Unleashing Your Remarkable Potential
Issue 7.2 - January 11th, 2009 ISSN: 15516571

In Kevin's Own Words

Six Secrets for Building your Confidence

If you have seen the movie or stage musical The Sound of Music, you likely remember Maria leaving the Abbey to become a Governess.

As she winds her way through town and toward the von Trapp mansion she sings of her uneasiness - and her lack of confidence in her ability to succeed in this role. In the course of the song she convinces herself that she can be successful and her confidence builds.

In fact, the final lines of the song, show her growing conviction...

I have confidence in confidence alone Besides which you see I have confidence in me!

While there are valuable lessons in the song - a quick Google search will find you many copies of the lyrics - it isn't always as easy as convincing ourselves of confidence in just a few lines of song or prose.

Rather, here are some specific ideas and an approach to help you (or perhaps someone you are coaching) systematically build your confidence level. These ideas can applied for something very specific or just to help with your general overall confidence level.

Look at past success. The best source for building your confidence is your past. Survey your entire life for successes. It doesn't matter if those successes are in a completely different area of your life than where you are now searching for confidence. Review the times you have succeeded. Times you are proud. Times you achieved. Make a list of these accomplishments and keep it where you can easily review it at any time. Just reading this list will buoy your confidence - after all, if you have succeeded in the past, you can (and will) succeed again.

Recognize your strengths. You will always be more confident when you accurately realize - and honor - what you are good at. If you have a good sense of this, make another list, and put it, again, somewhere you can review regularly. If you don't have a good sense of your strengths, now is the time to get it! Ask for feedback from those who know you well. Review the common elements of your past successes looking for clues. Think about the things that come easy to you, that you don't give a second thought. All of these are clues and ways to develop your list of strengths. With your strengths in place, why wouldn't you be more confident?

Build your competence. As you build your competence in something you become more confident, right? You have plenty of life experiences to confirm that point. So, if you want to build your confidence, build you competence or skills. Read a book, take a class, get a coach, or a hundred other things. And then, practice. You build your competence - and your confidence - when you practice successfully.

Make the mental transfer. Ask yourself "If I have been successful before, is there any reason to think I can't be successful in the future?" The correct answer to this is "no way!" You can build your confidence by mentally reminding yourself of past successes and then transferring that success mentally as proof that you can do it again.

Manage your mind. You've likely noticed your internal talk giving you doubts and negative input - perhaps even since you began reading this article. This negative self-talk erodes your confidence as much as any other thing - and it is all your own doing! When you notice the negative thoughts and doubts, take control of your thoughts by reminding yourself of the other things on this list, including the actions you are already taking to create great results (which is the next and final point).

Take action. In the end, you must take action. Your confidence can't be maintained at a high level if you are never taking action; never doing anything; always leaving yourself on a conceptual level. And, as you take actions - like learning and practicing and trying (and succeeding) - you create a momentum that further reinforces your confidence as well. Take action!

These six activities really are secrets. Not because you've never heard them, but because if you don't do them, it will be hard to build - and maintain - a healthy level of confidence.

Use them for yourself, and use them as ways to help those you lead, coach, mentor, or parent become more confident too.

Potential Pointer: Confidence is an important foundation for productivity and achievement. Luckily, there are systematic ways to build your confidence. Take these steps and proactively create better results for yourself and the world around you.

Comments

Kevin's Recommends

You Are What You Choose: The Habits of Mind That Really
Determine How We Make Decisions
By Scott De Marchi and James T. Hamilton

From the front cover flap: 

"On the surface, decisions about driving, eating, investing, and voting look very different. Yet the traits model shows that these decisions share many common elements, so that a given person will approach each of them in the same way. This means that the choices about products and people and politics can be combined systematically and used to predict what a person will buy or believe."

You are likely familiar with the concept of personality, behavioral or communication styles as three of the many models that help us understand ourselves and others. This book introduces a six-part model - TRAITS - to help you understand what factors are valued in most any decision process.

The TRAITS are:

• Time
• Risk
• Altruism
• Information
• meToo
• Stickiness

The book then talks about how to use this information from a marketing and sales perspective to help you target buyers and markets.

While not everything in the book is brand new, there is much that is valuable and the TRAITS model is helpful. In addition, the book uses a wide variety of interesting examples, ala Made to Stick or Freakonomics, which is both smart from a marketing perspective and makes for a better read.

I read this book with two lenses - as a marketer, as I believe the book was intended, but also as a leader. After all, as leaders, we are in the business of not only making decision, but helping others do the same.

The first portion of the book is extremely useful for leaders. The last portion is even more focused on how to use the model from a marketing perspective, and as such may be less relevant from a strictly leadership perspective.

Overall I found the book a good, relatively short, read, and quite useful on several levels. If what I've said intrigues you at all, I encourage you to pick up a copy.

Learn more at Amazon - Comments

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