26 Jun The One Thing Needed to Gain Self-Confidence
Let’s close our eyes and think about life. How many things wouldn’t happen because of a lack of self-confidence or how many things do we do thanks to self-confidence? Confidence, or lack of it, is an issue that comes up again and again in life.
Actions For Self-Confidence
I’ll tell you how it has played out in my life and what I have learned about it. The definition of self-confidence is a feeling of trust in one’s abilities, qualities, and judgment. The trust part grabbed me. I recall, clearly, mistrust in my ability and not having the power to be self-confident.
I used to work for the State just after I left secondary school. That is my first-hand experience in the public sector. The expression of our worth and true capabilities is not truly reflected within that domain. Being there in the first place was the product of a lack of self-confidence. After a few years, I began to get curious about my potential. So I enrolled in a course where I could study while working full-time.
I started studying Psychology, something I’ve always been curious about. I have to say, I wasn’t the greatest academic, and getting my 2:1 mark for my degree was difficult. In addition, the real struggle was to fit everything together as I worked full-time. I was studying through correspondence with The Open University. A part of me craved companionship to discuss these new ideas, not just the online forums connected to the courses. I was curious, and with some courage, I began to look around for others who were on a similar path.
Improved Relationships
A great challenge for me was overcoming my doubts and fears, which required me to lean a lot on my courage. Stepping into the unknown, I trusted that I would find people in my city who were interested in these interesting concepts. With a leap of faith, I stepped into some online forums and discovered many like-minded people. We were all exploring the same ideas together. Meeting this group of people in my city, it began to awaken something inside me.
I committed to setting up a meeting point and began to run events for people interested in the ideas I was learning about. Before long, a community began to flourish. It was as if I was circling around a purpose, something of value to me, and I knew I had to pursue it.
The ideas of liberty, personal responsibility, and human potential were beginning to occupy my mental landscape. From my cloudy goal to leave the public sector, I stumbled across my most important values in life. I began to take action in the world that brought me the results I wanted. As I confidently continued along and applied some consistent effort, it led me to run my own coaching business. I believe that, if we get clear on what our values are and set goals outside our comfort zone, we inevitably gain self-confidence.
Stronger Sense of Your Authentic Self
Self-confidence requires an acceptance of the potential, that along our path, we may fail. Giving ourselves permission to accept failure and believing that the next time doesn’t have to be the same. This is the foundation of what grows our self-confidence and allows us to step into our courage to become the people we want to be. This would’ve been mission-impossible without other people around me to help me test myself.
People ask, what can I do now to gain my self-confidence and powerfully move towards where I want to be? My answer used to be to do X, Y and then Z. But now I ask people to put their own minds and heart together to find what that is for themselves.
What Can You Do?
Ask yourself, what is self-confidence to you? And, what would you be doing if you had more of it? What I mean by ‘mind and heart’ is that the mind is the place where the thoughts originate from but the heart gives flavor to the thoughts.
When people can attune their beliefs to be in line with the outcome that they want to achieve in life, they become unstoppable. For many years, I had a core belief that academic life is not for me. Until I challenged that belief and eventually changed that belief, I was not permitting myself the level of success that I now enjoy.
Mind and heart working together in tandem allow someone to solve all their problems. Self-knowledge and curiosity for what is alive inside us are great ways to map our current reality and envision the journey to where we want to go. We just have to have the courage to jump.
Greater Motivation
I recommend that if you wish to improve your circumstances; get curious about your own beliefs. You can become the master of your destiny, as all successful people do, by courageously following through with their goals and taking appropriate actions.
Self-confidence is an accumulation of experiences and actions that have become routine to a confident person. Therefore, both the perception and perceiver of self-confidence are external and internal.
How are you going to work on your internal game and make the external exude self-confidence? I would love to hear about your own experiences and challenges with self-confidence.
I am a Freedom Coach and Mentor – I help freedom-loving people in their early/mid-career create a Successful Mindset. If you would like to explore some of these themes and move towards achieving more freedom this year, let’s connect and set up a call.
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