Thinking yourself confident
More confidence is something the majority of my clients say they want when we start working together. I’ve talked previously about how you need to take action to build confidence but how do you get the confidence to start taking action? The answer may all be in your head!
Believing in your potential
Having a belief in your potential - that you can learn, that you may fail in some of your attempts, but that’s okay as you will keep trying and will learn and adapt - I think can be useful to have the self-confidence to try things, and by trying things, your skills improve and your confidence grows in doing those specific things.
To build self-confidence, like with confidence, you do need to take action - and here are a few things I know have worked for me and my clients, that I suggest you might get value from too:-
Write down your past achievements
Call it a ‘brag book’, a ‘big-up list’, an ‘I’m great manifesto’ or the ‘this is cringey activity’ - but this really works! Creating a record of all the things you’ve achieved, big or small, is your own evidence log of what you have already succeeded at. It also acts as a reminder - the things that you may be now don’t think anything about, at some point you didn’t know how to do so it helps you remember that there is always a learning curve and that you have what it takes to keep going.
Tune into your inner critic - and then challenge her!
We all have a lot of internal chatter that is happening all of the time. When you tune in to what you are saying to yourself, you may hear things such as “I always give up”, “I’m not good enough”, “I’m so bad at…”, “I can’t do…”, “I’ll never be able to…”. Your mind works to help you, so when you are saying negative things to yourself, your mind will keep finding evidence to support it and prove you are right - this is why step 1 is so important because you then have your own evidence to challenge yourself on!
Be kind
I bet you would never dream of saying the things you say to yourself to other people, so what makes it okay for you to say them to yourself? Sometimes, the answer is habit, partly because they haven’t been challenged or tuned into before. So the last thing I’d like to add to your toolkit, which you can use either as something to challenge an inner critic thought, or as a preventative measure and a way to build confidence as you are trying something new, is having a mantra - a short positively framed phrase that you can say over and over to yourself.
Here are some examples of mantras to get your creative juices flowing:
I can do hard things
I know the more I try the better I will get at this
I can do what I set my mind to
I am proud of myself
I can achieve what’s important to me
I have evidence that I can learn and improve with practice
I am unstoppable
I am a capable person and I can handle anything that comes my way
I will keep trying
There is a great list of manifestation mantras for success here, if you want further inspiration!
You’ve totally got this!
It is about finding something that works for you to build confidence in your ability to try and to learn - not to be perfect at something the first time (or even the umpteenth time) you try. Interrupting your internal dialogue with contradictory evidence, and repeating positive mantras or phrases will have the same impact as the negative statements did previously - your mind will accept what is being said as the truth and find ways to help prove you are right.
And for the more skeptical amongst you, neuroscience shows that with repeated use of these techniques, your brain’s neural pathways are being changed and rewired from the old to new thinking, which will help you to be more confident in your own abilities as the default thought process. So starting with the thought that you have the ability to try is the first step, and then when you keep taking the actions, your confidence in that particular skill will grow as your capability grows.
