6 Habits of Highly Confident People.

There are many definitions of confidence in the personal development world. Brendon Burchard describes it as the belief in your ability to figure things out. It's using your past as evidence that you always make a plan and can tackle any situation.

Mel Robbins defines confidence as the willingness to try.

My definition of confidence is the feeling of being comfortable in your own skin. It's the willingness to be seen.

Consider what confidence means to you. Is it a feeling, an action, or a destination you haven't quite reached?

Here are some habits to consider so you can embrace being comfortable in your own skin:

Embrace discomfort.

Discomfort is your ticket to confidence. To gain mastery in anything, you have to start somewhere. Your first attempt at anything, whether in business or your personal life, is going to feel uncomfortable, pushing you away from your comfort zone and into full-on imposter syndrome.

Embrace it. This is where confidence is born.

When I first started writing, I felt like a full-blown imposter. Who was I to write? What gave me the right? The more I continued writing and publishing my work, a strange thing began to happen. I got better. I got braver. What used to take me a week began to take a few hours.

With consistency and repetition, I became confident, and now I don't think twice about hitting the publish button.

To get to this point, I had to be OK with being average and a beginner. I can't say the exact tipping point when I felt this wave of confidence, but I can tell you it's worth every minute of uncertainty and discomfort.

Whatever you want to be more confident in, start showing up. Woody Allen said 80% of success is just showing up. Show up to the manuscript, show up to the studies, show up to the gym—whatever it is for you. Schedule it and show up.

Develop the courage muscle.

The key ingredient to feeling confident is courage. To be more confident, you have to train your courage muscle. Like training legs in the gym, the more you do it, the stronger they become, and that initial burn begins to subside and is replaced with muscle and endurance.

The only way to become confident in anything is to have evidence of having done it before. You look back on past experiences and use that to nudge you forward. It's incremental wins over time that enable you to keep going.

Most people have it backwards; they think they need a full tank of confidence to take action. You need a teaspoon of courage; that's the first step, the micro win. When you stack enough micro wins, it's evidence you can do it. By this point, you have developed the confidence that you can, and so you do.

As Chase Jarvis says in Creative Calling, you have to do the verb to become the noun.

Validate yourself.

Does your level of confidence depend on the validation and appreciation from other people? Like a cell phone battery, are you trying to gain your charge from an external source? What if you could validate yourself and charge your own battery?

Sure, recognition and praise are great from others, but can it be a bonus?

If you're always waiting for other people to fill you up, it's hard to build up your own confidence reserves. It's like charging a solar battery; the sun is always charging it, but on overcast days when the sun is not available, is there enough battery to power the whole house?

You need to constantly charge yourself so that you don't deplete yourself on ‘cloudy days’.

Cultivate a kind mind.

Confidence starts in the mind with the thoughts we tell ourselves. What we communicate to ourselves has a huge impact on how we project ourselves to the rest of the world.

Considering you spend a lot of time on your own, what's it like inside your head? Is it a vicious inner critic pointing out all your faults, or is it a kind inner coach, a buddy who is there to laugh at you when you make a mistake and celebrate when you have a victory?

I used to live in the latter; my mind was not a kind place to visit. Eventually, I got it. And I realised there was a better way and a kinder way. It's the most liberating place where you can genuinely enjoy your own company and encourage yourself. Self-compassion is the basis of self-confidence; it's a kind, caring attitude towards yourself and a way to find the lessons and drop the story.

You create a kind mind with self-awareness; you have to hear the inner voice before you can correct it. Practices like meditation, mindfulness, yoga, and anything else that enables silence, stillness, and solitude will be your compass to a kinder inner world.

Take action.

Procrastination is the kryptonite of confidence. It's the lack of starting on a goal that breaks your confidence and drains your internal battery. Plus, you give your inner critic good ammunition to validate its vicious comments.

The quickest way to build confidence is action. Rather than focus on the entire goal, break it down into tiny bite-size chunks.

Rather than think about the whole presentation, focus on the first slide.

Rather than think about a thirty-minute gym session, consider three lunges, one mindful breath or one sentence of journaling.

Just start – starting is the evidence of the willingness to try, as Mel says.

 Keep the promises you make to yourself.

Confident people don't feel guilty about making time for themselves in the calendar because they know it's part of the process of creating the state and feelings they want.

It's not enough to schedule yourself on the calendar; the key habit to master is showing up to yourself. When you show up for the walk, the run, and the slot of time you booked to work on your presentation, you show yourself that you are trustworthy. You show yourself you are enough and worthy through your actions.

Confident people prioritise their tasks and don't put other people ahead of them. They are confident because they keep the promises they make to themselves.

If you don't have the level of confidence you aspire to, consider if you have mastered keeping other people's promises but not your own?

You can’t only think your way to confidence; you have to demonstrate it through right action and self-remembering.

Final thoughts.

Confidence is a feeling and state that you can generate anytime you need it most. If you’re not sure where to start, ask yourself:

Who am I at my best?

Think back to a time when you felt at your most confident, focused, and powerful. It could have been in school, university, in your twenties, or after a presentation that stood out to you.

·       What were you thinking about?

·       What did you focus on, and how did you speak to yourself?

·       What activities were you doing or avoiding that created this state for you?

·       Did you plan and have more structure in your life?

·       Did you have a goal you were passionate about?

Success leaves clues.

Identify one new action you can bring back today and how you can begin to generate the confidence to show up as your best self whenever you need to.

Warm wishes,

Lori