Last week, a client asked me this question:
“How can I improve my confidence? There are certain things I feel fairly confident at, but then I get in front of people or a group and just get so incredibly nervous, I lose all my confidence”.
It got me thinking (obviously, because I needed to draft up a response) …
I am certainly no expert in confidence. I could be the one asking this question, but instead I’m over here trying to answer it. Felt a bit silly, but I digress.
What I’ve learned through personal experience is this: Reps, reps, reps. You need evidence that you are person you want/know yourself to be, and you need to be proactive about putting yourself in situations that give you the opportunity to rise up.
Oftentimes we expect ourselves to be super confident in a realm that we just don’t have that much experience in, and we’ve got to consider all the layers of said realm. There’s an entirely new dimension added to something when you’re now expected to display it, teach it, prove your authority on it. You’ve now taken this thing — that perhaps was previously just between you and it — and opened the relationship. That can be scary, and your nerves are so, so valid.
There’s a quote by Susan David (I think) that says “courage is fear walking” and that’s the meat of it.
Courage is the door to confidence, not fearlessness. Courage and fear are linked. One holds your right hand, the other holds your left, the three of you walk into the woods together.
The more you feel that fear grip your hand & choose to walk forward anyway, your perception of self transforms. You start to build self-trust, an internally perceived resilience, evidence that you can and should be confident, because you’ve felt like this before and did the thing and lived to tell the tale.
I think the best way to build confidence is to keep dusting yourself off, even if you just completely ate shit, and get back out there. If something feels threatening to a fragile sense of confidence that relies on you always doing well, and knowing you will do well, you should probably do that thing.
It’s fear and nerves and ego banging down the door, and instead of hiding in the corner waiting for it to come get you, you open the door and say hello, how can I help you
You’re allowed to (and should) do things nervous and afraid. The more exposure you have to a nerve-wracking environment, the less nerve-wracking it will be over time.
And maybe consider reframing how you perceive a stress response — both in your mind and in your physical body.
If you get nervous before something and notice your HR increases, you’re hyperventilating a little, sweating, etc., instead of perceiving those sensations as bad, or as a sign that you shouldn’t be doing something, try to view them as physiological aids.
“This is just my body trying to heighten my state of arousal & prepare me for something challenging, something that’s important to me”
I can tell that you really care about things and put a lot of pressure on yourself to do well. Maybe, in these moments of self-doubt and fear, you need courage and tenacity, not confidence.
Confidence will come — but even if it doesn’t, courage and tenacity are your constant companions.
Peace & Love,
Sofia