“How Do I Become More Confident?”

The most important thing to know about confidence is the fact that it’s a skill you build with practice and repetition. It’s not about appearance, being attractive or not, it’s not about what fancy car or home you own. It’s not something you are born with.

 So many people come to me and say, “I don’t have the confidence to start my own business or I don’t have the confidence to ask someone out on a date”. What you need to know is that once you take action, confidence will follow. You need to build the evidence that you are good at something. When you build the evidence, you build self-belief, and in turn, you feel more confident and stronger to continue challenging yourself.

 1. Don’t wait to feel more confident before you act. Do the opposite. Act. Think of confidence as courage in small doses. Start with micro-actions. Make the phone call, speak up once in the meeting.

 2. Have a morning or evening practice – 5 minutes of visualizing yourself taking a small action, like a mental rehearsal; see it all as you would like it to look and feel when successful, feeling calm and relaxed as you do it.

 3. Be in your body as if you already have the confidence. Stand tall, shoulders back, do the ‘power pose’. This little shift empowers you to act more confidently.

 4. Write down a daily evidence log of at least 3 things in your day where you did something out of your comfort zone, building the skills for confidence. You are being your ally and improving your self-image.

 5. Compare yourself to yourself. What are you seeing improving weekly about yourself? Don’t compare yourself to others who may be further along in their journey of confidence.

 You don’t need to become a whole new person. You are simply removing what’s blocking the confident version of you that’s already in there.