Do you want to build your confidence?…here are five brilliant ways how

Have you ever felt like you would like to have more confidence? Maybe at work, or in an area of your personal life. It’s worth remembering that confidence is not something we are born with, but rather it is intertwined with self-belief and more importantly it’s something we can develop.

Self-belief is built upon layers of stories and narratives that have accumulated over time. These might be stories you have told yourself, have been told to you, or it could be narratives that society or the media have created. The key to increasing your confidence is to change the narrative. This article takes a look at five ways you can work on this and build the foundations for increased confidence.

1. Recognise past achievements

Start with the area where you are lacking confidence and then think back to a time when you have achieved it, or something, similar in the past. Perhaps you lack the confidence to attend an event where you hardly know anyone. Think of a time you have done this, and it went well. How did it feel? What was the best bit? Perhaps there was a time it didn’t go so well – what could you do differently? 

2. Challenge yourself

If we continue to keep doing the same thing and stay in our comfort zone forever, how can we expect to change the outcome? By setting foot outside of this zone we can start to shift our expectations. Pick one new thing you can do this month that will make you think “I did that!”. This will start to build the evidence that you can do something new and different.

3. Get specific

This step is about digging a little deeper. What does the word confidence mean to you? What words do you associate with it? Do the words that come up point towards a perceived skill or knowledge gap, what specifically is this? What action can you take to address this and is it something you can act upon now – if not now, when? On the flip side, what skills or strengths do you feel most confident about – what can you do to use them more?

4. Track your progress

A great mechanism to build confidence is the recognition of how far you have come. Find a way to track your progress that works for you and is sustainable. Is it weekly goals in your diary or smartphone or longer-term aspirations broken down into smaller steps and timeframes? Maybe it needs to go on a whiteboard, or somewhere where you will see it. Whatever you choose to do, make sure it is measurable and attribute ways to celebrate wins along the way.

5. How can you take it further?

So now you have a set of past evidence where things have gone well, you have a task or event planned to challenge yourself and you have identified how to address any skill or knowledge gaps and an intent to use your existing strengths more. On top of that you have created a way to track your progress and reward yourself along the way. If this is a topic you want to explore further, I’d highly recommend Brittany Packnett’s 2019 TED talk on ‘How to build your confidence – and spark it in others’ or contact me via my website to see how I can help you. 

By, Jane McKenna is a qualified Career and Life Coach and runs Brilliant Me Coaching, a Surrey-based coaching business.  www.brilliantme.co.uk