You’re reading How I Got My Self-Confidence Back – 5 Habits For Your Daily Routine, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
I noticed it first when I was 14. I let it go. I put it down to being young.
I had to give a short presentation at the school assembly. I didn’t volunteer; my name was picked out of a hat. I’ve never forgotten how I felt when my name was called out.
I had a week to worry about it. I got so anxious that I made myself physically sick. I was terrified.
In my head I started to make up ridiculous excuses to get out of it. I thought of nothing else all week.
Self-doubt set in big time. What if I embarrassed myself in front of the whole school? All my friends would laugh at me. My negative mindset spiralled out of control.
The day came … and guess what. I didn’t get to give my presentation. There was a fire drill during the assembly. I spent the rest of the day on Cloud 9. I was so chuffed that I’d avoided stepping out of my comfort zone.
Some people spend their whole life avoiding situations they find challenging.
In fact that’s exactly what I tried to do. I spent the next few years ‘lying low.’ That suited me just fine.
But when I was 18, situations arose that I just couldn’t avoid.
Career choices loomed which meant interviews. Meeting new people. It meant change.
My lack of self-confidence really began to have an impact. It started to affect life-changing decisions I needed to make. This time it really mattered. It shaped my life.
I made an important career decision to join the army. I failed the assessment course. They told me I lacked self-confidence.
This experience really knocked me for six. I began to question myself continually. I ended up missing opportunities and I got left behind.
So, what happened? Three years later, I reapplied to join the army. This time I got accepted. I passed.
All this happened 30 years ago but I still remember the thoughts and feelings I experienced.
So what did I do to get my self-confidence back?
Never drop your guard. Always be extra aware of how you look and sound whenever you’re in a situation where you need to show self-confidence.
Once you know how you come across you’re in a position to change things.
Knowing how you come across to people means seeing how you look from their viewpoint. That’s obvious, I know. But so many people forget how important it is. You just can’t afford to distract people if you want to be seen as confident.
Route to achievement: Ask people you know well how you come across physically when you’re talking to them. Be prepared to accept the truth.
Try filming yourself when you’re talking too. Keep on top of any distracting habits you discover. Be super alert to how people are reacting to you when you’re talking. If they’re not listening to you, there must be a reason.
Try experimenting; tweak your body language, change the tone of your voice, be more facially expressive – try something different to help you communicate self-confidence and authority.
Know whenever the ‘gremlin’ tries to stop you doing something you know is right for you. Self-confidence is as much about your mind accepting a challenge positively as it is about actually physically carrying out the challenge.
Route to achievement: Work out if you’re a pessimist or optimist; do you complain a lot, do you spend time with negative people, do you always feel hard-done-by, do you feel unlucky, do you smile much? Answering questions like these will help.
Banish the negative voice in your head the minute you hear it. Stop it being your own worst enemy and making self-confidence harder than it needs to be. Accept that things won’t always go to plan.
Sometimes you will trip up or fail. This happens to ‘confident’ people too. The key is to force yourself to see the positive in everything; even failure. Failure can be positive if you learn from it. See it as an experience worth having. It prepares you better for the next experience.
Start trying to project positivity through your expression and voice. Talking positively helps you to maintain a positive mindset. Make a conscious effort, particularly when the chips are down.
Don’t wait for people to present you with ‘opportunities’ to practice being confident. They may not come regularly enough. They may not even come at all. You will lose momentum.
Route to achievement: Force yourself to overcome a confidence challenge every day. Even a small action is better than no action; it must be something you fear or find challenging though. Link this to Habit #4 – planning ahead will be vital.
Think about how you want to be seen by others during your daily challenge; be clear about the outcome you want. Visualise beforehand; see yourself in the act of successfully achieving the challenge.
Remind yourself of what you’ll need to do to succeed. Have the self-confidence to adapt your approach if the challenge isn’t going as you planned. Stay true to yourself but get clever about how you get what you need and want. Use your initiative. This forces you to keep practising being confident.
Never leave your thoughts as just ‘thoughts’. If you do they will get replaced by other thoughts. Learn from past experiences but never dwell.
Route to achievement: Look forward and plan ahead. Reflect regularly on what you want to achieve at work and in your personal life. Do not let one stifle the other.
Convert thoughts into ‘Plans’ by writing them down. When it’s in writing it’s likely to happen. You’ll find this more motivational too.
Your written plans need goals; these should be credible aspirations that are clear and manageable, yet challenging too. If your goals are sizeable, break them down into small steps you can accomplish one at a time.
Try linking this to Habit #3. Address your goals on a daily basis and create tasks from them that challenge your self-confidence. Be sure to measure your goals and monitor your progress.
Don’t panic if a goal isn’t accomplished. Re-appraise the situation, work out what happened, learn from it and change the goal. Be positive; perhaps the new goal will lead to even greater success!
Get real with yourself. Believe and accept that you’re not the only one. Stop comparing yourself to people you think are more confident than you. Even people who ‘appear’ to be confident find their self-confidence being challenged, maybe even dipping in certain situations.
Route to achievement: Look at confident people in a different light. See them as human, just like you. No one has a natural gift. The fact that they look and sound confident doesn’t mean they’re naturally confident.
From now on, when you’re watching or listening to a confident person, be aware that they are trying to be confident. Most confident people have to do this. They’ve worked out what they need to do physically to project self-confidence.
If they can do it, you can do it. Replace ‘comparing’ yourself to them with ‘learning’ from them and perhaps even copying them if you find them impressive.
Continually remind yourself that self-confidence is a skill everyone can learn. So comparing yourself to others and doubting your abilities as a result makes no sense at all.
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Mike McClement, Founder Think Confidence, Self-confidence Author and Coach. Passionate about helping people achieve their potential and enjoy life to the full. Creator of the 4 Step online Confidence Plan.
You’ve read How I Got My Self-Confidence Back – 5 Habits For Your Daily Routine, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Description from The Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art: The first of a developing programme at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art of exhibitions talks and events dedicated to contemporary architecture, ‘Raw Material’ presents plans, sketches, correspondence and photographs that offer a fuller understanding of the process of architectural design, beyond the self-sufficiency of the realized project. This will be the first exhibition to draw upon the recent gift to the Fundação de Serralves of 40 projects from the archive of Álvaro Siza as part of a collaboration between Fundação de Serralves, the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal and Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon.
Álvaro Siza’s practice is distinguished by his use of drawing as a working instrument in the prefiguration of forms and spaces within the process that brings him successively closer to the desired result. But an archive is more than just a set of drawings. The architect’s correspondence with his clients, the photographic record of the places where the works are to be built, relations with regulatory authorities and the opinions of the multiple actors involved in the construction processes, the models that support the perception of the proposals, the minutes of meetings and reports of the tensions arising at the building sites are documents that record an infinite number of episodes that remain invisible in the finished work. Offering insight into their contingent processes, the exhibition also offers invaluable understanding of the processes associated with the inventory, classification, and conservation of Siza’s archive, which will serve as a focus for future research and discussion about the role of architecture in contemporary society.
Raw Material: A View of the Archive of Álvaro Siza is organized by the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto and is curated by architect André Tavares.
About Álvaro Siza
Álvaro Joaquim Melo Siza Vieira was born in Matosinhos (Portugal), in 25 June 1933 and he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1992. From 1949-55 he studied at the School of Architecture, University of Porto, where Fernando Távora was his teacher. His first built project, Quatro Casas in Matosinhos, was completed in 1954. Siza was a professor in the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, the city in which he continues to have his architecture practice. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science; Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects; of BDA/Bund Deutscher Architekten; AIA/American Institute of Architects; Académie d’Architecture de France and European Academy of Sciences and Arts; Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts; IAA/International Academy of Architecture; Honorary Member of the Portuguese Architects; American Academy of Arts and Letters.
About the curator André Tavares
Since 2006, architect André Tavares has been the editor of Dafne Editora, using publishing as a form of cultural and architectural practice. He was editor-in-chief of the magazine Jornal dos Arquitectos (2013-15) and is currently curator, together with Diogo Seixas Lopes, of the 4th Lisbon Architecture Triennale, ‘The Form of Form’. He holds a doctorate from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, where in 2009 he completed his dissertation on the presence of reinforced concrete in architects’ design strategies in the early 20th century. Resulting from his research in Mendrisio, Paris and São Paulo, he has published several books addressing the international circulation of knowledge among Portuguese-speaking architects, including ‘Arquitectura Antituberculose’ (FAUP-publicações, 2005), ‘Os Fantasmas de Serralves’ (Dafne, 2007), ‘Novela Bufa do Ufanismo em Concreto’ (Dafne, 2009) and ‘Duas Obras de Januário Godinho’ (Dafne, 2012). His lastest book, ‘The Anatomy of the Architectural Books’ (Lars Müller/Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2016), addresses the crossovers between book culture and building culture. In 2015 he curated the exhibition ‘Serralves Villa: ‘The Client as Architect’ at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art.
Good-looking food doesn’t necessarily taste better, but if you’re of the opinion that we eat with our eyes first, you probably appreciate a beautiful plate. Epicurious suggests an incredibly easy way to make your dishes look more appealing: use a peeler.
Sig Nordal 