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People are not hard-wired to have or lack self-confidence.
It’s learned, and it’s less a matter of experience than of how
we use our minds. Viewing situations from new perspectives generates huge progress.
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Self-awareness is the first step forward.
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Goals should be positive, present and personal (PPP)
as well
as specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and
timely (SMART).
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Practise mental rehearsal and visualisation. If you cannot
say no, rehearse it mentally. To familiarise yourself with
self-confidence, close your eyes and visualise a situation
where you were confident. Intensify the sense impressions
you recall and bookmark the experience.
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Change your way of thinking. Challenge your own flawed logic. Play devil’s advocate, and cast your net wider for evidence. Also, stop speaking negatively to yourself.
Use affirmative language and speak to yourself positively and precisely – as you would to others. Choose your words accordingly: not nervous but pumped. Like a public speaker, turn adrenaline
to advantage.
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Act ‘as if’. Imitate the posture and language of people – including you! - performing positively in specific situations.
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Be prepared! Script yourself for situations just as you
prepared your elevator speech.
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Maintain a consistent relationship between body language and spoken language. Study the Queen, and remember Mehrabian’s 55:38:7 ratio governing movement, tone and words (i.e. no funny voices or contortions when speaking at funerals).
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Jim Rohn says ‘You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with’. Be aware how the attitudes of others rub off on you.
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Value resilience and persistence. Thomas Edison allegedly insisted that an investigation did not fail 700 times: rather he learned 700 ways in which it could not succeed.
Take risks and love the rush! Don’t sit waiting for the full tide, which will turn before you act. Be aware of the dangers, certainly, but then heed the words of John Burroughs: ‘Leap and the net will appear’.
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Celebrate success. Seek it out as your default mode of being: ‘What we see depends mainly on what we look for’ (John Lubbock).
