Four tips to become more confident

1. Know your strengths and weaknesses

Learning exactly who you are won’t happen overnight. It can be difficult to separate the parts of you that you think you should be and the part of you that are you.

You can start by evaluating your strengths and weaknesses against what you enjoy. Try to list five things you’re good at and five things you’d like to be good at. Now you can aim to utilise the first list while working on some of the second list each day. As your strengths improve in the different areas, you’ll develop fulfillment and confidence simultaneously.

2. Expect success

We can’t predict the future so it might seem strange to say you should expect success. But don’t we tend to think of the opposite far too much? In stressful situations we often go in thinking the worst, so why not flip it on its head?

Even though conventional wisdom suggests that if you expect the worst, you won’t be disappointed – it’s not the best way to approach life. Pessimism can undermine your performance. If you start expecting success every day, you will notice over time the small wins start to stack up!

3. Trust your own capabilities

No one person knows everything. Even a master of a subject has things to learn. So don’t let your lack of knowledge in something affect your confidence, just focus on your capacity and willingness to learn. Just because you are a rookie now, a few months down the line you might be teaching others about the subject.

4. Learn to acknowledge praise

It’s very easy to take on board the negative things people might say, yet it’s so easy to discredit all of the positive. Taking a compliment can be seen as an art form. Some of the time you can think they are only trying to be nice or that you might have achieved success through luck.

This might be true on one or two occasions, but most of the praise you receive will be true. Try not to talk yourself out of believing it. Instead, use it to build your confidence. If you receive praise about your latest project, that means you can replicate the same success again.