Building Self Confidence

If there’s one thing that I find, and that’s confidence is one of the main elements that hold people back. And there’s a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding about confidence, yet it is such a key element. If I were to ask you how confident are you, most people answer, “Well, fairly confident.” But then when they’re faced with certain circumstances, such as having to give a speech, or a presentation, or attend a party, then for some, they’ll say they don’t feel confident. This is where people refer to confidence as being situational, i.e., depending on the situation the person is faced with will determine how high or how low their confidence will be.

Now, different situations will be different for different people and their confidence levels. They just don’t feel as confident in some situations as others. Yet it’s impossible to thrive and reach our highest potential in our personal and professional lives if our confidence is low. It impacts how visible we are and how visible we make ourselves to be. Also, it determines whether we control our own agenda and our own time. It determines our ability to say no when we need to say no. As a business, our earnings or the fees that we charge will be absolutely in direct proportion to how confident we are. We don’t drive ourselves forward as much as others who are more confident. It literally touches every single aspect of our life.

And most people say “Fake it until you make it”. Well, when it comes to confidence, this can have actually the opposite effect as it can lead to imposter syndrome. If we’re telling the outside world one thing, but yet we feel completely different on the inside, then this will lead to imposter syndrome. Your internal integrity metre knows it to be false.

So therefore you’re not being authentic. So if you continue long enough trying to fake it until you make it, then you’ll find yourself having to wear different masks all day and every day. That voice inside your head will continue to chat away, highlighting the fact and highlighting the difference that you’re not being authentic, that you’re not living with integrity. And therefore, it will lead to you feeling a lower level of self-confidence. It’s much better to build your own confidence rather than fake it. In this way, you’re being more authentic. You’re working with your own integrity.

So how do we build our own self-confidence? Well, let’s correct a fundamental misunderstanding that people have. The majority of people interpret competence with confidence. Let me explain. Competence is our ability to do something successfully, whereas confidence is our feeling or our belief about ourselves. Now, I’m going to outline the three pillars that makeup competence and also the three pillars that makeup confidence. But for now, let’s understand the big difference between the two labels, and how we can significantly affect each one of those labels very, very quickly.

So let’s take the example of giving a speech, which is reported as being one of the highest fears for people. Many of the people that I work with as clients will refer to the fact that they wouldn’t feel confident in giving a speech. This, however, is not down to confidence. It’s not down to a lack of confidence. It’s down to a lack of competence. They all know how to talk. So they’re competent in being able to talk and have a conversation. They just aren’t competent in talking on stage or having a conversation on stage. And that’s what public speaking is all about. Public speaking is about having a conversation with your audience.

Therefore, if we’re dealing with becoming more competent with talking on stage, then this is a skill that can be learned, just as when each person learned the skill of walking, cycling, driving a car, or playing a musical instrument. It’s a skill that can be learned. Yet people hold themselves back because they’ve labeled it, as so many other people labeled them, as being low in confidence, when in fact it’s actually competence. And because they label themselves as being low in confidence, it results in them avoiding situations, which limits them from achieving their highest potential. It’s not confidence. It’s competence.

Secondly, we all have different roles in life, such as husband/wife, employee/employer, father/mother, and so on. As a business owner or an employee, you too will have different responsibilities. For each of those roles and responsibilities that we fulfill, we need to become competent in the different areas. If you take the role as being a father or a mother, this role will demand us to be competent in a multitude of skills, from looking after a newborn, feeding them, dressing them, comforting them, how to even handling a newborn baby, to washing them, through to being a teenager. And we’ve got to change them into how to guide them, how to mentor them, how to coach them, how to discipline them, and even how to chauffeur them all around the place.

So each stage of their life requires different skills. And each aspect of our children’s lives requires different skills as well. As much as we would love it, we’re not given a handbook with each of our children as they come along. Yet, as the next child arrives, our skills have already been developed, i.e., to feed them, to dress them, to comfort them, to handle them, to wash them.

We get better. We become more competent in what it is that we need to do in order to look after a child. And as we get more competent, our belief in ourselves increases, and therefore we become more confident. You see, confidence follows competence. So whatever role that you’re operating in, whether it be in your personal life or in your professional life, there will be a suite of skills that you will need to develop in order for you to be fully competent in fulfilling that role.

Now let’s look at the three pillars that make up competence. The three pillars are skills, knowledge, and experience. Now, if we take our example from earlier of giving a speech, there are skills that we need to develop, there’s the knowledge that we need to gain. And then we need to put into practice those skills and that knowledge in order to gain the experience, and therefore give us feedback so as to improve our competence in a particular area.

So when it comes to giving a speech, there’ll be the skills of stagecraft, controlling our body language, using the presentation software and our laptops, and managing the microphone. We need to gain knowledge on various aspects, such as our subject matter, speech structure, and audience engagement. It’s also important to learn how to handle questions, manage mind blanks, and read the audience effectively. So there are a number of different aspects of what we need to develop our knowledge in.

But our competence in giving a speech will still be very low until such time as we practice and deliver a speech. And the more we give speeches, i.e., the more experiences we get at giving speeches, then the more competent we become. A brain surgeon, if you take it, no matter how much skill and knowledge he or she has developed in the classroom, will be little competent until he or she is standing at a table with a live person in front of them, and they have to do brain surgery on them. That’s where experience comes into play.

People tend to be drawn to individuals who display confidence. It’s not necessarily about admiration, but something about their presence is appealing. Confidence often makes a person stand out in a positive way. We might even put it down to the person having charisma.

Now, when it comes to confidence, there are also three pillars. And these are self-belief, self-love, and self-worth. Now, self-belief is that inner knowing that we can achieve whatever it is that we put our minds to. It’s not arrogance. It’s a deep inner knowing. We know that we can achieve the results that we want to achieve. We may not know how it’s going to get to be achieved, but we know we’re going to get there. We’re going to achieve our goal because we have a deep inner belief in ourselves. Whatever we set our minds to, we know we’ll make it happen.

Now, self-love is how we look after ourselves. Now, when I’m working with male clients, I tend to have to change the word self-love to self-care. Taking care of ourselves covers three elements. It covers the mind, body, and soul. It’s not just a case of looking after one of those elements. It’s looking after all of those elements.

Self-worth, on the other hand, is how much we value ourselves, regardless of what other people think, what other people do, or what other people say. If we don’t feel that we are of much value or benefit to other people, then we won’t put much value or worth on ourselves. Now, self-worth is an inner feeling. It’s not an outward feeling. It’s an inner feeling about ourselves. Now, in business or employment, this comes into play when you start to put a price tag on your service. If your self-worth is low, then you will price your services low, or you will price your salary low. On the other hand, if your self-worth is high, then you will price accordingly.

So when it comes to building self-confidence, it’s about understanding the difference between competence and confidence.

So it’s worth asking yourself what are the elements you need to develop under each one of these pillars? So until the next blog, that’s something perhaps you could reflect on. What are each of the elements that you need to develop under each one of those pillars? Until the next blog, I wish you every success.