How to increase your self-confidence: Part 1.

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How to increase your self confidence

If you could buy confidence at Tesco it would probably be constantly sold out not because it is in short supply but because everyone wants more of it.

This blog would have been written at some point anyway but has come about due to the unprecedented results of a poll on my Instagram.

I’m relatively convinced, although I have no proof that self-confidence is made up of all the different things within your life that you feel self-confident about. With the things which you value the most carrying the largest amount of “weight” when it comes to your assessment of your own self-confidence.

If everyone assessed their overall self-confidence based upon their ability to turn on taps, or make a cup of tea then we’d all be laughing our ways to wherever people with high self-confidence go.

But unfortunately we don’t tend to assess ourselves based on the things we’re good at, we tend to base it on what we’ve been told, how we look, other people’s opinions and a whole bunch of other shit.

I say shit because there’s a vast amount of stuff that “self-confidence” is based upon which we have no control over whatsoever which basically makes the “game” rigged against us.

But it’s how to increase your SELF confidence

We are talking about self-confidence, not someone-else-confidence, we can make our own rules up if we want to.

Hell if you want to assess your self-confidence based on your ability to use a teaspoon then there’s no-one stopping you.

SIDE NOTE – I’m not sure what’s with all the tea references but I’m going to have a cup of tea and see if that helps me out.

The point here is that we can make our own rules up when it comes to self-confidence.

I want you to picture for me now someone who is completely self-confident, what are they able to do that you can’t currently do?

Maybe they’re talking in front of a group of people easily.

Perhaps they’re casually talking to members of the opposite sex without issue.

They’re maybe walking differently?

But is that what you’d like “self-confident you” to look like and be able to do? Maybe yes, maybe no – you can decide yourself what self confident you is like.

This blog is designed to give you a huge amount of insight into becoming more self-confident and how to increase your self-confidence in general starting with a really annoying home truth.

1. The self-confidence comes after the act

I want you to think about all the things that you’d say you feel confident doing for yourself. Break it down into the everyday activities that you do.

Seriously, when was the last time your confidence failed you when it came to brushing your teeth? Or dressing yourself? Or Loading the dishwasher?

It’s probably never occurred to you to even think about this to be honest.

Of course I’m confident brushing my teeth, I’ve done it 20,000 times.

EXACTLY.

I’d now like to ask you how many things you feel confident doing that you’ve NEVER done before.

Bull-fighting? Lion-taming? Bungee-jumping? 

I think I’ve probably made my point here.

You earn confidence by repetition of things which you are not confident doing. Whilst this isn’t the only factor that comes becoming self-confident overall it is definitely a big factor.

If you’ve not learnt to drive you hopefully won’t be left out by this example.

I remember when I was learning to drive how terrifying I found roundabouts, how the hell was I supposed to pull away safely at the right time, position myself correctly, and move up into second gear whilst safely navigating the roundabout oh and keeping an eye on all the cars too?

It felt impossible.

I’m sure you have had similar examples of learning to drive or otherwise.

I just had to pop somewhere 10 miles away and navigated roundabouts 6 times without even thinking about it.

Have I taken some in depth training course in driving, roundabouts or confidence?

No. I’ve just driven tens of thousands of miles and been around thousands of roundabouts, there comes a point where you just cease to think about the thing which used to terrify you if you do it enough times. 

I’m VERY aware that that is a really annoying answer but it’s frustratingly true – if you want to get more confident at public speaking then speak in public, swimming then swim, talking to people you fancy then talk to people you fancy.

That’s learning self-confidence in a nut shell, there are however 14 other things that I’ve listed below which you can do to increase your self-confidence too.

2. CBT negative thoughts

One of the key ways in which we can fight back against our own belief that we’re not confident is to become acutely aware of what we’re thinking.

Noticing these thoughts and challenging them is simple yet powerful, the only problem is noticing the thoughts in the first place.

Next time you’re feeling low on confidence stop and ask “what am I saying to myself?” or “what thoughts are going through my head at the moment?”

It can help to write these thoughts down however the most important thing is to gain awareness of the thoughts themselves.

Next we challenge them.

There’s about a million things you can say to challenge a thought here’s a list of things which should prove helpful.

You certainly don’t have to use all of them but there will be certain ones which will resonate with you more than others.

How to be more self-confident thought-challenging questions

“Is this thought something which is making me feel more or less confident?”
“Does what I’m thinking have any evidence to back it up?”
“Would thinking the exact opposite of this be helpful?”
“Would I say something so unkind/unhelpful to a best friend trying to do the same thing as me?”
“How true is what I’m thinking really? As a percentage.”
“Where is this thought getting me?”
“What would a more helpful or constructive thing to think be?”
“Is what I’m thinking an opinion or a fact?”
“Would my friends agree with this thought?”
“Am I imagining a worst case scenario?”
“What is the best case scenario?”
“Realistically what is likely to happen?”
“Realistically what is the worst that could happen?”
“Do I know what other people are thinking?”
“Am I projecting my insecurities into other people’s heads?”
“Am I ignoring some good things which are true as well?”

Once you’ve challenged whatever you’re thinking we then create a “positive cognition”.

This is a happier, healthier and more positive thing that we can say to improve our view of the situation.

Something that helps us increase our belief in what we’re about to do.

You don’t have to believe this positive cognition to say it.

Example

You’re about to give a talk to a group of work colleagues,

The thought that’s going around your head is “I’m going to mess this up, I’m so rubbish at talking in front of people.”

You can challenge this thought by saying 

“Am I projecting my insecurities into other people’s heads?” 

The answer is undoubtedly yes.

“Is what I’m thinking opinion or fact?”

“Definitely opinion” 

“Would I say this to a friend going through the same thing?”

“Absolutely not”

So, what would be a more helpful thing to think in this situation?

How about “I’m going to do my best, I’m trying to get better at talking to people.”

Can you see how that is still true and so much more helpful to the situation?

3. Notice and stop negative self talk

Whilst this is tied into the previous point we’re going to treat this in a slightly different way.

This is very much the idea of simply spotting when your brain is getting into negative self talk and telling yourself to shut the hell up.

But what is negative self-talk?

Well, put simply it’s anytime that annoying, whiney, self-critical voice in your head starts talking.

Basically whenever they open their dirty trap and start trying to yap on about something you tell them to shut up.

If it helps then you can give your self-critic a name, Karen is always a classic but whatever works for.

***

Example

You’re tired after a bad night’s sleep but still manage to get up when your alarm goes off and get yourself into your running gear for a morning run.

2 minutes in and your breathing is not right and you can’t find your form.

Your inner critic says “Hey Chris, this run isn’t going so well, if you turn around now you could be warm and dry within 5 minutes and watch an episode of The Sopranos before work instead, this is going to be a bad run, you’re not going to enjoy it – oh and everyone who sees you is absolutely judging you”

Your response would simply be

“Listen, Tim, I’ve really not got any time for your shit – shut the hell up”

***

You can of course use the Socratic CBT style questioning above but sometimes you just need to tell your brain to STFU and let you get on with things.

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4. Be your future self-confident self

I don’t think I know a single person who doesn’t want to be a little different in some way.

People want to be thinner or taller or more confident or happier or able to say no to cake or something.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with wanting to be a little different to who you are right now as long as it is for the right reasons.

There is one right reason, unless I am mistaken which is as follows.

Because you’re doing it for yourself.

Wanting to be more confident because you want to be more confident is good enough for me.

One of the simplest ways to get your head around being more confident is just to be your future self today.

God that sounds like a shit infomercial tagline.

However it can and does work well to boost your self-confidence.

When you’re in any situation and you’re feeling confident or are struggling to make a decision just stop and ask a simple question.

“What would the future confident version of me do in this situation?”

Whatever your answer, that is what you do.

The real beauty of this is that it makes you become who you want to be but all of it actually still comes from you.

By acting as if you’re a more confident version of yourself you become the more confident version of yourself.

5. BUT recognise you’re human

This needs to be included directly next to the bit about being a perfect/future version of yourself.

You need to also recognise that you’re a human being full of the beautiful range of emotions that actually make you a human.

That means that whatever you do for goodness sake don’t go around comparing yourself to a “perfect/future” version of yourself because that’s a surefire way of making yourself feel pretty crappy.

A future, more confident, version of you might well do something differently but if doing that makes you feel wildly uncomfortable for whatever reason then don’t do it.

What you do instead is whatever your best effort is.

If you’re trying your best to become more self-confident by doing something even 1% better then that’s progress.

And that’s what we want, progress, not perfection.

Treat yourself with kindness and compassion always, especially in any perceived failure.

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