The Secret To Confidence Unraveled

In my last articled titled Confidence Vs Experience I briefly touched on some aspects about confidence and I thought I would take that avenue and explore it further, to give you some methods of creating bags of confidence, that you can carry with you wherever you go and use for whatever you wish.

I’m not an expert in this area, but I do have some ideas on how I feel titanium like confidence can be forged so I will be putting these into practise for myself. I’ll be explaining some of the EDTA’s (Essential Daily Thoughts & Actions) that I will also be employing on a day to day basis to make me more confident in all area’s of my life. It’s important to remember that confidence and arrogance are two totally separate traits. They cannot be exhibited at the same time. Arrogance is not confidence and confidence is not arrogance.

So why does it seem like some people are born with confidence and others are as timid as kittens?

Let me use the example of a guy who I see as having all the confidence in the world when it comes to approaching women and talking to them. Lets call this person guy A. Then there’s the other type of guy who gets sweaty palms, they start stammering and totally turn the whole thing into a dogs dinner! We’ll call this guy B.

What is the difference between these two types of guys? Did A inherit his super confidence from his parents? Did he go on a course? Was he blessed with this talent from God? Was he born with it? Is it part of his genes? Did guy B miss out on the confidence gene? Was it because of a bad past experience? Was it because his parents were unconfident and he learned from them? I’m sure that all of these factors have had an impact although to a minisucle degree! But it’s very simple, it’s their psychology!! It’s what they’re thinking in the moments before they actually take action and approach the beautiful lady across the room that makes the difference between A and B going home with that girl or going home alone.

I guarantee that guy A tries and fails a hundred times more than guy B but the way that guy A and B interpret the information from those failures is completely different. Guy A will take that failure, figure out what worked and what didn’t work and use those learnings for the next time. Whereas guy B, the perfectionist who expects way too much of himself, wasn’t successful, feels that he is a failure in that area of life and decides that he’s no good at approaching women and decides feels that any future attempts will be futile.

Confidence is inner belief manifested through action. You may have already noticed that whatever you are thinking when undertaking any task it going to have a huge impact on the outcome of a task. For example: When I play badminton, I’ve often noticed that if I’m winning a game, I have trouble in converting those points into an actual win and closing out the match. Why? Because near the end of the game I start worrying about what mistakes I might make. It is me, thinking about all the mistakes I could possibly make and then doing exactly that.

Before I go any further, let me ask you, are you truly commited to changing your old ways and converting it into the confidence of a stallion? You must understand it takes work, it takes commitment but the changes and rewards will be well worth it if you choose to put in the time.

From here on out I’m assuming that you are 100% commited to being more confident and will follow these steps to go through the process of change

Step 1 – Be honest!

In my example earlier I talked about some of the challenges guys face when approaching women. That’s one of many examples but the principles to apply are exactly the same. So firstly what areas of your life would you like to gain greater confidence in? I’m going to be completely honest here and tell you my three….i always pretend to be more confident than I am but here are my three:

1) I want to be more confident in approaching women
2) I want to be more confident in my skills, more specifically, badminton, but in one or two additional areas
3) I want to be more confident in my skills and abilities to produce results as a Life Coach

So go on, what are your 3?

Step 2 – Notice the patterns

As with every shift in mindset you must first start to notice the patterns of your own thinking. Remember that your habitual way of thinking is unconsciously determining the outcome of many aspects of your life. Take one of your three above and look closely at the way you think. If you cannot see where your thinking is letting you down perhaps get a close friend to look at this with you. Write down the dialougue of your thought pattern. What words are you saying to yourself, what pictures are you seeing? What sounds are you hearing? What are you feeling? Take special care not to pollute this what you would like to have in your mind or be feeling. We’ll get to that part later, for now, as honestly as possible, make notes on those points.

Step 3 – Interrupt the patterns

Once you become aware of your patterns the next step becomes easy! Lets say for example, that you’re not very confident around other people and that you often put yourself down. You now have a much clearer understanding of what it is that’s causing your behaviour. You have it right in front of you the patterns of destruction that you’ve been doing so often that have led you to think that you’re not worthy or don’t have as much as everyone else to offer. Now that you know, it’s time to change it. As soon as you notice yourself doing it, you’re going to change it. You’re going to change it not by fighting it and trying to install a new pattern of thinking. You’re going to Interrupt it by thinking of something that makes you feel good. In my case, I’m going to think of the James Brown Song: “I Feel Good.” I’m litereally gonna sing that song in my head and imagine myself doing some James Brown style funky moves! I’m going to keep doing this enough until I’ve interrupted the old pattern enough that I just can do that pattern of thinking anymore, I automatically begin to think of James Brown instead.

Step 4 – Install the new pattern

This is where it can vary slightly from situation to situation but again the underlying principle is the same. Just a few minutes a day is all this takes and this step will transform your results for the rest of your life. Create some time to sit and visualise the perfect scenario. Wipe clean that slate of images of failure that you may have created in the past and start making the internal visual rehersals of the ideal outcome that you want for any given situation. Imagine yourself making all the right moves, say all the right things, have the perfect body language, oozing with confidence at every step. When you do this on a regular basis you’ll find you’ll automatically begin to do these things when the situation arises. These rehersals will automatically repattern you into doing the things that you feel represent the ideal outcomes and results for any given situation.

If in the past you used to create small faded images of having a drink thrown over you by a woman, then instead create large bright images of the woman being completely interested in what you’re saying and laughing at your jokes! Your imagination is the limit!

Step 5 – Do your homework!

Whatever area you want to boost your confidence in, do your homework! Research those who are the masters of their trade! If you want to become more funny and be more confident in telling your jokes, then study the master comedians and have some material always in your mind that you can draw from to make people laugh! 😆

In Summary

I will be putting this actions into practise myself and so I will be working with you on this all the way. If you want any help with this, feel free to leave me a comment or just email me on amit@unlimitedchoice.org and I’ll assist you with in anyway that I can. 😉