Do you ever wonder how confident people are just so confident? In today’s blog, I will share my experience in developing my confidence at high levels and a breakdown of the most confident people I know of and how they become so confident.
Before I go into this, it’s important to note that confident people DO NOT have an absence of fear. I will say that again… confident people DO NOT have a lack of fear. They have just taken action over and over again through it, that they become confident. As Dr Russ Harris quotes in the book The Confidence Gap
‘Confident action first, confident feeling second.’
You have to do confidence first.
How do we do this? Let’s go through the characteristics:
Confident people know there is a chance of failure or something going wrong but take action anyway.
This goes on from what I’ve just said above, if you are not going to do something because you are worried something may go wrong, you will never do it. That is life, though. There is no guarantee things will go right. I know with every blog, video, podcast, coaching call, there may be a chance that something won’t go to plan or someone may not be happy, but I do it anyway as it’s essential, and you don’t get results without action. What is essential to confident people is enjoying the process and knowing they tried. Let go of the expectations. Have goals, great! But let go of expectations and enjoy taking action.
Confident people practice over and over again.
Practice does NOT make perfect. Nothing is perfect. Practice makes progress, and when we make progress, we feel more confident. Confident people will make things into a habit. For example, I am pretty confident in front of a camera, I spend 30 minutes a day talking in front of a mirror. I am pretty confident in a coaching call; I spend a few minutes a day reading coaching questions repeatedly to embed into my system. There are experiences in life where we will go in nervous, and this is normal. We need to go through them to feel more confident, but if you practice something repeatedly, you become more familiar with it, which improves your confidence.
Confident understand fear will always show up in life.
When confident people move through fear they feel confident as they have overcome it. This isn’t the end, though, fear will come up again. If we retreat to our comfort zone every time fear shows up, we do not make progress and honestly lose respect. Imagine if a friend said they would do something for you but kept bailing; what would you think? You’d probably think, ‘Unreliable, and I can’t trust them’ this is the same for yourself though. Life is a continual process, and fear will come up. This is a natural reaction from the brain to keep us safe, but you have to keep rising to these challenges as confident people do. If you can overcome by fear now and then, though, don’t beat yourself up. Consider how you can break the challenge down more and go again.
Confident people don’t let negative people hang around for long.
Do you know people who bring your confidence down? Well, try and reduce them and avoid them as much as possible. Yes, some people might be your family or your best friend, which is challenging but try and minimise the time with them or be honest with how you are feeling.
Confident people respect themselves and don’t allow this in their lives. So you shouldn’t either. If you don’t change the negative aspects of your life, then you won’t grow your confidence. Simple.
Confident people practice and use positive self talk.
‘You’re useful’ ‘That was rubbish’ are common phrases I used to say to myself when I lacked self esteem and confidence. The odd criticism will come up now and then but very rarely. You can’t just get rid of negative voices but telling them ‘Go away’ that’s not how it works. How it works is to build more positive self talk.
Get into a routine of praising yourself and giving yourself compliments regularly. You need to train your brain to do this. One good practice is to spend a few minutes upon waking up and going to bed doing this.
Conclusion
As I’ve touched on, confident people don’t have an absence of fear or negativity trying to get into their life. It’s their attitude and mindset towards it that makes them confident. They know they have to apply new actions and habits to overcome it and build their confidence. You can use the above too to boost that confidence in your life. Would you rather not and remain in your current situation? It might take a bit of effort, but surely it’s better than being stuck?
Thank you for reading. I appreciate you. As always, never skip self esteem day.
Jonny Pardoe © November 2020
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