5 Top Tips to Boost Your Self-Confidence
Self-confidence is believing in your capabilities. No matter what curveball life throws at them, the self-confident person can handle it.
What is self-confidence?
Self-confidence is not swagger or boasting. It’s not telling other people how great you are, or how victorious you will be. That’s arrogance.
Self-confidence is believing in your capabilities.
It’s knowing that even though you might not win this particular battle, you have the skills, knowledge, and fortitude to win the war. If you don’t have the right skills or abilities now, you can get them.
No matter what curve ball life throws at them, the self-confident person knows they can handle it. Even if they don’t yet know how.
Self-confidence is believing that no one can beat you until you choose to quit. That what looks like defeat to other people, is merely a setback showing you the weakness of your current position. A weakness that you are able and willing to fix, in pursuit of your ultimate goals.
What if you lack self-confidence?
But what if you aren’t self-confident? What if you expect to lose, get thrown for a loop by every obstacle, and give up before you even try?
The good news is, you don’t have to stay that way. You can increase your self-confidence.
Here are the top 5 ways that you can increase your self-confidence.
Tip #1: Do something difficult every day
A lot of people recommend doing something that scares you every day. They talk about sky diving and swimming with sharks. That kind of misses the point.
The original idea of doing something that scares you was to do something that had a fear of failure built in. Do something that you’re not quite sure you are capable of.
Stretch yourself a little bit outside of your comfort zone. As proposed by Susan Jeffers in Feel the Fear…and Do It Anyway, tiny actions in the face of fear let you see yourself as able to handle whatever result you get.
But don’t go so far outside of your comfort zone that you try something you’re completely unprepared for.
Going outside your comfort zone
One of the most common examples of lack of self-confidence is the high school kid who isn’t able to talk to the popular kid of the opposite sex.
Don’t immediately go up to them and ask for a date. That would be something you’re completely unprepared for.
Instead, smile and say, “Hi” when you pass in the hall. It doesn’t matter if they say, “Hi” back to you. It doesn’t even matter if they acknowledge you in any way.
If you stayed in your comfort zone, you wouldn’t have spoken to them. You pushed yourself out of your comfort zone and did speak to them. Yay you!
Once you’re comfortable saying, “Hi,” you can move on to an actual dialogue. Your classes, the school’s sports team, the disgusting thing being served by the cafeteria. It doesn’t actually matter what you talk about.
The point is not to lead toward a specific result. The point is to keep pushing your comfort zone. Every time you do something even though you’re scared of “What if…?” you reinforce that you can handle the outcome.
Key takeaway #1
Remember, self-confidence is believing you’ll be able to handle whatever happens. The more you push yourself slightly outside of your comfort zone, the more you’ll gain experience at handling unfamiliar outcomes.
Tip #2: Say “no” more often
To be confident that you can do things, you’ll need to say “no” more frequently. If you’re going to do everything you say you are, you have to say you’re going to do a lot less.
A lot of times, we agree to things to be polite, when we have no intention of doing them. Often, we then invent reasons why we can’t do the thing we just agreed to.
This actually saps your self-confidence. You begin doubting everything everyone else is saying. Did they really mean it, or were they just being polite? If you can’t trust them to help, you have to do everything yourself. That makes the simplest project balloon into a huge amount of work.
People begin questioning you, too. You signed up to do something, but the organizer isn’t sure you really meant it, and arranges for a “back up”, just in case. It starts to feel like people expect you to fail and not carry through on your promises. Maybe it’s because they know something you don’t. You actually can’t do these things.
Your self-confidence takes a slow spiral before draining away completely.
You can prevent that from happening by saying “no” to things you know you won’t do — whether it’s from lack of time, resources, or interest. Save your commitments for things you’re fully committed to.
Saying “no” at work
A chronically overworked manager approached one of her employees, and asked him if he could put together a client presentation for a client that Friday. Instead of simply agreeing, as had been his habit, then slapping something together at the last minute, he said, “No.”
At her shocked expression, he explained that she’d given him a high-priority task with a firm deadline of Friday morning. He was already expecting to work late Thursday night to make sure it was done on time. The client presentation was scheduled for Friday afternoon. He would not have time to put a quality presentation together between the two deadlines, and the client was important enough that they deserved a high quality presentation.
He then offered three solutions that might solve the problem. The meeting could be rescheduled to Monday, giving him the weekend to work on the presentation. The topic of the presentation could be changed, to allow him to use a presentation which had been created for another client. Or one of the other members of the department could take over creating the presentation.
The manager had to think about what she really wanted the client presentation to accomplish. Then she told him she’d reschedule for Monday. He had full self-confidence that he’d prepare a great presentation, because he knew he’d have the time necessary.
Key takeaway #2
Only say you’ll do something if you fully intend to do it. If you lack time, resources, or interest, don’t agree to something. Once you develop a reputation for saying no to things you won’t do, and yes to things you will, people will have greater confidence in your ability to do what you say you will. And that leads to greater self-confidence as well.
Tip #3: Do things now
Procrastination is a sign of uncertainty. Confident people do things right away. If they can’t, they schedule a time when they will get it done.
We tend to procrastinate (about one thing — if you procrastinate about everything that’s a different issue) because we don’t know something. Maybe we don’t know what to do, or maybe we don’t know how to do it.
Confident people are not stopped by uncertainty. The world is uncertain. If you wait for complete certainty, you’ll never do anything.
The difference between people with self-confidence and those lacking in confidence is how they perceive that uncertainty. Confident people believe that when they get to something new or different, they’ll figure it out and make it work. People lacking in confidence believe that when they get to something new or different, the whole project will collapse into failure.
Cleaning a desk
My husband had a problem with his desk. It was covered in paper. Scraps that he’d written in the middle of the night. Notes from phone calls. Ideas that he wanted to implement. There was no order to them, and no way of searching them to take action on any of them.
This went on for years. He kept meaning to clean and organize them, but never actually getting around to it. The project was too big, too confusing, with too many moving parts.
Finally, he decided that even if he didn’t know how to handle the entire pile, he could figure out what to do with one piece of paper.
He grabbed a paper at random, read it, and decided that he didn’t need that information anymore. He threw the paper away.
Inspired by his success, he grabbed another paper. This one had notes he’d taken during a telephone conference.
He thought for a moment about how he was likely to try and find the information on the page in the future. Then he created a category of conversations in his filing drawer, and created a folder for this project. The paper went into the folder, in the category, in the drawer. Done!
Trying to figure out what to do with all of the papers was too big and confusing a project. But he was confident that he could handle one piece of paper. As a result, he took action immediately. And after about two hours, the entire desk was clear of paper!
Key takeaway #3
Do things when they come up, rather than procrastinating. If you can’t do the task immediately, then schedule the task for when you will be able to do it. If a task seems too big and confusing, break it into smaller, easier to handle tasks.
Tip #4: Run your own race
Comparison is a key source of lack of confidence. We compare ourselves to others — usually in one specific way — and find ourselves lacking. We then use that perceived lack to explain why we will be unable to get or do the thing we want.
Confident people don’t think like this. They understand that people are complex creatures, with many different abilities and faults. Just because someone else is better at one thing, doesn’t mean that’s the only thing contributing to success. The confident person looks for the thing he or she can do well and capitalizes on that.
This can be seen in fiction writing. One author creates amazing, memorable characters. Another crafts plots that keep the reader on the edge of their seat for the entire book. A third has a profound grasp of language, and creates lyrical sentences that are a joy to read. Still another has a depth of research and detail that completely transports the reader to another time and place.
Any one of those writers could have looked at the others, and felt incompetent by comparison. But instead they had confidence in what they did well, and tried to become as good as they could at that skill.
High school track and field
The phrase “run your own race” to mean don’t compare yourself to others comes from a coach in high school track and field. (It has been used in many other places, as well, but his is the story I’m familiar with.)
He would routinely get kids on the track team who were fast, but had never run competitively. Their first meet, they would usually lose, because they kept checking over their shoulder to see how close all the other runners were.
He finally got to the point where he would sit all the freshmen down on the first day of practice and give them the same lecture.
“Every time you look over your shoulder at your competitors, you slow down. You have to ignore the other runners, and just run your own race. That’s the only way you can run fast enough to win. And if you’re checking to see how close they are, because you want to know if you should run faster…just run faster.”
Key takeaway #4
Don’t compare yourself to others. Just because they do one thing better than you, does not mean you can’t achieve the same things they have. You have other skills, other positive personality traits. Use them to run your own race.
Tip #5: Give yourself authority
Another reason many people lack confidence is that they aren’t sure if they’re supposed to do something. They’re waiting for an authority figure to tell them it’s okay for them to do it.
That works when your only goal is to stay out of trouble. But if you want to accomplish anything in your life, you can’t sit around waiting to be told whether or not it’s okay to take action.
Obviously, if you have already been told by an authority figure not to do something, I’m not suggesting you override that authority. But if no one has said who should do what, take initiative. Instead of waiting for someone to give you authority, give it to yourself.
Because here’s the secret. People are confident when they have been given authority to act. But it doesn’t matter who give you that authority. So give it to yourself.
The freelancer solution
In general, people feel more secure to enforce rules, if they are enforcing them on behalf of someone else, like a company or organization. They are afraid of looking like the bad guy if they are enforcing their own rules. This makes it especially difficult in some situations, such as freelancing.
When you’re a freelancer, you don’t have a company or organization to fall back on. If you’ve made an agreement with a client, and the client breaks that agreement, you can’t fall back on company policy. Or can you?
Many freelancers incorporate themselves, either as a standard corporation or as a Limited Liability Corporation. Creative artists are then able to represent themselves as working for Thus-and-such Studios. If their client breaks an agreement with them, it’s studio policy that they require an additional retainer or other guarantee in order to continue working for them. Of course, the artist understands the situation, but what can they do? The studio has a policy.
You don’t have to go to the extreme of creating a corporation to give yourself authority. Simply imagine that you’re acting on behalf of all the people who will benefit from your taking action.
Key takeaway #5
Don’t wait for someone else to give you authority to act. Confident people give themselves authority.
Conclusion
Self-confidence is the belief that you can handle whatever life throws at you. You can increase your self-confidence through daily practice. These five tips are the best ways to quickly improve your self-confidence.
The five tips for boosting your self-confidence
In this article, you learned to:
- Do something difficult every day
- Say “no” more often
- Do things now
- Run your own race
- Give yourself authority
More importantly, not only did you learn what to do, you learned why to do it.
By practicing these five methods of boosting your self-confidence every day, you will be able to increase your self-confidence.
Ready to have a better tomorrow?
I’ve created a cheat sheet to help you increase your confidence and get control of your life. If you follow this daily, you will level up your life very quickly!
