Building confidence by earning confidence

It’s been said that your business’ earning potential is directly related to how confident you feel. There are plenty of tips around these days on how to feel instantly confident but I’d like to suggest a more robust approach to building confidence.

When people tell me that they don’t feel confident, I’ll ask the rather blunt question ‘what have you done to feel confident about?’

It’s true you can, to an extent, re-direct your thinking to convince yourself that you’re confident. But often people focus on quick fixes like this, rather than focusing on the fact you have to earn confidence.

You have to invest in actions which assist you in earning confidence. If you don’t feel confident in any particular area of your business, perhaps you haven’t done all that much to feel that confident about!

So the remedy for building confidence? Get out there and spend time earning confidence! Move away from your comfort zone and expand it by doing something new. Recognise the fact people who excel in this particular area also once started where you are now, they just took the right actions to build their confidence.

A dictionary definition of confidence reads, ‘belief in oneself and one's powers or abilities’. Picking up on the word ‘belief’ here, you may be familiar with one of my favourite quotes by Henry Ford:

“Whether you believe you can or whether you believe you can’t, you’re probably right.”

I’d give that some thought. In my life and my work, it’s proven time and again to be the case.

In my experience, you need to learn to make an honest assessment of your confidence levels. Whenever I approach a challenge, I test my belief in my own success by asking, ‘how certain am I on a scale of one to ten that I will succeed in this?’ or ‘how strongly do I believe that I can do this?’. Once I’ve established this, I have something useful to work with.

Unfortunately, many people seem to follow the mindless ‘you can do it! You can do it!’ approach for building confidence whereby they try to overpower any thought that suggests otherwise. The problem is, you can say those words but not believe them. Unless you truly believe that you can, you won’t succeed. Our deeper feelings tend to overpower surface level thoughts. It’s these that we need to work with.

Once I’ve assessed myself on a one to ten confidence scale, if it’s anything but a ten, I work on building confidence by increasing this feeling of belief or certainty. How? I open a new ‘confidence bank account’ and start depositing my savings in it. I look for evidence that supports my belief that I can succeed. I think back through my life for anything I did well that might suggest that I can succeed in this new situation.

Part of the problem when people don’t feel confident is that the evidence is there, but they just don’t notice it. You’ve got to look for it. And if you can’t find it, create it.

Once I have increased the feeling of certainty that I can do it, I increase it further by planning thoroughly for what’s ahead. Planning well increases your levels of certainty and confidence.

Of course you must schedule opportunities to grow your confidence in comfortable steps that give you a high level of certainty that you’ll succeed. Move out of your comfort zone gradually, pushing the boundaries whilst keeping your confidence high. As you perform well, you’ll make more deposits in your confidence account and in time the confidence you have earned in this area will give you the courage to go forth and confront what were areas of weakness!

Mark Moore is the Director of Excelerated Performance International. He helps people to close the skills and knowledge gaps that they face, much faster, and manage themselves more effectively in order to achieve their business goals.

6 comments | Add your own

This article contains a vitally important message for all soloists - our confidence (expressed as a humble, yet firm self-belief) is our most valuable business asset. It determines our attitude, our work ethic and, I believe, is a major influence on our health. Great work, Mark and a message we all need to remember! Grant Hyman from Sydney | Read my articles
For the question “what have you done to feel confident about?” I would say, over 20 years of experience of my field.
I believe we need to be confident to the job we do on a daily basis, to go out and find clients, to make cold calls, try to sell our services, etc. We all have our self - doubt moment which prevents us being overconfident. Judit Nagy www.theofficewitch.com.au from Sydney
I think this article is the most important thing I have read all day. Being a person who constantly thinks the good things I've done are easy and the things that other people have done are often better than mine - I am often discounting my abilities by comparing myself with other more "experienced" designers.
I think this article makes sense too when you're trying to achieve ANY goals - even if you dont' know what they are yet - having confidence and growing it slowly, taking notice of the great things you've done and giving yourself the credit you deserve could definately be a way for me to live my best life and gain more success personally and in business.
I really want to remember this one. THANK YOU! Olivia from Cairns
Great article Mark. I really like the idea of a confidence bank. Even after 10 years of business practice I still go through periods where I doubt my abilities. It is easy to forget, not see, or downplay what I have achieved. Thanks for the wakeup call! Zern Liew from Sydney | Read my articles
Thanks Mark. I learned the 5 P's.
Perfect
Preperation
Prevents
Poor
Performance
I also believe that even though we have solo businesses that doing things For ourselves doesn't mean we have to doing them BY ourselves. Getting help could be coaching, mentoring or just talking with friends. I believe encouraging others or being encouraged is a great way to build confidence. Just ask any child.
"I help people work from home for profit"
www.homeprofits.isagenix.com James.Ising@aanet.com.au www.homeprofits.isagenix.com from Darwin
This is a great article Mark, thanks. I remember this to help keep my confidence up "Always Stay Open for Business" - similar to being outside the comfort zone - never say no to an opportunity, turn it around and give it a try, you may surprise yourself. I had started set up and within a week I had a client - pure luck, but I wasn't knocking it back and it did wonders for enthusing me to get on with more marketing! Marie Chandler, Office Support Online from Brisbane, Queensland,+Australia

6 comments | Add your own

Add Your comments

Preview comment

Name

Website *

Town / city and country

Email (never sold, displayed or given away)

* This will link your name to your site. So please avoid self promotion elsewhere! We delete spam, disrespectful or off-topic comments.