If there is a factor that transversally influences every area of your life, it is confidence.
It impacts you internally, by conditioning the way you perceive your capability to achieve certain goals, make desired changes, take specific actions. But if also impacts you externally, making a huge difference in the way you are perceived by the others, whether it is your professional career, your love life or your ability to be assertive with people.
We all know highly intelligent people who are less successful and effective than less brilliant, but more confident and bold people. We all know beautiful people who are perceived as less attractive as not-supermodel-looking, yet very confident, charismatic people. We all know talented people who don’t believe they can achieve anything special. We all know some surprising stories of people who didn’t seem to have many chances in life, but firmly believed in themselves. Confidence impacts literally every aspect of your life.
So let’s take a closer look at what confidence is and where it comes from.
Let me start from what confidence isn’t. It is not arrogance, aggressive approach, dominance or proving your point at all costs. It is not about always being right or always winning. Quite the contrary, these are signs of being insecure and overcompensating by acting in a too forceful way.
Confidence is a relaxed, calm certainty that you can do it – whatever “it” is. It is a firm belief that you will be alright, whatever the external circumstances. It is the inner peace that you are capable, that you will manage. It is the feeling that you are OK the way you are. It is the opposite of complexes, insecurity, second-guessing yourself or being self-conscious. It is absence of the need of being ‘perfect’. We all know and repeat the saying “Nobody is perfect”, yet so often we still try to be so, have you noticed it?
Coaching Solution
Now that we know defined what confidence is, let’s pass to practice: how to achieve it? Confidence is a skill, and like every skill, it has to be grown and trained. You can’t switch it on overnight, just as you can’t change from being flaccid to muscular overnight. It takes time and conscious effort to achieve it.
You start from the foundation: a clear self-image. You will need an inventory of your strong and weak points, and a balanced vision of yourself. You will focus on appreciating the positive sides of you – everything that you have that contributes to living a good life. Then you will need acknowledgment of all the things about you that are not quite as you would wish them to be. And then you will decide which are the characteristics that you can work on, and which you can’t really change. You will need to work on acceptance of the ones you can’t change. And now, finally, you can make a plan of the ones that you can change to live a better, fuller, happier life
Just as physical exercise, competence is a skill you will need to work on regularly, until you reach the result. And then you will just maintain it.
Being confident will make you more successful, more influential, more attractive, and achieving better results in most of life endeavours.
Recent Comments