Why do you lack confidence? There are various reasons as to why people will lack confidence in themselves. This can be in relation to personal, academic, working or physical components of life. In order to be able to develop your own confidence it is important to understand WHY you feel low. The ability to feel confident will increase your spirits and self belief to achieve and excel in life. Through doing a self evaluation over your current situation you will be able to address where you can build your confidence. Through doing this exercise it will enable you to draw upon current experiences that can diminish your confidence and reflect upon skills that can develop your confidence. For example, you can develop your confidence in public speaking through communicating with others and presenting to large groups.
Acceptance for growth: Due to the nature of life there will be periods of time that will require you to be more confident. For example, when it comes to interviews. In an interview you naturally have to show that you are suitable for the role advertised, as well as show your potential. It can be obvious when you lack confidence through fidgeting, looking around constantly, playing with your hands. In order to help work on being more confident in interviews you should think about the strengths and skills that you can offer. Through being clear in your answers and drawing upon real life examples, it will enable you to show the interviewer you are suitable for the role despite not being 100% confident.
How to develop confidence? There are many ways to develop your confidence, this article will just list a few methods and ways. At times you may need to try out different techniques and methods as they will not always be suitable for you. In order to be confident you should be comfortable in delivery, despite the situation being uncomfortable as it is new, it is important that you can still showcase yourself in a clear manner. When you want to build upon a specific skill you can learn it through online resources, practising real life tests applying the skill, or understanding the basics around the skill. For example, if you wanted to improve your advocacy / mooting skills you should begin by understanding the structure of the courtroom. Depending on the type of court and judge you will address the bench differently. After, you may want to think about what advocacy talks work best for you, I have found attending court in my free time has enabled me to understand what suits me best. You can put all this to the test by practising skeleton arguments and arguments in competitions or alone.
Feedback
Listening to others: There are various ways to listen to others and take on board feedback. Usually one will offer both positive and constructive advice for you to improve. It is important to take on board both the positive and 'negative' feedback received. Why? Through understanding how you have been successful you can be certain that you can reuse the technique that you had currently used. It worked and does not need further adaptation towards. This can build your confidence through knowing what works well for yourself and being appreciated /noticed of your success. However, when you receive feedback for improvement this is how you can begin to build your confidence. You can think of ways to develop the improvement areas outlined and create a strategy to create these improvements into strengths. The more specific that the feedback is the easier it is to enable you to work on that improvement. It is important not to take the feedback personal, but you should be accepting of your flaws. For example, you may be asked to develop a more specific skill for a role as it is required. As mentioned in the last post through browsing online or practising the skill will enable you to develop this.
Self criticism: It is important to assess your own self and positively critique yourself. In doing this exercise you will be able to recognise your strengths and weaknesses. It is important that you are able to see for yourself how to improve as you may not always receive feedback. Through assessing yourself in situations you will be able to improve on your weaknesses. When it comes to written or in person interviews you can make note of skills that you think you used in the interview but also think about how you have answered questions. When reflecting on the questions asked did you give sufficient examples, elaboration of skills and depth in response? If you feel that you have not quite answered the questions as fully as you would have liked you can brainstorm and practice answers.
Creating an action plan: When you receive feedback it is always important and useful to do something with that information. It is useful if you create a table of positive and improving comments, identified with examples that have been used and how you can be even better in the next opportunity. Even with the positive comments there is always a chance for you to better the response you initially have given. It is key to remember that you will constantly adapt your responses due to being exposed to more experiences and examples. The more up to date you are in your responses the more you will remember to talk about in depth.
Looking at emotions with curious thoughts rather than judgement
Understanding yourself: The most important question to ask yourself for reflection is WHY do you FEEL this way? When understanding this question it will enable you to explore your thoughts. You can create boundaries for yourself through figuring out what thoughts will help you to reach your ultimate goals. The transition of the mind is important to create something that will help you to exceed your original expectations. Through understanding yourself you can ensure that others around you will respect your boundaries set for yourself. In recognising this you are able to build your confidence. How? You know what your limits and triggers are, how you can develop meaningful conversations and relations, and how your mind can benefit you. When you take control of your mind you have the ability to control the pressure you receive (knowingly or unnoticed).
Living for each experience: In order to properly experience your own thoughts you need to accept everything for what it is. When you are going through something see it as a lesson, either in a positive or negative perspective. When it is a positive experience you can look at what makes it beneficial for you, and being able to learn from the experience. You can speak about your experience to others which can be encouraging to both yourself and others, it can be inspiring to learn from others and understanding what you have gone through.
Consequences of judging: When you judge yourself you are adding an immense amount of pressure onto yourself that you do not need. It is hard and negative. Instead of making you confident in yourself it will diminish your thoughts and capabilities. It is important to learn from your mistakes, experiences and relations with other people, but not to dwell on the negatives. In order to progress in life you must be open to the positive and negative experiences that you will endure. Therefore, instead of judging yourself you need to reflect on your experiences. It will be more beneficial for you to assess your emotions, thoughts and experiences in a neutral light. When you adopt this approach you will challenge the self-doubt and inflicted thoughts, and start to build a confident inner and outer body.
We are not our thoughts
Intrusive thoughts: Unfortunately at some point everyones mind will be uncomfortably invaded with intrusive thoughts. What is it? "Unwanted, turning and distracting thoughts". When it comes to being open about what is on our minds and constantly being mentally challenged it is not really spoken about (especially in the educational and employment arena). So let's deal with these three factors of mindset in turn. Firstly, the unwanted thoughts come when you don't expect nor want them. It is unpredictable and can be damaging. When you become thrown off guard from your own thoughts you can become to lose focus on your goals and priorities. It is natural but again damaging. Losing focus at any point can be fixable if you create a strategy to reorganise your thoughts and regain focus. The most important thing to do is ensure that you know that the feelings and thoughts are temporary. You need to train your mind to believe and know that down days are essential in order to progress. Secondly, turning thoughts usually appear due to a change in events or triggering events. Again, this may be unpredictable and you find yourself overloaded with thoughts in one sitting. Or sometimes you can find yourself beginning to overthink and question the norms. In the latter instance you can begin to challenge what you think is harmful thoughts into a learning experience. It will enable you to figure out what your triggers are, shadowing your traumas and thinking deeply about what should be a positive trail of thoughts. A great way to keep on track of how your thoughts keep becoming triggered or unawarely blindsiding you is journalling. Some prompts for discussion: what is currently on your mind? Do not expect perfection on this journey as you will struggle and exceed your expectations, embrace this journey for what it is. Finally, distracting thoughts can be one of the most challenging type of thoughts to combat because you are losing sight of your starting reason. It can give you a hard time to trying to regain focus on your journey as well as understanding how you can combat this negativity. You should accept that these thoughts are inevitable but think of the reasons to why these thoughts are here. Communication with yourself is vital during these processes because you have to be brutally honest with yourself. In order to eliminate these thoughts and questioning your inner-self you need to see how you can improve. A helpful way to think about eliminating the distraction is think about the current moment and the future you want to create. Thinking about the future can help you to regain focus as you will begin to rethink about your prime focuses in life and what you want to achieve long term. You can then begin to think about setting yourself targets and goals to accomplish in order to reach the ultimate goal. The more you break down what you want to accomplish the more likely you are to succeed. Again, you will only benefit from this advice through being honest with yourself and eventually (time has no target) you will begin to see progress in yourself and your confidence.
Developing a positive mindset: In order to be confident you should aim to build a positive (yet realistic) mindset. This will help with you figuring out what makes you happy, comfortable and successful. It is not an easy process, it requires you to sit and think about yourself when you are in low situations, but it also about reflecting on the growth you have made. It is important that you are honest, it is the only way that you can progress and move on from things that you thought that you could not initially do. When you are reflecting upon the journey in weeks and months to come you can think about the reason why you have started this healing. What do you want to achieve? How will you achieve this goal? What skills and personal development do you want to endulge into? Thinking more deeply into the mindset you want to create will shift the negative thoughts and undermining self beliefs. In order to build your confidence and self worth you need to be realistic. When thinking about your reasons for self development and beginning this journey you should create a project for yourself that you can meet targets. You do not want to be dishearten to think that you are unable to meet deadlines or goals because you are incapable. It is not that you are incapable, it is likely that you have overstretched yourself into achieving something too quickly. Therefore, it is important to break down your goals to a minimum, how small of a step it may seem it will make you feel you are slowly achieving your goals. The purpose of developing this positive mindset is to ensure that you feel confident in your steps and actions. It is important that you have self belief and self love for yourself to accomplish what others may seem as outreach for you. It is a chance to prove to yourself that you are more than capable, determined and able to achieve what others may undermine you for. But it is also important that you are doing this for yourself, you will feel more fulfilled when you STOP comparing yourself to others.
Creating habits for a peaceful mind: Rather than focusing on why you can benefit from building this peaceful mind start to think about HOW you will build it. It is important that you put the knowledge and self awareness into action so that you are actually making a change. Being more present in your thoughts are important to ensure that you build a peaceful mind. Through meditation and journalling techniques you are able to think more deeply about what your mind is telling you. Sometimes you will crave nothing but silence, whereas other times it can be like an overloaded clockwork. It is helpful to have someone or something to express these thoughts and emotions towards. Not everyone will find therapy useful, and will want to do this journey on their own, therefore there are a lot of exercises and resources that can be personalised for yourself. Eventually you will figure out what methods will work best for you and what will make you feel more comfortable. It is not a journey that can be rushed nor accomplished in a certain time period. Therefore, it is important to figure out your own steps to reach your goals as it will be different for everyone. The more you think about yourself in these circumstances the more likely you will be to achieve a mind of peace.
Building self-esteem
Acquire from experience: When you begin to build upon your experience you will naturally grow your confidence. Through seeing those with expertise or knowledge in a field you want to break into you will become inspired. Not everyone will be a role model to you, but you will be able to see what skills and thought patterns can be used to influence yourself. It is also great to surround yourself with people who you want to be like in the future, see each opportunity as your future employees so it is always important to give a good first impression, and seeing the day to day patterns of those in the industry. It is competitive to get experience in any industry, in many circumstances you will be required to take some sort of test where you will be competing against other individuals. Now I say individuals rather than like-minded or connected individuals because you just never know. People have career changes, breaks in employment and breaking back into the industry or just have a genuine passion for that area. You never know who you will be up against, therefore comparing yourself to someone who has a different skillset and experience will only diminish your confidence. This is why the action plan is important for you to sit and think about when you have time, it will show your potential as well as what you have already excelled in. The more honest you are in figuring your own skillset and experience out the more likely you will succeed in accomplishing more.
Evaluation from yourself: Throughout this article I have highlighted a lot upon self critiquing and figuring out yourself. It is important. The balance of not being too harsh upon yourself but also too relaxed is also a very fine line. The easiest way to achieve balance is through being honest with yourself, when you know you can do better acknowledge that. One step further think about why you didn't do better the first time round, and upon the second time how you will prove the improvement. The more you get real with yourself the more inner confidence you will build. Many people have an outer surface of confidence that can result in low moods and feelings in the inner core. The more important approach is to achieve an established confident inner-self where you are happy with yourself, your actions and your progression. You can only measure your success by your own actions and efforts, and this is why it is vital to not compare yourself to others. Each individual has their own experience and story to tell, the more understanding you gain about your own story the more confident you will be to retell it.
Achievements: Everyone will thrive off achievements and appraisals in their life. It is part of human nature. Simply it shows your capability, work efforts and interests. Achievements make you an interesting person to employers, it is a way to set yourself apart from other candidates and showcase your talents. In conversation you can draw upon skills developed, tasks accomplished and lessons learnt. Just because you have achieved something does not mean that you have had an easy journey to accomplish it. An important way to show character and personal development is to address the flaws and struggles that it has taken to achieve that accomplishment. Everyone will want to hear the success stories but not the long hours and sleepless nights invested. Many will say that success is defined by hard work, but not many will show how they have got to that. Even if you do not want to personally tell everyone about what you have gone through to get to this stage you owe it to yourself. You may be thinking as to why you owe it to yourself? Well it is simple, if you can reward yourself for the achievement made, you can reward yourself for the journey getting there. Many will not take breaks and reflect on their journey as they are trying to reach a goal as you can be so tunnel visioned, however, it is only upon completion that you will realise you are hard on yourself. These open thoughts and conversations with yourself will build your confidence and self belief, and eventually it will come natural to you.
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