3 Top Tips for a Confidence Boost!
Confidence. When we’ve got it all manner of things become easier. When we’ve lost it all manner of things become harder…
It’s such a nebulous thing but fortunately there are things we can do to boost our confidence when the confidence wobble strikes.
Here are 3 of my favourite tips for becoming more confident:
1) Take a deep breath.
Not too deep – don’t hyperventilate! If you can, plant your feet firmly on the floor, hold your torso as straight as you can (stay comfortable), breathe out as much air from your lungs as is comfortable and now breathe in. Feel the breath flowing through your body. Try that a couple of times and then just breathe normally.
When we begin to feel lacking in confidence we tend to want to make ourselves small, hunch up and try not to be seen. That has the effect of further decreasing our confidence. (Read An Easy Confidence Boost for the science!) Looking more confident and allowing your body to breathe properly actually helps you to be more confident! Try it now.
2) Tame Your Inner Sabateur
We’ve all got one. That little voice just waiting for our defences to drop before it kicks in. On my Renewyou course I call this the internal mail that you really need to delete before reading it. Recognise the subject heading and do not open!
Take a few moments to listen to your inner dialogue when lacking in confidence. It may be something like “You can’t do that“, “What are you thinking? You’ll look ridiculous“, “Better to say nothing and not take a risk“, “Don’t get above yourself“, “You didn’t get the job last time, don’t put yourself through that again“.
You can really boost your confidence by harnessing that inner saboteur and converting it to your side. The negative message is very powerful in sapping confidence but the good news is that a positive message can be very powerful in boosting your confidence! Turn the negative into a positive. For more information on how to do this take a look at Tips on Positive Thinking but in essence talk kindly to yourself and be your own best friend.
3. Get Back in Your Zone of Confidence
Take yourself back in your mind’s eye to a time when it did come together. It may have been at school, in a previous job, or maybe just yesterday! Often we have confidence in certain areas of our lives and not in others. So we’ll happily undertake a half marathon but are fearful of public speaking. Or vice versa…
Focus on your confident area and remember there once was a time when you couldn’t do that either. (Read First You Wobble, not least because it has a lovely picture which will make smile!). We get confident by having a go at something. If you can think yourself in the frame of mind when you are good at doing something, it’ll boost your confidence for that first time feeling. (Hope I’m making sense here!!). Take a few moments out to see yourself being good at something and shift your focus from failure to success!
If you have any tips to share on how to boost confidence, please do use the comments section below. I love to hear from you! And if you’ve enjoyed this post you might like to get them sent straight to your in box – simply fill in your email in the RSS box, top right of this page!
Photo Credit: Beth McDonald
Market Research!
It’s funny how ideas come at the strangest moments, isn’t it? I met up with a good friend and colleague last week but for various reasons we hadn’t actually seen each other properly for some time. We settled ourselves for a good long discussion about work, life, the universe and anything else that cropped up.
We go back a long way. Debbie and I were child care social workers many moons ago and both of us are now self employed, albeit in differing roles. Debbie reminded me of something I had said to her when she had an important court appearance which was creating huge amounts of stress for her, as child care proceedings always do. I said to her-
” Just remember that every member of the bench was sitting on the loo this morning and they are actually only humans.”
A Course is Born!
I had forgotten saying it but she hadn’t. And so we got to talking about our early experiences of appearing in court, being cross examined, and how our confidence had grown to the point where we were able to totally focus on the matter on the hand, and not on whether we’d fall out of the witness box (yes, I once did that!)
And suddenly the idea for a course to inspire confidence in court was born! There are plenty of courses which explain procedure, the make up of the court, practising cross examination etc (and very good most of them are too) but we are planning something different. Debbie still works in the legal system as an expert witness (among other things) and I coach and train people to be more confident and assertive (among other things)! A perfect combination!
Market Research
And so I need your help please! If you know any professionals who need to be confident in court, possibly those who don’t attend on a regular basis, could you please forward them this post and ask them to get in touch via my contact page. I will then email them a few questions, only a few, I promise!
And if you have any thoughts or suggestions please feel free to comment on this post.
Tips to Boost Your Confidence
Do you sometimes find yourself losing confidence? Do you have flashes of seeing yourself failing at whatever you want to do? Is lack of confidence in your abilities holding you back from living life to the full?
If you answered yes to any of the above you are not alone. Very few of us get by without the occasional blip in our confidence levels. And even the most confident of people have moments when they feel they just can’t do it. Honestly!
The good news is that we can learn to be confident! Confidence is a feeling and we are in charge of our feelings!
I Feel…?
The next time the confidence wobble strikes, take a few moments to acknowledge just how you are feeling. Make a conscious attempt to slow your breathing (just being aware of it can help slow it) and note how you feel physically and emotionally. Are you hot, or in a cold sweat, or even shaking slightly? Do you feel anxious, nervous, or even angry? Try to be quite specific and honest with yourself.
Slowing your breathing will help with the nervousness. Practise doing that until it comes easily to you, but don’t hyperventilate!
Internal mail
Now focus on what is your internal mail saying to you. You may be so used to hearing it that you don’t even realise it’s there. It’s like spam, unwanted messages piling into your in box.
But in this case simply deleting it is not enough because once it’s in there it’s already infecting everything else, so we have to neutralise it. Your automatic spam mail is sapping your confidence, slowly and insidiously, like a virus.
You may hear phrases like:
“You’re getting above yourself here”
“Keep in the background, no one is interested in you”
“You’re too stupid to take part in this conversation”
“Don’t challenge the status quo, don’t rock the boat!”
“People like you don’t get jobs like that”
Ring any bells? Honestly we all do it; the trick is to be aware of it, and then stop it before it gets too strong a hold in any one situation.
And then make it work for you.
Work for You
Take your spammy message and make it positive.
Keep it simple.
Keep it positive.
Keep it real.
For example, “You’re too stupid…”. Where did that come from? If you spend long enough thinking about it, it might have been a phrase from a teacher that haunts you, or even a casual throw away comment from parents or guardians that hit you at a vulnerable time. And you may have been unconsciously nurturing it ever since, allowing it to grow and flourish.
Time to let it go. You are clearly not stupid but constantly giving yourself that negative message is sapping your confidence. You are making yourself feel stupid.
Saying it to yourself has become habit, possibly even a comforting habit. So simply not saying it will be difficult. You need to replace it with something that works for you, and only you know what that is. It has to be something that you would say so taking someone else’s words or mantra probably won’t work.
Your new message needs to be something along the lines of “I am as good as everyone else here” or “My views are useful” or “I’ll give it a go – I’ll survive”
Confidence Mantra
Take a moment now to design your own confidence mantra. Think of it as your spam control. When that insidious message creeps in again, zap it with the powerful mantra. You’ll need to practise a few times but it will work. Those little messages are well lodged and will want to stay, but you can get rid of them! You can you know! You are much more powerful than a few words!
“No one can make you feel inferior without your own consent”- Eleanor Roosevelt. Great quote!
Three Things for Friday!
No, I haven’t invented a new tongue twister (try saying it out loud!), just a quick exercise to maximise your learning from this week and help you realise how fabulous you are!
As you read this, follow the instructions.
Take a pen (or several coloured pens to boost your creativity) and without too much thinking write down:
1) Something new I learned this week.
(Examples- how to use a new IT programme, a piece of family history, how not to get cross when complaining…)
2) Someone new I met this week.
(Could be a new postie, a colleague on the phone, all sorts!)
3) Something I did really well this week.
(Don’t hide your light under any bushels! Did you help someone? Did you finish a tricky report? Did you cope well with a set back? Did you get some new business? Did you cheer up a friend?)
Now look down your list, give yourself an imaginary pat on the back and go off and enjoy you week end!
You Are Fabulous!
You are you know! I work with people of all ages, backgrounds, education, culture and class and I never cease to be amazed at how wonderful and resourceful people are.
But it’s true that we are often the last people to see our own strengths, skills and positive attributes. So I suggest you try this exercise now, and next time you feel down, take it out and look at it!
You might want to take a look at this change exercise first and use it as your resource for the following.
Three Things
I want you to think of three things that have been a great success for you. For example, three things for me might be:
1) Being the first female chair of the Medway Schools Council when I was 18.
2) Passing maths GCSE when I was 34 (I had been to two universities by then but maths passed me by until I decided I had to conquer the fear!)
3) Organising a successful party on our 25th wedding anniversary with 200 guests and a secret Elvis impersonator!
Your list will be different because it’s about you! You may well have got maths O level/GCSE easily so will be wondering why I include it here. I didn’t get it easily I tell you!
Never compare yourself when talking about your personal development; it really doesn’t matter what anyone else does. This is about YOU and how fabulous you are!
Once you have your list I want you to think about all the positive aspects of you that helped you to that success. And I want you to write them down. And I want you to own them, as in just don’t put a list of random words but write, ‘I am great at organising’, ‘I am kind hearted’ etc.
Yes, you will feel daft because we don’t do this type of thing often, but this is private so don’t worry. And you will feel better and you will see that you are fabulous! And being fabulous once means that you can be fabulous again! And again! You are fabulous!
Your Mantra
All of us have sayings and phrases in our head, probably stemming from childhood, which help or hinder us in our daily lives.
This can happen at a subconscious level so being aware of what they are can be very liberating. Once you identify the sayings or messages that sap your energy or confidence, you can begin the process of replacing them with something that gives you a boost!
I have an exercise in my Renewyou course on this and am always amazed how ‘naming the beast’ can almost immediately be part of its taming.
Unloveable?
For example, if you have an ‘I am unloveable’ message running through your head, you may be unwittingly projecting this image when people come close. You may be protecting yourself from what you see as an inevitable rejection by giving a subconscious ‘don’t get close’ message. This will be showing itself in all manner of ways: body language, where you choose to sit, eating lunch alone, not joining in with work events, and so on.
Name and Tame
Once you have recognised that this is what you are doing you can begin to deal with it. You may want to do some work on how those messages got there, but a more immediate thing to do is to replace the ‘unloveable’ one with something else. Maybe even as simple as ‘I am loveable’.
