The confidence game

Lack of confidence getting you down? Here are seven easy confidence strategies that may help:

1. See confidence as a skill set for you to learn

Flip your thinking and see confidence as something you learn and not something you have.

Grab a piece of paper and draw four columns with the following headings:

• Areas of life where you are unconfident
• Why are you unconfident?
• What would make you confident?
• Action needed

Now sit down, really concentrate and complete. If you struggle, call on your friends or partner to help.

2. Your values

Next time you are in a situation where your confidence deserts you, check in with your values and decide how you should proceed. For example, honesty, kindness, and integrity etc.

3. Practice makes perfect

It’s true, if you are unconfident about a particular event or situation, then practise. Simple. And then practise again, and practise some more. This particularly helps for presentations, public speaking, interviews.

4. Embrace your lack of confidence

Lacking confidence is absolutely normal.

Obviously there are levels of severity, but in her book Being Confident, Judi James states: “First a health warning: Confidence kills. In animal terms what we perceive as modern forms of confidence are entirely unnatural.”

Put simply, back in the day, being overly confident would have got you, your family or your tribe killed. Enough said.

Want to know a secret? Generally, overly confident individuals are normally faking it. Which leads me onto...

5. Act confident

Act how you want to feel. In the Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin’s third commandment is “act the way I want to feel”.

It works. Try it. Don’t use this technique for long period of time though because faking an emotion can cause internal stresses, but I would definitely try it for a short term fix. Next time you feel unconfident, acknowledge it and then put your game face on.

6. Identify a confidence mentor

I bet there is someone who has the confidence levels you want, or someone you look up too? Reach out to them, ask them for help. Invite them out for a coffee and ask them for their confidence tricks. How do they handle themselves when unconfident?

I can guarantee they will be flattered and be very willing to help you.

7. Don’t do it!

Sometimes, the bravest and the best thing to do is walk away from whatever is making you feel unconfident. Life is too short to do things you don’t want to do. Don’t take this as the easy way out though, I think nine times out of 10 you can turn an unconfident situation around, but sometimes it’s actually better to walk away. Unsure? Talk it through with a friend.

I hope this helps you,

Gemma

xxx