Confidence comes from actions not feelings.

As someone who deals in confidence, I can tell you that everyone is looking for the holy grail of how to get it. Search engine queries on ‘how to feel more confident’ are at an all-time high right now. We seek the feeling of certainty, the feeling of self-assurance. We want to get rid of the self-doubt and the anxiety. We want to feel more positive and in control.

?It’s no surprise that some of the most popular internet articles on confidence are the ones that promise sky high confidence in the time it takes you to brush your teeth. ‘How to build your confidence with this 1 simple trick’ they tell us or ‘5 ways you can increase your confidence right now!’.

?We are so often seeking the feeling of confidence, the feeling of certainty, that we forget that the key to confidence is through action. I repeatedly and consistently say to my clients that confidence is a skill and one that we must learn. When I ask people who profess to be lacking in confidence what actions they have taken to build that confidence, more often than not I am left with a blank expression. Either that or they look at me sheepishly and say, ‘that’s a good question, I’m not sure what specific actions I am taking to build my confidence’.

?I get it. Knowing what you must do to build your confidence can be tricky. I spend a lot of my time teaching others what to do because I have years of know-how and experience but that didn’t come easy!

?But, if we think about the things that we are confident doing, it is because we have learned what to do through action. We know how to brush our teeth because our parents taught us what to do when we were young. We know how to tie up our shoelaces because we were taught how to do it, and we practised it until we got it right. When we get into a car to drive somewhere we do so knowing that we have the skill to drive the car. We – or probably our parents – spent money on lessons and we practised until we were skilled enough to pass our driving test. We would never dream of getting in a car without having the skill to drive it; without having done the work necessary to learn what to do.

So, why is being confident any different?

?The advantage of confidence being a skill rather than a feeling is that we can learn a skill. We have the power and ability to learn provided we put the effort in. Like any skill however, it takes time and know how.

?One of the biggest ways we improve our confidence is by showing up for ourselves every day. It comes from following through on the promises we make for ourselves. It’s about doing small things every day that are in our control. It’s that simple. The reason why this is important is because doing small things every day builds our confidence. We are wholly and completely accountable. If we don’t deliver on the promises we make to ourselves we have no one to blame but ourselves. We are the only ones who have let ourselves down. On a positive note, it is completely within our gift.

?Showing up for ourselves build confidence because we learn to trust ourselves. If we show up day after day doing small things after a while we know we have our own back. The word confidence comes from the Latin word ‘confīdentia’ from the verb confīdere which means to confide and the fīdere part of the verb means ‘to trust’. We learn to trust ourselves through our actions.

?Following through on the promises we make to ourselves also gives us a lesson in setting our boundaries. When we show up for ourselves day in day out it is a marker of self-respect. When we respect ourselves, we are much less willing to let other people disrespect us. Put another way, it’s much harder to expect other people to respect us if we aren’t prepared to do it for ourselves.

?So, if you are someone who wants more confidence, what are you doing to build your confidence? What action are you taking? What systems are you putting in place? What are you learning, practising or experimenting with in order to build your confidence?

?Maybe you show up for yourself by doing some kind of marketing activity each day if you are an entrepreneur. Perhaps you show up for your yourself by speaking up in a meeting at work. Maybe you show up for yourself by getting out for a walk or going to bed earlier and giving yourself some self-care. Maybe you do it by tackling the life admin you keep putting off! Whatever it is, you should be doing something.

?What you do, how you do it and the outcome you achieve are not really the point. The point is you do it. Even if you don’t feel like it. In fact, it’s especially important if you don’t feel like it because you feel so much better about yourself having done it. Stop concentrating on getting the ‘feeling’ of confidence and simply focussing on taking action day in day out and having your own back.

?The other thing about just focussing on taking some kind of action is that it gets you out of the confidence trap that we often fall in to. The ‘I will do/be/have XYZ when I have more confidence’. The ‘I will wear that nice dress when I feel more confident in how I look’ or ‘I will speak at an event when I get more confident with public speaking’ or ‘I will ask for a meeting with that stakeholder when I feel more confident about talking to senior people’. If you wait until you get more confident before you do something you will be waiting a very long time. You get more confident because you wear the dress, and you feel good doing so. You get more confident because you volunteer to be a panellist at an industry event. You get more confident because you meet with a friendly senior person at work and talk to them about your skills and achievements. ?

Know this: you have the ability to build your own self confidence. Its not some mythical or ethereal thing out there. There is no unicorn. There is no silver bullet. There is only you and when there is only you, you have the power and control to make it happen.