The tears started flowing and I sat there on the other end of the call quite frankly shocked. I’ve never had a potential client just start balling on an exploratory coaching call. For the first time in his career, Jason (not his real name) was failing and he didn’t know how to handle it. His career had been full of achievement and rapid growth. He basically killed it everywhere he went, or you could say he had the Midas touch. That was up until he took a new position at a company and his boss turned out to be a grade A ahole. His boss was one of those classic insecure yet arrogant types, who have to belittle others in order to feel better about himself.
“I feel like such a failure. I’m letting myself and my family down.” Jason told me on that first phone call. Then, as the tears started flowing I knew automatically what the problem was. Jason had lost his mojo (confidence) and I needed to help him rediscover it.
I’m a leadership coach so I work with successful people day in and day out from all walks of life. I have clients who are business owners and CEO’s in Colombia, the US, London, Malaysia, the Middle East and elsewhere. No matter where they’re from, they ALL have one thing in common, their VERY CONFIDENT! I’ve never met a successful person who wasn’t confident. The likelihood of someone with no confidence stumbling upon great success is little to none.
Confidence is an absolutely critical ingredient to the success formula.
The question then becomes, how can we increase our confidence? I want to go beyond that though. I want to help you create an Unshakeable Confidence. The type of confidence that makes you certain that you can do absolutely anything you want to do in life.
I’m not just preaching this from a pulpit. I live it. I left a career when I was reaching the top of it in order to start from zero in a new country. My goal was to prove that anyone can do anything they want to in life if they’re wired a certain way; with a certain mindset, emotional intelligence and healthy body and soul. I moved from Houston, Texas to Colombia, South America without knowing Spanish or barely anyone with the goal of developing leaders to improve the future of the country, and in the process, learn the language and understand the culture. After a few years of being here, I’ve had the pleasure of working with thousands of people across 10 cities; learned the language and culture; and launched a company and two non-profits organizations. I’m not saying this to impress you, rather to impress upon you that anything is possible when you have Unshakeable Confidence in yourself and your abilities.
Confidence is an absolutely critical ingredient to the success formula.
So without further ado, here are 5 Tips that will help you create Unshakeable Confidence.
- Develop a deep self-awareness
It’s hard to develop Unshakeable Confidence when you don’t have a deep understanding of who you are. You must be willing to constantly question yourself and dig deep within for the answers. What are you good at? What are you terrible at? What are you great at? What really drives you? What keeps you up at night? What would you do day in and day out without getting paid for it? How do you define a successful life? How do you measure your own success?
I can go on and on but I think you understand the point. In this day and age of constant connectivity and distraction it’s becoming harder and harder to do some deep soul searching and understand who you really are and what you really want out of life. As my mentor John Maxwell says, “The two most important days in your life are the day that you are born and the day you know why?”
- Figuring out your ‘why’ and your place in the world, is absolutely essential in developing an unshakeable confidence.
Jason, my client mentioned in the introduction, lost his confidence because he lost sight of his own self-awareness. He allowed his boss to label him and make him feel less than what he was. It was when he reconnected with his own heart and purpose, that his own voice became more powerful than that of his boss. He started to value himself again and realized what the real problem was.
- To increase your Self Confidence you MUST own and love your own uniqueness.
I was always a very curious child growing up. I would always ask the most random questions until my mom would get so tired of them that she would just start ignoring me. One of the most fascinating things that I ever learned was while watching a police detective show. In order to identify the perpetrator of a crime they would match his fingerprints with those found at the crime scene. I distinctly remember thinking, but how can that be? Does that mean we all have unique finger prints even though they’re just lines in a circular pattern? The answer as you know is yes! There are over 7 billion different finger prints in existence in the world today and billions more throughout history.
I’m mentioning this to make the point that our unique individuality is so profound that we can even see it on the tips of our fingers.
Always BE YOU & DO YOU
There has been and never will be anyone else just like you.
So, that means that you should embrace and love your uniqueness. I mean everything. The things that make you beautiful and the weird things. The special talents that you have and the things that you’re terrible at. Love ALL of it! Own ALL of it. The more you embrace it, the more confident you will become.
The fact that there is no one like you also means that you have a unique role to play in the world. The discovery and embracing of that role will take your self-confidence to a much higher level.
Now, here’s what I’m not saying. If you’re rude or have other bad character qualities that harm others physically or emotionally, then you should NOT Love and Own those qualities, rather improve them. Owning and Loving oneself also comes with the goal on constantly improving one’s character.
The point is…always BE YOU & DO YOU.
My parents wanted me to become a doctor. I knew that wasn’t for me, so I became a teacher and then a school principal and then a leadership coach and business owner. So many people suffer because they listen to the voices of others much more often than they listen to their own hearts. They do everything to please others and lose themselves in the process. Then, they wonder why they’re not happy or confident. It’s because they’re letting other people determine their life, rather than taking control themselves and loving and owning their own individuality and creating their own unique lives.
- Stop listening to yourself and start talking to yourself
This is a very simple yet powerful psychological principle. You either use your brain or your brain uses you. We all have that little voice in our heads and those thoughts that disempower us. Thoughts like: ‘I’m not good enough’ or ‘I’m so ugly’ or ‘I’m a failure’ or ‘Why am I not as good as so and so’ etc.
All of us have negative thoughts like these until we learn to take control of the conversation that we have with ourselves. That’s why it’s critical to stop listening to ourselves and start talking to ourselves.
When we take control of our head space and start telling ourselves the empowering thoughts that push us forward and stop listening to the disempowering ones that hold us back, our life changes in an incredible way.
One final addition to this third point.
Our repeated thoughts become beliefs, Our beliefs will manifest themselves in our habits, our habits will determine what we do with our lives
Controlling our thoughts is the starting point of increasing our self-confidence, so stop listening to yourself and start talking to yourself.
- Study Leadership and Become a better leader
I was in all sense of the word a very ‘average’ kid growing up. I was very quiet and introverted. I didn’t cause trouble, nor ruffled any feathers. I made pretty average grades in high school and college and was just kind of on cruise control in life. I did nothing extraordinary and had my share of insecurities.
I walked into a Barnes & Nobles bookstore one night not knowing that it would change my life forever. I was perusing through the self development area of the store and I came across a book called “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” by John Maxwell. That was the first time I had ever read anything about leadership. As I explained, at the time I was the furthest thing from a leader. In the book I learned how important it was to learn how to be a leader and then go out and do it in order to improve the lives around me. I also learned that leadership was a skill that could be learned. Yes, there were people who were gifted with natural leadership qualities, but even if a person didn’t have those, they could develop them.
The book got me started on the leadership journey that I’m still on to this day some 15 years later.
Of all the topics that I’ve studied in my life, Leadership is in the top 3. My life changed completely after reading the book. I started seeing myself as a leader and someone who was responsible for creating positive change in myself and the lives of the people around me. Through this journey my self-confidence has gone through the roof! So what does the study of leadership have to do with increasing self-confidence?
Leadership is a very broad topic which includes the study of: Effective communication, influence, emotional intelligence, decision making, develop effective teams, developing other leaders, strategic and critical thinking, problem solving, conflict resolution, vision and getting people to buy into it; and much more. What would happen to your confidence level if you learned about and improved in all of the above listed topics? I guarantee that your confidence would go through the roof, just like mine has. So, start studying leadership and watch your confidence and skill level grow like never before!
- Look and Feel Good
If this seems to obvious, that’s because it is. Physical appearance and health is an important part of developing one’s confidence. When you’re happy with what you see in the mirror and you feel fit and healthy, it increases your self-confidence. There’s two parts to this:
- Be and Live Healthy
This first one is obviously much more important. This has to do with creating a consistent exercise routine. Exercise has been shown to
- Look your best