3 Hours To Greater Career Confidence

After working with more than 5,000 professionals on their careers, if I had to give the primary reason a person feels stuck in their ability to achieve their goals, it would be lack of confidence.

Crisis Of Confidence Is A Career Killer

Without confidence, you cannot push yourself to go after your dreams. Fear of failure is usually the root cause of a crisis of confidence. But, where does this come from. And, more importantly, how do you get rid of it? In my experience, it requires a conscious and consistent commitment to eradicating the fear. You must go 'all-in' on overcoming your crisis of confidence. If you don't fight back, and keep fighting back, the negative self talk (NST) will dominate and hold you back from pursuing your goals. It will even go so far as to sabotage your efforts so you stay permanently stuck in crisis mode.

3 Hours Over 21 Days = Increase Your Career Confidence

A couple of years ago, I realized a lot of the people I was working with needed a more systematic way to improve their career confidence. A book wouldn't do the trick. A webinar or a pep talk wouldn't work either. They needed a simple daily process that could help them form new ways of thinking, crushing their NST, so they could increase their confidence and go after their career goals. So, I built out a 21-day challenge as follows:

1) 10 minutes a day Monday-Friday, participants completed an exercise designed to help them disrupt their mindset with respect to their fears and re-direct their thinking towards their abilities to succeed.

2) On Saturdays and Sundays, I gave them a 5 minute/day exercise designed to keep the positive thoughts strong.

3) Their total time invested in the program equaled 60 minutes/week, a total of 3 hours over 21 days.

Why Did I Break Up The Training?

Some people wondered why I didn't just do a half-day training session to deliver this course. In my 15+ years experience as a career coach, I've learned the power of building your confidence is in the habit-forming techniques derived from daily ritual. Instead of overwhelming the participants' brains only to have them fall right back in to crisis mode, the process enabled them to concentrate on the subject of confidence each day in a manageable way. I also made them look forward to each day's challenge so they could build their confidence naturally. Studies show it takes about seventeen days to form a new habit. By building this course over small daily increments for three weeks, I was able to empower the participants to form new habits around how to build up their own confidence.

Did It Work?

After the first batch of participants when through the course, I surveyed them in a group session to see how many felt more confident. Those that had completed the program said they felt better about themselves. Specifically, they stopped being so hard on themselves and focused on the excitement of taking calculated risks to reach their goals. In short, they were more willing to step out of their comfort zone to go after what they wanted.

What Would YOU Do If You Weren't So Afraid?

The famous hockey player, Wayne Gretzky said, "We miss 100% of the shots we don't take." He's right. But, without confidence, you're still likely to fail to take that shot in your career. If that sounds like you, then I encourage you to find something to help you condition yourself to have more confidence. It really is the only thing holding you back from pursuing your dreams.

P.S. - If you read this entire post, I want to reward you. My '21-Day Career Confidence Challenge' is available HERE. And, if you use the discount code LINKEDIN20 - you'll save 20%. Come join me and get started on your journey to more career confidence. I'd love to help you!