How To Be Your Own Confidence Coach

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Do you lack confidence in yourself?  Just imagine if you could be your own confidence coach and how empowering that could be!

Well, I’m here to help you to do just that.  But first of all, let’s talk about confidence a bit more and what exactly it is.

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What Is Confidence?

 

[tweetshare tweet=”“Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honourable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself.” – Cicero” username=”alisonw30″]

As well as hope, trust and belief in ourselves, confidence is also about taking action and challenging ourselves out of our comfort zones.

It’s that feeling that everything and anything is possible.  Knowing that we’ve learned from failure and are doing our very best.

Confidence is about being assertive and speaking up for ourselves.

It’s about setting boundaries and being honest.  Learning from mistakes and not letting obstacles get in our way.

What confidence isn’t is about being aggressive, pushy, arrogant or getting your own way (although some may think that’s what it is!)

 

Why Is Your Confidence Low?

 

First of all, think about where your confidence is low.  Chances are it isn’t low in all areas of your life.  You may, for example, be confident about speaking up when you are with your friends but less so in a work meeting.

There can be many reasons why your confidence is low in certain situations.  Limiting beliefs, self-esteem, past experience and negative thought patterns can all play a part.

The good news is that confidence is simply a feeling and you can change how you feel.

 

How To Be Your Own Confidence Coach

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There’s no substitute for talking things through with an actual coach.  However, there are a number of coaching techniques you can try out for yourself to help you improve your confidence and become your own confidence coach.

Here are a number of coaching tools and techniques I use with my clients which you can try for yourself.

Pick one or two to try.  Or try them all over a period of time and see which ones work the best for you.

 

 

Where ARE You Confident?

 

First of all, think about a situation where you are confident.  You’re going to spend some time thinking about what’s different in that situation.  Here are the steps to follow:

1.  Close your eyes, take a deep breath and imagine yourself in that situation.
2. How are you feeling?
3. What are you thinking about?
4. What words are you saying?
5. Who’s there with you?
6. What can you hear, see, feel and smell?
7. How are you doing things differently from times when you feel less confident?
8. What else do you notice?
9. What positive learning could you take from this situation and apply elsewhere?

You may find it helpful to journal what comes up for you during this exercise.  Then spend a few days mulling things over.

Often with coaching, inspiration will hit you a few days later when you are in the shower or out walking the dog!

It could also be helpful to repeat this exercise with different scenarios where you feel more confident and see what themes come up.

 

Boost your confidence faster by working with a real-life coach.   Book your power hour call right now! 

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Find Your Strengths

 

Rather than dwelling on things that you aren’t that confident with, write a list of all your strengths and achievements to date.

If you aren’t sure what your strengths are then there are a number of ways to find out.

You could ask a trusted friend to tell you what they value about you for example.  If they needed advice on something, what topics would they come to you with?  Ask a few different people if you can and you may be surprised at what comes up.

Another way to find out your strengths is to take the excellent (free) VIA Character Strengths Survey

Once you know your strengths, if you find yourself in a situation where you feel less than confident then ask yourself how you can tap into your strengths to help you.

 

Ask Yourself Powerful Questions

 

A key component of being your own confidence coach is asking powerful questions.  Try asking yourself the following questions and journal your responses to help boost your confidence.

• Who are you when you give yourself full permission?
• What are you letting your inner critic tell you?
• How might you respond to your inner critic?
• If you couldn’t fail, what would you do?
• What strengths can you draw on?
• What will achieving this goal give you?
• How will you celebrate when you overcome the fears and achieve your goal?
• What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
• What happens if you fail?  How will you react and what might you learn?
• What small step can you take today?

For even more coaching questions to ask yourself, check out 51 Powerful Questions That Make You Think

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Photo by Gary Butterfield on Unsplash

Set yourself SMART goals

 

If you aren’t sure how to do this, here’s a guide, along with a handy downloadable template for you to use.

Try to set yourself some goals which push you out of your comfort zone a little.

It doesn’t have to be anything huge either, just something small that makes you feel a little bit uncomfortable.  Ask for help if you need it and then plan how you’ll celebrate when you achieve that goal!

 

Take Action

 

Now you have some SMART goals, it’s time to get going and take some action!

Research has shown that increased confidence is strongly linked to taking action.

This means actually DOING something as opposed to sitting around overthinking it!

Yes, I know this feels hard, but I promise it gets easier.

If you’d told me 20 years ago that I would feel pretty confident standing up in front of a room full of people and giving a presentation I would not have believed you.  However, I’ve practised and practised at this and although I do still get the butterflies from time to time, it’s nowhere near as daunting as it used to be.

Taking action doesn’t necessarily mean you have to book yourself straight into delivering a TED talk on the world stage (I’m still working up to that one :-D).

Taking confidence around public speaking as an example, think about a small step you could take.  It needs to be something that will push you out of your comfort zone a little bit but not something that has you completely frozen with fear!

So in this example, perhaps you could arrange to update a couple of friends about an upcoming trip or to speak about a topic at a small social group.

And if you are struggling with taking action, it’s not your fault.

Our brains are hardwired to keep us safe so will immediately come up with objections to ideas which aren’t in our comfort zones.

Mel Robbins has come up with a simple tool you can use straight away to help with this.  The 5-second rule encourages us to take some kind of action within 5 seconds of an idea coming up.

Check out the extract below from Mel’s TED talk (she did get on the world stage, ha!)

 

 

Reframe In The Positive

 

Listen carefully to your ‘inner critic’ and what it’s telling you.  We all have that little voice that tells us we can’t, or we shouldn’t or we aren’t good enough.

Whenever you catch that little voice telling you this (mindfulness or journaling can be good techniques to practice noticing your thoughts) come up with an alternative, more positive affirmation.

Make sure to use language such as ‘I am’ or ‘I can’ rather than ‘I should’ or ‘I need to’.

For example, perhaps you are telling yourself that you can’t attend a particular social event because you don’t feel confident enough.  You are worried you won’t know what to say or that people will think you are annoying or stupid.

Wow, we are hard on ourselves!  Seriously, would you tell a friend these things?!

Instead of reinforcing all those negative, limiting beliefs by believing these thoughts, try saying STOP to them and then reframe them.

So in this instance, you could tell yourself that you CAN attend the social event.  That you have plenty to say.  That you’re a great listener and will be interested in others and that people will think you are kind and caring (because you are!)

 

Photo by Katrina Wright on Unsplash

 

Related post:  The Ultimate Guide To Increased Self-Confidence

 

Upskill

 

To be more confident in certain situations, ask yourself if there are any skills you could do with learning or brushing up on.

For example, if you want to feel more confident in interviews could you speak to someone who recruits for a living and perhaps practice some interview questions.

One skill I’m still working on is being more assertive.  We aren’t really taught how to be assertive as a matter of course during our education or early lives.

Personally, I can have a tendency to be quite passive in certain situations or with certain people.  I’ve found this course from Udemy to be really helpful in understanding why this happens and to also equip me with tools to be more assertive.

 

Record And Celebrate Your Progress

 

Finally, keep track of all the progress you are making.  Every time you take action or feel your confidence growing, take a few minutes to write it down.

And then celebrate your success!

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To Recap

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Using the techniques above will help equip you to be your own confidence coach.

To recap, the tools and techniques are:

• Work out where you are confident already – what learning can you take from these situations?
• Find your strengths
• Ask yourself powerful questions
• Set yourself SMART goals
• Take action
• Reframe in the positive
• Upskill
• Record and celebrate your success

I’d love to hear which of the tools you try out and about your successes with boosting your confidence.  Let me know in the comments or drop me an email at alison@littleblogofpositivity.com 

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