Have you ever known what it’s like to experience low self-confidence? On extreme levels, it can severely affect your sleep, eating habits, and cause major anxiety. Professionally, low self-confidence can cause you to withdraw and disengage from colleagues and can affect your ability to perform menial job tasks. Personally, it can affect your relationships, friendships, and ability or willingness to interact socially.
Many people live daily with some form of low self-confidence. In fact, it’s the most sought after professional or personal development topic that people want to work on. Low self-confidence can play a huge role in people’s day-to-day life, and even the most successful people lack self-confidence at different times in their lives.
Low Self-Confidence Affects Even the Highest Achievers.
If you’re someone who takes big risks, or is curious by nature, it’s normal to lack self-confidence in a new area of study or investment. Perhaps you’re a successful business executive launching a new business. Maybe you’re a recently promoted manager, or a recent university graduate. In these cases, you may be lacking self-confidence because you lack the experience, or the skills required for the job. Maybe you experienced a poor sales quarter at work, or maybe you were passed over for a job promotion. This can create self-doubt in your ability to perform at work.
Where Does Self-Confidence Come From?
Before we discuss some effective ways to increase your self-confidence, it’s important to understand what self-confidence is and where it comes from. Self-confidence is a state of mind where an individual has belief and self-assurance in themselves to perform a task, role, or manage a particular situation. While some people appear to be born with self-confidence, it really isn’t the case. Self-confidence originates from our experiences and what we’ve been taught.
Many people have lost self-confidence quickly because they’ve suffered through a difficult experience, traumatic event, or received negative feedback in their personal or professional life.
You Can Increase Your Self-Confidence.
The good news is that if you are lacking confidence there are ways to regain it, and in some cases, become even more confident than you were before. Preparation and planning are keys to developing and improving your self-confidence. If you’re in a a situation you’re uncomfortable with or have never experienced, try to envision how it may unfold and proactively plan for how you manage it. Document, prepare, and practice it to remove any potential anxiety. Preparation and repetition creates a comfort and understanding of how to handle any situation.
Here are three additional steps you can take to increase your self-confidence:
1. Do What You Love – Creating time and space in your life to enjoy the things you love to do will bring you joy and self-care. Happiness strengthens your mindset and enables you to bring clarity and focus to building your self-confidence.
2. Exercise - Exercise releases hormones that can reduce stress, increase happiness, and stimulate brain cell growth. It can also make you feel better about yourself mentally, spiritually, and physically.
3. Work with a Professional Coach – Working with a coach can be extremely effective towards helping you increase your self-confidence. They can help you create a vision of self-confidence and create actionable steps to achieve it. A professional coach is a trusted guide who will support you, keep you focused, and can monitor your progress.
What Are The Benefits Of Having Self-Confidence?
There are many benefits to having self-confidence. When you’re self-confident, you perform at your best when it matters the most. You can influence others more readily. Self-confidence can increase your personal and professional drive. Self-confidence can increase your happiness and reduce social anxiety.
When you invest time and work into your professional and personal development, you can become the most self-confident version of you.
To learn more about how professional coaching can increase your confidence or schedule a free 20-minute consultation, click here.