True confidence does not come from having everything, but from accepting everything you do not have. Confidence comes from doing the things that matter.
Don’t have a beautiful, sexy body? So what? Don’t have the fanciest job? So what? Don’t have the highest grade in school? So what?
Confidence means believing in your ability to accomplish whatever it is you set out to do. But you cannot succeed in everything, so you must choose something. Choose that something and say “So what?” in everything else.
How to Be Confident
Here’s how you can make the right choices to unlock your inner confidence:
1. Write Down Your Long-Term Goals
“You must have long term goals to keep you from being frustrated by short term failures.”
—Charles C. Noble
In a LinkedIn interview, Richard Branson was asked, “If you lost it all, what would be the first thing you would do to try and rebuild your success?”
He answered, “Well, I think you have to define what success is.”
So first, define success for yourself. That is your own box. You must make your own box so you don’t fall into the trap of adopting other people’s success criteria that you don’t care about.
Confidence is specific. I can confidently teach a freshman student what Psychoanalytic theory is, but I cannot be confident that I can beat Gordon Ramsay in a cooking battle. I am confident because I studied psychology for years, whereas in the kitchen, I could barely fry a chicken properly.
No one can be great in everything. If you spend your time and resources on one thing, you are inevitably making a trade-off for something else. Writing down your long-term goals helps you identify which of the things you want to go big on and which of them you want to say “so what?” on.
It all begins with a decision. Once you’ve decided what success means to you, it is easier to give yourself permission to suck. If you decided to be a writer, then it’s easier to suck at dancing. It doesn’t matter.
Assignment:
Imagine it’s 10, 20 years into the future, and everything went according to plan. Write down what you would’ve accomplished and what would’ve made you feel like you’ve lived a life you wouldn’t regret. Those accomplishments? Those are your long-term goals.
2. Embrace Failure
“Assume you’ll fail nine times first before you succeed on the tenth.”
—Michael Starbird & Edward Burger, 5 Elements of Effective Thinking
To be more confident, you must redefine your relationship with failure.
Confidence requires facing challenges. You will not be more confident by watching Netflix all day. It’s not challenging enough. You need to rise to the challenge and write that book you’ve always dreamed of writing.
You may succeed or you may not. People might like it, or they might not. No one can ever guarantee. That’s the point of a challenge, it means you can’t succeed 100% of the time. Recognize failure as a natural part of the process and keep moving forward. It’s not that confident people don’t fail, but they acknowledge failure as an essential part of the process.
Assignment:
Practice embracing failure. Make a list of the significant things that you are currently doing. Set a goal by increasing your efforts by 5%. If you can only do 20 push-ups, try to do 21. Start small—but always push your boundaries and do something beyond your current abilities.
3. Do What Matters
Your long-term goals should matter to you. They may have a positive impact on other people’s lives, but they must primarily come from you. Don’t go living for other people’s purpose or agenda. You’re setting yourself up for misery and mediocrity.
Ask yourself, “What’s worth doing even if I fail?” This is what Brené Brown asked herself to summon the courage to give her TED Talk. She believed her ideas were important enough for people’s lives that she found the courage to take the risk and be vulnerable in front of her audience.
Sometimes, confidence is about overcoming a strong fear of failure. But if you find something worthwhile, something that you find worth doing even if you fail, then half the battle is won.
Assignment:
If you find yourself having trouble making decisions about what truly matters, apply George McKeown’s 90 Percent Rule. Rate the options from 1-10. Anything below 9 is a No. Anything you rated 9 or 10 are what truly matter.
4. Surround Yourself with Confident People
Walk away from toxic people in your life who suck away your inner confidence and spend more time with the ones who support you, uplift you, and make you a better version of yourself.
Behaviors are contagious. Surrounding yourself with confident people will give you more confidence.
Ask for their support. Having supportive people around you will improve your self-confidence.
Think about the kind of people you surround yourself with. Are you surrounded by people who dare not try for fear of failing? Are you surrounded by people who criticize and gossip about the failures of others, but never do anything themselves? Are you surrounded by people who make you feel less confident?
These people affect you, whether you are conscious about it or not. So choose your people wisely.
Assignment:
Write down a list of people who make you feel bad about yourself, who gossip and criticize a lot, and who do nothing but watch on the sidelines, and then make another list of people who make you feel positive, people who support you, people who make you a better version of you.
Commit to spending less time with the people on the negative list and spend more time with the positive ones. The people on the negative list might be long-time friends… the choice is yours.
5. Stop Comparing Yourself to Other People‘s Highlight Reel
Reduce your social media consumption, because your self-esteem literally drops the more you use social media.
It is rare for people to post about the bad, boring, and ordinary parts of their lives. On social media, you’ll find posts about the highlights of their day (or even year), which could make you feel like you’re falling behind your peers. This is not true. Everyone has an ordinary, boring part in their lives. They just don’t post it.
Check how often and how much you’re using social media and beware of these dangers. The more you use it, the more you’re likely to compare yourself with other people’s highlight reel.
Assignment:
Delete your social media apps on your phone. You can still use them with your browser or other devices (laptop or computer). The point is to make using them less convenient. This alone significantly reduced my own social media consumption.
If you cannot do this for whatever reason, just turn off the notifications from all of them so you don’t use them reactively. This is so you can only use them when you need to, instead of getting distracted while doing important things because you got notified that someone liked your post.
6. Act Even If You Don’t Feel Confident Yet
“He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.”
—William Blake
In his book The Confidence Gap, Dr. Russ Harris’s number one rule states:
The actions of confidence come first; the feelings of confidence come later.
Unless you execute, nothing happens. No amount of reading will build your confidence unless you act on the things that matter to you.
Start from your long-term, worthwhile goals and break them down into smaller chunks. Make the chunks so small that you can do something every day that will move the needle forward towards your long-term goals. Create a daily checklist that helps you achieve those goals.
Doing this inspires action. Checking off items from your checklists releases dopamine in your brain. This is a feel-good neurochemical that tells your brain you received a reward, making you more likely to seek those behaviors again.
Checking these items that are aligned with your long-term goals also makes you feel that you’re making progress, which in turn empowers you to move even closer toward your goals.
Final Thoughts
There are many roads that will lead you to self-confidence, but you don’t need all of them. Write down your long-term, worthwhile goals, embrace failure, get the right people on board, and work on them. Day in, day out.
That’s what it means to be confident. It’s doing the things that matter and accomplishing the things that give meaning to your life. It’s nothing sexy. What about the other things that you suck at or you don’t have? Forget them. If it’s not on the list, ignore it. Be comfortable without it. It doesn’t matter.
What do you do to feel confident? Share your tips in the comments below!
If you enjoyed this post, then you might also like:
- How to Be Assertive: 9 Tips for More Confident Communication
- How to Communicate Effectively: 9 Tips for Clearer Exchanges and Fewer Misunderstandings
- How to Be Brave: 6 Tips for Embracing Fear and Living the Life of Your Dreams
- How to Start a Conversation with Anyone: 7 Tips for Breaking the Ice
Rutherford Rigodon is a psychometrician-turned-marketer who loves reading and writing about human psychology and all its implications in human life. As the Digital Marketer for TCK Publishing, he creates and executes the marketing campaigns to ensure that TCK’s books get to the hands of our beloved audience at the right place and at the right time.
