What you believe you can or cannot do, powerfully influences what you accomplish in life.
You might possess the ‘right’ IQ, knowledge and skills to achieve anything possible.
But it’s what you believe about yourself and the world that dictates the outcomes – specifically, your beliefs impact your levels of motivation, emotion and action.
Beliefs, also called the self-efficacy beliefs, are central to your self-confidence.
Those are the beliefs you hold about your capabilities to organise and execute the course of action required to manage specific situations.
Why are they so important?
Because they rule every aspect of your life.
When you believe that your actions can produce the outcomes you desire, you lay out strong foundations for your:
- Motivation
- Well-being and
- Personal accomplishments.
Further, you persevere when faced with challenges and act as if you have control over your life.
Does that mean you have to be confident 10/10 at all times?
No, not even the best of the best are.
Confidence is a variable.
The goal is to maintain a strong enough base-line of healthy beliefs that protect you from getting stuck in past-mistakes and enable you to learn and move forward.
The goal is to nurture your optimism, take risks and discover your potential instead of maintain the status-quo.
So, how can you become more self-confident?
How can you impact what you believe?
There are four sources of self-confidence: mastering your experiences, observing successful people similar to you, finding support and self-developing and taking care of yourself.
- Master Your Experiences
When you effectively deal with events, you overcome obstacles and attain your goal.
Ask yourself:
What knowledge and behaviours do I need to adopt to achieve what I want?
Do I tend to give up easily or persevere when it gets difficult?
What motivates me to keep going?
2. Observe Others Who Made It
When you see other people similar to yourself persevere and succeed, you increase your belief that you too, can succeed.
Ask yourself:
Who, similar to me, is doing what I want to do, have, live?
What and how are they achieving their goals?
Can you find a mentor with similar qualities to advise me?
3. Create Supportive Environment and Self-Develop
When you are persuaded verbally that you have what it takes to succeed, you put more effort in what you do and sustain that effort over time.
Ask yourself:
What environment (business and private) would best support what I want to achieve?
How can working with a coach/executive coach help me get the desired results?
4. Self-Care
When you take care of your physical, mental and emotional states, you perform better.
Ask yourself:
What is essential for my best performance?
How does my mood influence my work?
What can I do to improve my overall health?
To conclude, Alexander Dumas, a famous French novelist, once wrote: “A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.”
So, work with yourself instead against.
Improve your beliefs and increase your self-confidence about what you can do.