Confidence is Key: How To Build It In 7 Psychological Steps
How they can talk to their boss like he or she is not their employee!
How can they just go and ask that gorgeous girl for a date?
How on earth can they talk in front of everyone?
The answer to these questions would be one word: “confidence.” Confidence is key to success and totally vice versa.
To a greater or lesser extent, we are all concerned with the level of confidence we have in ourselves, which is why we are involved in intense struggles to improve it.
When we do not succeed, we tend to think that the problem is ours: we have failed at something, or perhaps we are not so good. But think again, What if we had fallen into a trap?
Russ Harris, an English psychotherapist, affirms that the lack of confidence in oneself is not a matter of personal defects, but rather that the rules of the confidence game are not known, either because we never consider it or because even if we have, In fact, society has provided us with the wrong rules to play it.
Even though some of these flawed rules have worked for us for a while, chances are they didn’t really provide what we were looking for. So how do you play properly?
“The same capabilities that lead us to success also lead us to our internal struggles.”-Stephen C. Hayes
Watch this video, how to build confidence in 7 steps:
What do we want confidence for?
Why do you need to believe in yourself? Think about it before continuing.
The answer is simple: we need and want confidence for one reason: we want to make changes to improve our lives! Either to get our goals and purposes or to get better outcomes in a specific area.
So we don’t just want confidence, we want it for something, as Harris claims.
“If you had all the confidence in the world, how would you behave differently? What kind of person would you be, and what kind of things would you do?”
The importance of personal values and goals
The previous question provides us with the goals and values that help us define the fundamental aspects of those doses of confidence that we want.
On the one hand, our goals and values define how we want to act, under what conditions we want to live and what qualities and personality traits we want to develop, and, on the other hand, goals define what we want to achieve or possess.
While the goals are limited, they have an end when they are completed; the values are always in motion. Now, what is their confidence relationship?
Values encourage us, move us, and keep us on the journey of confidence development.
Living according to these values gives us satisfaction, even when we cannot reach these goals and aspirations.
Knowing what values and goals we want to bring into our lives, we want to help us define the changes we need to make to shape our first steps on our journey to confidence.
Read More: 7 Reasons Why Your Mindset Is Everything
The confidence gap
There is a place where we can get trapped when we are heading towards the achievement of our dreams, the one in which fear appears to tell us that if we do not have enough confidence, we will not be able to achieve our goals, perform at our best, or act as we wish.
It can be surprising because this kind of thing can be seen usually in society, but the truth is that the more we cling to this belief, the further we will get away from the kind of life we want.
Because do we really think that the feeling of confidence will come out to meet us? Is it possible that we suddenly have more confidence to start doing what is really important to us?
The answer would be NO, at least in the long term.
Perhaps through some activity, reading a success magazine or confidence book, conversation with a coach or even a friend, we feel more spirited, but these works will not take long to fade.
If we want to do something with confidence, we have to work for it and for this, we need to practice the right skills over and over again that allows us to achieve it.
“You can’t pretend you have confidence, you have to earn it. You have to do the work and earn it for yourself.
- Lance Armstrong
Thus, every time we practice, we will be performing an act of trust, of supporting ourselves, of betting on ourselves.
And only after a lot of practice, a lot of time and effort, we will achieve the expected results, and we will begin to perceive the feeling of confidence. In short, as Russ Harris puts it:
“Acts of trust come first; feelings of trust come later. “
Although it is very easy to say, it is not that simple in real life, mainly because we have a mind that does not like changes, so it will try to sabotage us through our thoughts in any way.
” I don’t have time, “I’m tired and unmotivated, “I’ll do it next week … ” and a long etc, are the typical excuses that he will launch.
These are mental traps to which it is relatively easy to fall if we are afraid of being confused, we do not think we are good enough or move slowly totally normal beliefs.
Read More: How Do Millionaires Think + 15 Ways To Think Like Them
Why do we lack confidence?
According to Harris, even though every one of us experiences confidence in certain aspects, there are several reasons that prevent us from having the confidence. They are as follows:
- Too many expectations. It is related to the idea of being perfect.
- Judging with great severity. A totally normal aspect in human beings: we have a certain tendency to criticize ourselves, tell negative stories about the future, feel dissatisfied or resort to past experiences in which we do not come out well.
- Great concern for fear. Who does not experience fear at some point? The problem is not experiencing it but holding on tightly to fear and living through it.
- Lack of experience. We cannot feel secure in something if we have little experience with it, but this does not imply that we cannot develop it.
- Lack of skills. Unless we are really good at something, it is impossible to feel confident about doing it.
These psychological barriers prevent the development of self-confidence as long as we remain trapped in them and think that there are no ways to destroy them or to seek alternatives.
Confidence in yourself: the theory of self-efficacy
One of the best theorists of self-confidence is Albert Bandura, who expressed his theory of self-efficacy (which roughly means something very similar to self-confidence) as part of his Social Learning Theory.
His research on human beings’ social learning allowed him to recognize other cognitive elements that ease changing and influencing the form of intentions and motivational self-regulation.
One of these elements is self-efficacy or the perception of self-confidence.
Bandura affirms that the development of self-confidence is made up of four components :
- Mastery experiences: past experiences are the most important source of self-confidence information since they allow us to verify the real domain.
- Vicarious experience or observation: refers to modelling, that is, seeing (or imagining) other people successfully perform certain activities
- Verbal persuasion: Verbal persuasion is essential, especially for those who are already confident in themselves and need only a little more confidence to go the extra mile and achieve success.
- Physiological or emotional state: Individuals often interpret great anxiety states as signs of weakness or poor performance. On the contrary, humour or positive emotional states will also impact how one will interpret experiences.
How to improve your confidence in yourself?
But what can you do to improve your self-confidence? Here is a list of 6 useful and practical steps to improve your self-confidence:
1- Live situations positively
As you have seen, for Bandura, verbal persuasion is a crucial element in the development of self-confidence.
Therefore, be positive even if you are going through a period where you feel that things are not going your way.
Stop focusing on the problems and concentrate your energy on solutions and positive changes.
Low self-confidence is usually associated with thoughts of failure and negative thoughts that interfere between you and your goals.
If you continually repeat to yourself that you are not up to the task, all you will get is the “self-fulfilling prophecy.” So even in unpleasant moments, be self-motivated.
Read More: How To Have A Positive Mindset At Work
2- Be prepared
For example, it may happen that you have to give a presentation at the university and you think that you do not have enough confidence in yourself.
In this type of case, what really works is to prepare the presentation well so that, when the day arrives, you have full confidence in your possibilities.
Another example would be talking in front of all of your customers. Now you have to give a welcome speech to them.
It’s your first time, and you don’t have enough confidence in yourself. The best strategy here can be preparing your speech well and practise it many times.
After that, you will feel comfortable and ok in front of your clients.
Whatever is on your goal list, being well prepared and feeling like you master what you do increases your self-confidence.
3- Make a list of what you have already accomplished and remind it to yourself
As in the first point, difficult moments can make you doubt and cause your self-confidence to be diminished.
And it is that life is full of changes, and sometimes it is challenging to stay up.
In cases like this, it would be perfect to have a list of what you have achieved so far regarding your goal, as visualizing your progression can help you motivate yourself in difficult moments.
4- Take action
The powerful engine of self-confidence is action: if you dare to act, then you gain self-confidence.
In his self-efficacy theory, Bandura talks about the “achievement of execution:
” that is, experiences are the most important source of self-confidence information.
Many people visualize themself as a failure before they start acting. This is what I like to call turning your weapons against yourself!
Well, this has a simple rule: if you do not act, you lose 100% of the opportunities to achieve what you want. Period!
5- Accept any past failures
And what may happens if you act and it goes wrong? Well, the execution achievements are the perception that we have ourselves of our victories and failures.
By perception, I mean your assessment of the events that have happened.
If it has gone wrong, it would be best to accept it and see the small successes, which surely exist, even in the failures.
Self-confidence only grows if we manage to overcome the barriers that we set ourselves: on the one hand, resignation (which has to do with acting), and on the other hand, criticism.
Seeing the successes as the sum of our failures can help us gain self-confidence.
Read More: Simple Steps To Create Your Personal Growth Plan
6- Observe successful people
Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy states that vicarious experience is another key component of self-confidence.
Imagining or observing other people doing specific actions successfully can positively influence your self-confidence.
This is one of the ways used in business coaching to improve clients’ confidence. It is useful when the latter do not have excellent knowledge of their own abilities or have little experience in the task to be carried out.
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