How to build up your confidence in 6 steps.
Confidence is this tricky, slippery thing. We look around and see others who seem to have it all figured out, with a manic pixie air of pure comfort in moments that would make our palms sweat.
“If only I had their confidence I’d be able to XYZ, and so on.”
In reality, confidence doesn’t come from thin air. (Unless you’re a toddler… they generally think they can take on ANYTHING.)
Confidence is built on a spectrum from least to most comforting:
Hopeful Assumption - a bit of blind faith. Channel your inner toddler and just go for the new thing.
Belief in Self - you may not have the exact skills for this thing, but you’ve seen yourself overcome other somewhat similar hurdles that you can leverage
Experience - you’ve seen this before. You have a wealth of knowledge to build upon.
Experience is the best thing for our confidence. We know we can do this thing because we’ve seen it before.
Think back to the first day on your job. You weren’t quite sure of anything. The things that threw you for a loop then - you scoff at now. (This can help support your belief in self! Look at how you handled those tough spots - you could do it so much better now!)
But sometimes we truly are doing things for the first time. We aren’t sure if we have the hopeful assumptions… so what can we do?!
Here are 6 steps to build confidence in yourself.
Reflect on moments of low confidence. Why are you feeling uncomfortable? Is it the task? The topic? The people involved? What stories are you telling yourself. Who told you that you can’t do that thing? Should we listen to them?! So often we allow what others have told us to be fact. Say you want a leadership position but are feeling unsure. When you reflect you might recall a colleague who said they’ve never seen you as a leader (ouch. Also, rude.) Do we want to take this person’s opinion as fact on your abilities? Probably not. They’re rude.
Learn more! The best part of low confidence, impostery feelings is that they help you shed light on areas that you lack experience. So go learn! Build up your knowledge base. Curious about becoming a better leader? Read leadership books. Watch youtube videos. Listen to leadership podcasts. Connect with a leader that you admire. You’re gathering intel on how to be the best leader you can be.
Create mini-challenges. Let’s put the pedal to the metal now. Vroom vroom. Test out your leadership skills in an upcoming meeting that you feel safe in. Maybe you’ll take the lead and set the meeting yourself. Maybe you’ll let your colleague know that you’ll be speaking up extra!
Celebrate the failures. One of the best (and most painful) ways to gain experience is to mess up. It gives you confidence for the next go around. Oh yeah, I tried that once, it didn’t quite work but I’d love to apply these tweaks to it! So maybe that last meeting wasn’t quite your best… you found yourself cutting people off in an attempt to assert leadership. Or you got so nervous you couldn’t speak up more than once. But you spoke up once. And you tried. It wasn’t our best, but it was a great effort. Go you.
Build your sounding board. That colleague who said they couldn’t see you a leader? They’re not invited to the board. Building a board of individuals who have your best intentions at heart. And not just people who’ll agree with you. We want folks who we believe in us, who we believe in, and who we appreciate being challenged by.
Quiet the naysayers. That colleague goes in this camp. The folks that are questioning your ability to take on something new. Shush. Feeling frustrated that someone you know is moving lightspeed past you? Either invite them to your board to learn more about how you can improve, or, mute them from the peanut gallery. We want to be challenged by our board, but we don’t want to be challenged by people who don’t want to see us succeed. They get the axe.
Although a magic confidence wand would be great right about now, it takes time.
But you’ve done hard things before.
And each time, they get easier.
You get better.
You build your experience, your knowledge, your belief in self.
You can do this.
Still struggling to find your confidence and take on new risks? Let’s talk about it.