Its time to start raising your voice, make yourself have those tough conversations, start talking. It doesn’t have to be perfect, stumble your way though those conversations and keep having them til you get what you want and you’ll find it gets easier to start them every time.
• Hypercritical. This facet of self doubt is triggered by past failures that you haven’t come to terms with. You argue with yourself, you argue against yourself, you have all the answers about what could go wrong and you fixate on that and keep yourself frozen, stuck in the place you want to move on from. Its time to break things down into small moves forward and take that small move every day. Bit by bit, little by little you get where you want to go. And every small move forward gives you more and more confidence until you move faster, gain bigger outcomes and stop reminding yourself of what could go wrong because its all ultimately taking you in the right direction.
• Helplessness. Helplessness is triggered by insecurity and low self worth. When you’re stuck in helplessness you are actively playing the victim. You have a habit of doubting yourself, a learned behaviour that makes you think you’re not worth the effort of even attempting to make a change. You have been brought low by past circumstances, other people’s opinions and judgement that you have accepted as truth and its taken away any impulse you may have had to do better, to improve things in your life. Feeling fear is normal, we all have fear, doubt and insecurities. Listening to your fears and letting them stop you – that is a choice. If you have a problem that can be solved by taking action, then you don’t have a problem. Take that first action, however small and allow it to push back all the negative inner chatter in your mind. Because if you can do that one small step, you can celebrate, you can tell yourself ‘I did it!’ and keep saying it and keep taking small steps forward, because that will help you unlearn helplessness.

Part of the struggle of being a human being today is to learn how to not let what other people think of you bother you. And its a huge part of self confidence.

The first step is to not take advice or criticism from people you wouldn’t trade places with. If you want to climb Everest and someone who never left their backyard tells you that you can’t do it, don’t listen to them. Instead go find yourself books, websites, mentors who can tell you about the people who have done it, and learn from them.

The second step is to remember that when people are being rude to you or respond negatively about you and your aspirations, its never about you. What you’re hearing is how they feel about themselves and what they tell themselves in their own heads. Instead of listening to them, send them your love, have empathy for their lack of self belief and say to yourself, ‘Just watch me’, and get on with getting it done.

Nobody else knows what you should do with your life, so stop asking everybody else. You already know. When you spend five minutes every day in quietness, when you go within, you’ll find your answers.

So stop hiding from the truth of your life. Because that’s what you’re doing when you run around asking other people what you should be doing. You’re hiding. You can handle the truth of your life. Its usually hard, often it will scare you half to death, but its what’s right for you and its always there when you go looking for it.

Become open to change now; you easily let go of any and all hidden benefits of staying stuck in your old behaviour, you effortlessly let go of all thought and action patterns of behaviour that were keeping you stuck.