When I ask my clients for their long term coaching goals what often comes up is some variation on “I want to be more confident.” I always ask them to get specific with this to understand more about how they view confidence.

They often say things like:

• I want to speak up more

• I want to not feel so self-conscious when I’m networking 

• I want to be able to make decisions more quickly

• I don’t want self- doubt to keep me from opportunities

• I want to be more excited and passionate about what I’m doing

• I want to commit to a course of action and feel good about my choice instead of FOMO

• I want to stop hiding who I really am 

• I want to be seen as a leader

The dictionary defines confidence as: 

“a feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities.”

There are two ways to approach confidence. One way is to follow tips and tricks to appear confident. The other is to actually be confident.

Merely projecting confidence is a trap

I shared a story in the fearlessness article last month about how my college friend remarked that he had thought I was very confident back then. The truth was that the confidence he percieved was a mask that I wore. It gave the appearance of feeling confident but inside my mind was raging, worried that if I put down the mask my friends would disappear. 

I don’t think confidence has ever really been one of those things that came naturally for me.

If people thought I was confident, it was really just the way I masked my insecurity, because I didn’t want people to really get to know the real me.

Joanna Gaines

The mask of false confidence is a terrible trap. If we put it down, then we may lose our successes. BUT if we succeed and keep the mask, that success is then tainted and we pick up imposter syndrome instead – fearing that one day our mask will be removed and we’ll lose everything. This cycle is exhausting and destructive, keeping walls between our authentic self and the world.

There are so many pieces of advice out there about how to “appear” confident, but how do you actually become confident? 

1 – Do the work.

It’s not about a quick fix.

Nor is it about some ‘one and done’ method of becoming permanently confident.

Authentic confidence means taking a good long look at the whole of your ‘self’ – the good, the bad, the indifferent – and accepting what is while working toward revealing more of your best and truest self. It means developing acceptance AND responsibility for these aspects while understanding that you are perfectly imperfect.

Reflect on your authentic self and how you want to show up in the world.

There are parts I do not like – the shy parts, the cynical parts, the downright mean parts. Yet I accept them, at least for today. There have been times where these parts kept me safe and alive, kept me from falling apart, from breaking down. I can no more reject them than I can reject my sprain-prone ankles. When I can accept them I also own my responsibility for them. Just like I don’t even try to walk in heels anymore, I must take care not to surround myself with cynical people. When I notice that I’ve made a biting remark I make my practice to take a deep breath and count to ten before I speak again. 

I’ve done years of work on myself, doing spiritual and deep reflection and unraveling the layers like an onion. I’ll continue this work for many years more, as many as I’m granted on this Earth. It’s hard work but the reward far outweighs the cost.

There are days where I just really hope no one is looking at me at networking events, and I accept that it’s still 100% worth it to go because that means I’m moving one step closer to confident networking and understanding what my factors are that lead to success in social situations. So far I’ve learned that I need breaks- pre-planned – if I’m at an all-day conference (more if it’s a multi-day conference). 

2 – Own your successes with as much conviction as you own your mistakes, if not more.

When I was in kindergarten, we all lined up the first day to go out to recess. I was so excited that I didn’t hear the instruction to wait until the teacher blew the whistle to leave the line, so when I entered the playground I ran up the hill with a gleeful shriek (like a 5-year-old should) only to discover to my horror that I was the only person to do so. The shame of that error is something I can still vividly describe to you over 30 years later. Can I say the same for my first beautiful art project or success playing the clarinet? 

Nope!

We can be so hard on ourselves that we forget to celebrate or even acknowledge our successes. If you were raised thinking of pride as something that is wrong or to avoid, this can be even more pronounced.

In my desk, I have a Wonder Woman journal. The sole purpose of this journal is to document my successes – every thank you, every completed project or moment of pride in my work or positive exchange of ideas with a collaborator – it all gets documented in the journal. Whenever I have those doubts come up that interfere with my confidence I read through the success journal. It makes a huge difference!

3 – Create a foundation of fearlessness.

Fear is the opposite of confidence. Fear is believing that you can’t do it, things won’t work out, or something “bad” will happen. Confidence is believing that you CAN do it and that no matter what, things will work out. If you haven’t committed to making fearlessness a routine, check out these practices: 21 Days to Fearlessness.

4 – Cultivate resilience.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.‘

Eleanor Roosevelt

How you recover from setbacks is the first test of genuine confidence that will out someone who is trying to fake it. If your inner perfectionist creates a swirl of negative remarks in response to a perceived failure, now is the time to address it.

What would happen if you took a moment to pause and appreciate the learning after a setback rather than beating yourself up?

Recovering from a setback is much easier if you are not pinning your success on a particular outcome. Approaching your goals with a growth mindset and using a tool like the 1-2-3 plans (link) are crucial to genuinely experiencing and flowing with the changes while still seeing the opportunities even within a “failure”.

5 -Commit to continuous development.

There is no “done” when it comes to confidence or any other personal development areas. Commit to learning and practicing more, whether it’s to develop your ‘hard’ skills, adding training and reading related to your discipline or industry or working on your ‘soft’ skills by working with a coach and/or therapist, journalling, attending workshops or reading self-help books. 

Identify some core competencies that you recognize as areas for improvement and set annual goals (this is a great time to start thinking about that since we are only two short months from the new year!). It’s typically more effective to have a narrow focus so you can be fully committed to learning and practicing rather than creating a grand list with no hope of juggling it all.

Aim for 1-2 skills in each of these areas for the next year:

• industry/career skills (keeping in mind the job you want not just the job you have)

• People skills – even if you don’t see yourself going into management, we all work on teams these days and knowing how to work and communicate effectively is paramount, consider networking skills and keeping in touch with your extended network too

• Self-management skills: working on therapy issues like anxiety/depression, establishing supportive habits, developing your confidence, etc

• Personal interest skills: starting a new hobby or increasing your skills in an old one, something to round out your life

To make your commitment to becoming authentically confident stick, I have a challenge for you:

In the comment section below, share which practice you will begin with and why it’s important for you to be authentically confident!