If you are naturally introverted, that doesn't mean you aren't as capable at your job as an extrovert is.

Being quiet doesn't mean there is something wrong with you. In fact, a lot of people that are loud are over-compensating for how much they lack confidence.

We need to squash this idea that being loud equals confident. It doesn't. And often the loudest people in the room and the ones over-compensating for their low confidence.

If you are quiet, you can still get promoted. It isn't a flaw or an imperfection, you need to stop looking at it like that.

This was exactly what held one of my clients back the most in her career.

She was ready to step it up at work and go for that next big promotion but a niggly voice in her head told her that she was too quiet and the more she listened to it, the less confident she felt?

That voice was lying to her.

The more energy she gave that niggly little voice the louder it became. She was introverted and empathetic and she had been given the message most of her life that it was wrong to be quiet.

She was beaten and battered down, feeling like she'll never get promoted because she wasn't loud enough. (I'll call her Sally for the purpose of this post).

Sally was naturally very quiet, that was her innate temperament. She was softly spoken, sharp as a button and really astute.

She had all these messed up ideas about how her natural personality was ‘wrong’. It was partly to do with her upbringing. But I blame social conditioning too.

She was super ambitious, she had a plan. She wanted to go places. She had a fire in her belly to shoot for the stars. But she thought she had to change who she was to get there.

When I asked her what she had been doing to work towards the promotion, she told me she had been practising being louder, she had been speaking up more and she had been acting like someone who was confident.

This piqued my interest. What exactly is acting like you’re confident, I probed. Oh well, I’ve been talking more and talking louder.

Over the weeks as we delved deeper into this, it transpired that she believed she had to pretend to be somebody else to be confident. Of course, she wasn’t loud and talkative because she’s an introvert. So, she was finding it really hard to be this person.

Each time she tried to push herself to be loud and talkative, it wiped her of energy and she beat herself up for failing to be confident. And she was completely losing touch of who she was!

Unwittingly, she told herself every day that it was wrong to be herself.

And actually, this was the very thing robbing her of her confidence.

Confidence isn’t being the loudest person in the room. Just like Sally, I believed this too. Actually, what I’ve discovered over the years is that those loud, bolshy people are the ones who are the least confident. They are the ones over-compensating because they feel anything but confident.

I can quite categorically tell you, when I’m feeling my most confident is when I’m being my quietest.

So, for Sally we had to unpick all these unhelpful beliefs she had about what it meant to be confident and re-frame her idea of confidence. Then we focused on where confidence really comes from and that’s not ‘fake it until you make it’.

You can’t pretend to be confident. It doesn’t work because deep down, you believe something else. It’s those deep down beliefs that really need changing.

Confidence needs to come from within and this starts with how you feel about yourself. That’s why when Sally was telling herself it was wrong to be quiet, she was actually damaging her confidence.

Sally needed to learn how to be comfortable with exactly who she was and unlearn all the lies she told herself about it being a bad thing to be quiet. That’s where true confidence comes from.

It was really cool watching the penny drop when Sally realised that actually she was the one that had been knocking her own confidence and it wasn’t because there was something wrong with her.

It’s actually really simple when you figure it out (but usually you need an outside expert to help you figure it out) because the key to boosting your confidence is completely within your control. It’s a case of changing the unhelpful stories you have about yourself.

So, I got Sally to start recognising when she was criticising herself and stop the thoughts in their tracks. She examined the thoughts, asked herself if they were really true and thought about how she could re-frame that thought into something more positive.

I also got her to start keeping a daily diary where she would consciously look out for her positive qualities. She started to note her positive qualities down and look for examples.

We also worked on gradually changing her belief that being confident meant being loud. We did this by looking for lots of examples that challenged that belief that she also believed to be true.

By the end of our 8 weeks together Sally was feeling so much happier in her own skin AND she actually secured a new job with a competitor with a nice, juicy pay rise. Something she wouldn’t have been able to do whilst she was acting all weird and pretending to be someone she wasn’t.

Uncovering these unhelpful beliefs is my super power and it's just one of the powerful pillars in my 1-1 VIP Coaching Program "The Big Quantum Leap. This includes stripping you bare of your insecurities and self-imposed limitations and completely re-writing your story to create the ultimate future version of you where you can go for a big promotion with big money, even if you feel scared.

In The Big Quantum Leap I help high-performing career women that feel under-paid, over-qualified and under-valued to build unstoppable confidence so that you can up-level your career in the fastest time possible.

If you’re ready to take the reins and quantum leap your career and your confidence, I would love to invite you onto a F R E E SuperCharge your Career call. On the call I will take you through the exact roadmap to unleashing the ultimate confidence to grabbing your next level dream job in the quickest time possible.

You will take away your personalised supercharge your career plan and I will advise you on the best coaching options moving forward and which pillars you need to work on to get the fastest results.

If you book your call before 15th December, I am offering a ￡500 discount on my 1-on-1, 8 week VIP Intensive.

The link to book your call is here.

Hi, I'm Naomi, your Confidence Queen. I help high performing career women to quantum leap your confidence and your career. .Join my community for Thriving, Empowered Career women that are ready to rapidly supercharge your career and your confidence https://www.facebook.com/groups/warriorsatworksisterhood