5 Ways To Be More Confident and Make Things Happen
Table of Contents
“What makes the difference between those who pull it off and seem to be living the dream, and those who delay or flat out fail to pull the trigger?”
The more I explored this question the clearer the answer became:
Confidence.
Confidence is the biggest difference between those who create and achieve and those who remain on the sidelines.
This isn’t confidence in a specific area, such as marketing or web design or the blind confidence the jock from your high-school seemed to have. I’m talking about a specific kind of confidence that is developed through time and experience.
It is the kind of confidence behind beliefs like:
I’ve done lots of other great things before so I’m sure I can do this too.
Other people have done what I want to do so there is no reason I can’t pull it off.
Whatever happens I’ll learn from it and be a better, more experienced person afterwards.
I believe confidence plays a critical role in location independence. While travel and location independence does build confidence, if we don’t have a base of confidence we will struggle to overcome fear and get started.
True Story: At this point, while writing the first draft of this article, I started to write “I’m so fascinated by confidence that I could go on and on about it, I could literally write a book”…
And then I remembered I actually have written a book on it…and that was the point of this article to begin with.
OK, back on track Dan. Time to focus.
Now I’d like to share with you 5 insights on confidence from my latest book “7 Weeks To Unstoppable Self Esteem: The Ultimate Guide To Building Lasting Confidence and Life-Long Self Esteem“. These tips will help you reduce anxiety, overcome fear and create massive amounts of confidence for your business, life and travels.
How To Be More Confident Tip Number One: Competence Creates Confidence
There is a famous saying in the personal development world: “Act As If”. I like this approach but this way of thinking has some serious flaws.
Sustainable and authentic confidence requires a somewhat realistic perspective. If you’re 35 and living in your parent’s basement, no matter how many times you tell yourself “I am the greatest entrepreneur to ever live”, your subconscious will still know what’s really up.
The key to authentic confidence is to develop our talents while adding skills and experience.
For short-term confidence boosts, the “act as if” strategy can be effective. If we want sustainable confidence, we must focus on developing competence in the areas important to our success.
How To Be More Confident Insight Number Two: Progress = Growth
A weird thing happens the first month after a young man begins going to the gym.
His confidence soars way more than it should.
This happens because our confidence is derived from relative judgments.
In other words, the level of confidence we feel in any moment is based on our own judgments, and these judgments are 100% relative: Relative to our past selves, our vision for our future selves, our neighbours, our friends… even the people on magazine covers have some level of influence.
All else being equal (including their “normal” levels of confidence), the gorgeous woman who gains a few pounds may actually feel much less “confident” than the obese woman who has recently lost 20 lbs.
Having and working towards small, manageable goals is one of the best ways to build your confidence while improving your life. Remember to set goals you can achieve within 4-12 weeks, and always take some kind of action on a new goal within 24 hours of it coming to mind.
How To Be More Confident Insight Number Three: Comparison Points
To create the most consistent levels of confidence and build lifelong self-esteem, we must change how we make comparisons, and what we make them to. The most powerful way to make comparisons is to compare ourselves to our past self, admire the progress we’ve made, and feel an authentic confidence and pride about our progress.
How To Be More Confident Insight Number Four: Mind-Body Connection
Sometimes those of us in Psychology love to over-complicate things. Every issue needs to be traced back to a parent, every emotion has a deep-rooted cause…you get the idea.
Well, this isn’t always the case.
In my decade of research and personal study I’ve found, that sometimes it is the simplest things that have the biggest impact on how we feel.
Here is one example of this.
Your body is a reflection of your average state of mind…but your state of mind is also a reflection of your body. It is a two way street with signals going in both directions.
Women tend to be much better than men are at intuitively realizing the impact our body and the chemicals in it has on our mood and confidence.
The hormones in our bodies have a huge impact on our confidence in both positive and negative directions.
The best way to prevent dips in confidence caused by chemical changes is to be proactive and build a body that will build your self-confidence. Not everything you feel is “in your head”. If you feel down or insecure, try changing your diet or exercising more and see how you feel.
Exercise and healthy eating will directly improve your confidence. As an added bonus, healthy living will improve your focus and productivity, which will increase your confidence even more.
How To Be More Confident Insight Number Five: Take Action
A big part of our confidence is shaped by our own perceptions of ourselves. Funny enough, this self-image is shaped by our actions, and at the same time there is a strong unconscious pull for our actions to conform to our self-image. Kind of a crazy loop right?
Personally, I think it’s very cool that, like other elements of how we think, this works in both directions. If you start to do great things, you’ll see yourself as someone who does great things. Then, your self-image becomes that of someone who does great things, so guess what? You’ll be more likely to keep doing good things.
When we do good things we feel good, and we’re perceived as an admirable person by others and by ourselves. This perception is picked up by our unconscious mind and will positively shift our self-image. All this leads to one big boost of positive emotions and self-confidence.
Exciting Stuff
This week I’ve released a new book, my third (and most comprehensive) on self-confidence:
7 Weeks To Unstoppable Self Esteem is available exclusively on Amazon via the Kindle E-Readers, Apps and Browser Tool…In other words there are a hundred different ways to buy and read it.
I would love for you to read this book. I know it will have a positive impact on your life and give you an edge in going after your dreams. I feel confident in this because my first two books in the series have received over twenty 4 and 5 star reviews. I have an inbox full of readers telling me how these books changed their life and helped them finally overcome low self-confidence.
7 Weeks To Unstoppable Self Esteem is the completion of this trilogy and by far the most comprehensive and powerful of the series.
If you’d like to have a look you can learn more about the book by following either of these two links: