Do You Know The Best Way To Increase Your Self-Confidence?

Choosing From The Overwhelming Amount of Advice

Do you want to be more self-confident?

Judging by the number of articles, books, and courses that are available, many, many of us do. It’s no wonder, really, with social media constantly showing us the fabulous careers, vacations, side-hustles, families, gardens..etc. that seemingly everyone else has, who doesn’t feel at least slightly inadequate? (I wrote an article about this — My Lies — and Yours — On Social Media.)

The good news is that if you want to increase your self-confidence, there is plenty of advice available about how to do it. The challenge is how to navigate the overwhelming amount of information and choose a path forward. This article is going to provide an answer.

First, since this article is not about how to change your level of self-confidence, but rather about the process, I’d like to acknowledge that there are are many lists of actions to begin taking. These lists often include things like:

• Focus on the positive
• Stop being negative
• Be kind to others
• Be prepared
• Understand yourself
• Start with small steps

Mindset

These are useful pieces of advice and you should be aware of them. What’s perhaps more important than any single tactic is what they have in common. The commonality is mindset. Starting with a healthy mindset is important.

“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.”

— Buddha

Each of us has a lifetime of experiences and stories that have gone into our own beliefs about our own powers and abilities, which is the definition of self-confidence. As organizational psychologist Benjamin Hardy writes, “No one has an objective perspective of the world. We all have subjective perspectives. Each and every one of us has a different brain that has been TRAINED to focus on certain things in the world.”

If your experience has taught you that public speaking is frightening, or sports are too difficult, or new projects always fail, that is what informs your world view and your self-confidence. Those things are not objectively true, but your mind and body react as if they are true. For you, they are true, at least, for now.

Understanding that concept and believing your truth can change is important. Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck is one of the leading researchers on mindset. In her well-received TED Talk, “The Power of Believing You Can Improve,” Carol discusses fixed versus growth mindsets.

In a fixed mindset, people believe their personality and behavior are steady, unchangeable traits. So, if they believe they are bad at math and speaking in public, that is just who they are, period. In a growth mindset, a person believes their personality and behaviors can change. She discusses a wonderful trick — using the word “yet.” As in, “I am not good at math, yet.”

This trick, better thought of as a tool, is incredibly empowering as it implies that someday, the person will be good at whatever the task is. This tiny word has the ability to reframe almost any self-concept, and reframing is powerful.

Reframing

According to VeryWellMind.com “Reframing is a technique used in therapy to help create a different way of looking at a situation, person, or relationship by changing its meaning.” Being able to look at something through a different lens than we are used to causes the picture to change.

What is it you want to accomplish? Writing a book? Giving a speech in public that people love? Asking someone out on a date with confidence? Instead of seeing yourself as someone who cannot do those things, thinking of yourself as someone who has not done those things, yet gives yourself permission to become that type of person.

But where to start?

Choose just one thing

You have probably read lots of self-help advice about starting with small goals. That’s because it is good advice. If you don’t even know how to swim starting with the goal of winning a gold medal in the Olympics is probably too overwhelming. You want to start with a small, logical step, like signing up for swim lessons.

Some advice about increasing self-confidence suggests choosing one thing to start with. It needs to be the right thing though, the key behavior that if you change, all else will fall into place. That’s a lot of pressure. It seems overwhelming to choose the one thing you need to improve to change your entire life.

Instead, as a starting place, I suggest you choose any one thing. Hop on Google, do a search for “how to improve self-confidence,” and of the various articles listing 10, 25, 5, and 8 ways to do so, read through a few, and pick just one thing that resonates with you. It’s exciting to think about the wonderful results that could happen if you made ten changes to your behavior all at once, but the reality is, you probably won’t do it.

Creating one new habit is difficult, but ten all at the same time? Unlikely. Give yourself a real shot at success and work on only one change at a time.

If you want to be more self-confident, you need to experience some success. As writer, pilot, adventurer Beryl Markham stated, “Success breeds confidence.” Start with just one relatively small task to begin racking up some wins.

“Success breeds confidence.”

-Beryl Markham

For instance, if you took one of the tasks from the list at the beginning of this article and focused only on that goal for one month, you could see some real improvements in your life. As an example, take “stop being negative.” Do some research on what that means and how to implement it. Choose 2–4 of the top ideas and do them for one month. If that feels overwhelming, do just one of those things, too.

Each time you experience a level of success, your confidence grows. As your confidence grows, you will be more willing to take on new challenges knowing you have the ability to succeed.

You may not be filled with self-confidence, yet, but if you grow your confidence one task at a time, you will be!

More from Dakota… Are you a writer or dream of being a writer?

Do habits like procrastination and perfectionism hold you back? I’m an author and I also help people overcome self-defeating habits so they can work towards becoming the writer they dream of being. If you’d like to receive a free, simple guide that will give you insight into your reasons for procrastinating, click on the link below.

Understanding Your Procrastination Habits: A Quick Start Guide for Writers