Confidence! The how to.

Once you master your confidence, there is nothing that can stand in your way!

“Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertaking.” — Samuel Johnson

How many times have you told yourself to be confident?

We hear the word confidence everywhere, what does it actually mean to be confident? The Cambridge Dictionary definition of confidence is “the quality of being certain of your abilities or of having trust in people, plans, or the future.” What confidence basically boils down to is trusting oneself and or others.

I don’t know about you but for me, trust is difficult to find. Trust requires an element of certainty in the action that is to be taken by you or others. The problem with certainty is that you can never be a hundred percent certain of anything, apart from the fact that everything is uncertain.

We are uncertain as to what is going to happen in the future and do not trust what we think is going to happen. But even though we’re highly unlikely to, ever be certain about the future, we can develop a trust in ourselves and develop our confidence about how to deal with the future.

People have a habit of just looking at the micro-events that happen in our lives. The broken-down cars, the lost keys, the unlucky slip-ups at work, etc. We tend to fail at preparing for the big things. We are so accustomed to deriving are confidence from past experiences to foretell future events, that we forget about the unpredictability of the future.

I inspire to help you develop your confidence in yourself and others. This article is going to be broken down into five parts.

1. Positive outlook

2. Experiences

3. Believe in yourself

4. Knowledge

5. Manage your fear

Positive outlook.

Having a positive outlook in life, is an incredibly powerful thing to have. No matter what happens in your life there is always a positive that can come out of it, you might not see it at that precise moment but if you are willing to be open to it, it’ll come.

Even though this seems to be a cliché and for the most part it is, there is truth in the concept. Whatever happens that happens to be negative you can find something positive.

You see, having a positive outlook will inspire others and others than can inspire you. Nothing is ever as bad as it first seems. Instead of seeing dead ends, you can see new beginnings, new opportunities and you never know where they can take you. But one thing you can be sure of if you blind yourself to them you will never go anywhere.

For one, take the lockdown that we are in, you see the bad; the economy might fall apart or the hardship of self-isolation. Or you can take the good; you have time to spend with your family; you have time to learn, try to do new things/ventures, or discover/ rediscover your passions. There are always opportunities you just have to open your eyes.

The thing is that in the processes of looking for the positive; we are likely to find hope.

Hope for a brighter future, the hope for a payoff from your hard work (even if it’s not the payoff you think), or the hope for something better. Knowing that there is something at the end, is exactly the thing that gives you confidence.

Experience

Experiences are a mixed bag for me, I always try to learn from them, but I never use them to predict the future. Experiences develops confidence because they prepare you for future possibilities, but only if you learn from them. You must remember they don’t foretell the future.

It is important however to understand that just because things happened a particular way before does not mean that they are going to happen the same way again. The confidence comes from seeing what happens during and after the event. That allows you to have a greater understanding of what might happen and how to deal with it if something similar happens again.

The more open we are to new experiences, the better prepared we can be for the future and its uncertainties. Thus, be more confident when stepping into the unknown. The more experiences you go through, the greater your understanding of the world around you, giving you more abilities to deal with what lies ahead.

Believing in yourself

Believing in yourself is hard, doubt is always just around the corner whispering in our ears. “You sure you’re doing the right thing?”, “What if it does not work?” or “you’re not good enough!” To beat doubt, you need to know that we all experience it, no matter who you are. Doubt only stops you if you listen to it, so it’s simple! Ignore doubts whispering voice.

“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” — Theodore Roosevelt

Focus on your strengths, your goals, your dreams, and once you understand, as many others have done before you, with hard work and dedication you can reach them.

Listen to the things that are happening around you, there are always opportunities waiting for you. Understand that you can do anything as long as you are willing to work for it, the only thing that is stopping you is not knowing what is waiting for you and no one ever does.

But remember, whatever is waiting for you it has an equal opportunity of being good or bad, and with more work, the scales will tip towards the good, just keep at it.

We are capable of more than we think.

Knowledge

With knowledge you can do anything. Read as much as you can, learn as much as you can. The more you understand, the better prepared you are for the uncertain future. Knowledge is one of the greatest tools when developing confidence, you are building on the experience of others as well as your own.

The more you know and understand the better you prepared for what comes up. The trick is understanding what you need to learn. It is not all about the information that you can get from books (though they are extremely useful and needed), but the knowledge that I speak of is the one that prepares you for anything.

Learn skills like.

• Critical thinking, the ability to problem solve complicated issues
• How to defend yourself (physically)
• Discipline and hard work, you can’t achieve anything with up giving the time and work into it
• Flexibility, the ability to adjust to the current events so they don’t break you.

I’m sure that there are many more skills that would help you prepare for the unknown, though the aforementioned I feel are some of the most important.

Manage your Fear

The main thing to remember about fear is that it comes from not knowing. The more we learn, the more we know and the more we experience, the easier it is to manage our fears. It is important to know that fear will always be; it is built into us and it can be particularly useful, but we should not let it control us.

If we have a positive outlook, we get hope and remove the fear of the ‘what if’. When we develop a belief in ourselves, we remove the fear that doubt brings. When we learn, we remove the fear of the unknown. Even though we might never fully remove fear from our lives, it is worth remembering that fear can be a tool that can drive us forward.

Summery

Confidence is always going to be a work in progress, no matter the age or the experience life can and often does ‘shake’ your confidence. The important thing to understand is that that ‘shake’ will be temporary. Fall back on the aforementioned five aspects and not only will your confidence come back but grow.

• Positive outlook — try to see the good and not the bad. There is always more to be gained from the good.
• Experiences — the more you go through the better prepared you are to deal with life.
• Believe in yourself — when you believe in yourself you already halfway to your goals and dreams.
• Knowledge — the more you know the better prepared you are for the unknown.
• Manage your fear — when you learn how to deal with fear, it becomes a tool and not a hindrance.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article, I hope you found it interesting and useful. Please leave a comment if you have any questions.