Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Sassy_Social_Share_Public::$logo_color is deprecated in /home3/bbysteps/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sassy-social-share/public/class-sassy-social-share-public.php on line 477
I was often told that to be confident you have to “Fake it till you make it”. Put on your nicest clothes, puff out your chest and tell yourself that everything is going to work out perfectly. But that didn’t sit well with me. To me, it was putting up a façade and being dishonest with yourself. When things go wrong, that baseless confidence crumbles as easily as it was built.
I believe being confident in any situation starts from being honest with yourself. It is about the willingness to venture out of your comfort zone and embracing anything that happens. It is about celebrating the small successes and striving to do even better next time. It is about having the foresight and diligence to prepare yourself for whatever lies ahead.
You can handle any situation
We often catastrophize and our brain starts conjuring a doomsday scenario. However, even when a situation turns bad, it is often not as bad as we imagined. We are more resilient than we think and are able to handle any emotional setbacks that come our way. What is essential to being more confident is the willingness to feel uncomfortable, sad or frustration and embrace that feeling.
Harvard Medical School psychologist Susan David talks about emotional agility which is defined as approaching one’s inner experiences mindfully and productively, allowing a person to be resilient and bounce quickly from setbacks. It is about being aware of your emotional experience, labelling the experience and embracing it. Read more on how to deal with stress and optimize your performance. We all strive to always be happy, but sadness, anger and anxiety are also part of the human experience and we should embrace these emotions. As Dr David puts it “Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life”.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Dr Viktor Frankl, abstracted from Man’s Search For Meaning
You might be wondering then what if my situation is really bad? Well, one of the worst scenarios you could possibly face is being at a concentration camp. Dr Viktor Frankl spent 3 years in the Auschwitz concentration camps, where he was treated inhumanely and he witnessed numerous atrocities including the death of his wife in the camps. Yet, even in his darkest moments, he realized he had the power to define his own experiences. He could decide on the attitude to have when faced with the same situation. Even when suffering was omnipresent, Dr Frankl chose to face his predicament with a lighthearted spirit and a determination to share his experiences with others through his writing. He chose to be a fighter and a survivor when others had long given up on hope.
No matter whatever situation comes your way, you always have a choice in defining your experience. Confident people fail as well. But they believe they can bounce back no matter the situation.
Develop a growth mindset
We often can tend to be too focused over results, thinking that our achievements define our self-worth. Consequently, when we face difficult challenges and fail, it is a huge blow our self-esteem and we give up. On the other hand, if we have a process-oriented mindset, that focuses on constantly improving yourself, we are more likely to be confident and resilient in the face of challenges.
That is what Stanford Psychologist Dr Carol Dweck set out to prove in her book titled Mindset. Dr Dweck says in having a growth mindset, which is the belief that one can get better with effort, improves your confidence and abilities in the long run. Having a growth mindset changes our understanding of effort and difficulty. Instead of seeing failure as a setback, it in fact serves as a valuable lesson to learn from. Studies done by North Carolina State University has found that entrepreneurship students who adopted a growth mindset are significantly more confident in their entrepreneurial abilities such as identifying new business opportunities.
When we face new situations, learn to adopt a growth mindset. Instead of telling yourself you cannot do it when you face setbacks, tell yourself “I am not there yet” and believe you can improve in time. Failure suddenly appears to a lot less daunting and you surely would be more confident when dealing with any situation.
Practice under pressure
In high stakes situations, we can feel very insecure about ourselves. Professional athletes often find themselves in high pressure situations. A slight mistake can lead to a devastating loss, impacting their reputation and their livelihood. Yet, there are those athletes that do not crumble despite the pressure. With nerves of steel, they confidently face the situation head on.
What sets them apart? They spend countless hours practicing under pressurizing situations such that when the big moment arrives, performing well is second nature to them. Golfer Tiger Woods overcame his fear of big moments with his relentless routine. His father and coach Earl Woods made his son’s practice sessions extremely pressurizing to simulate an actual game. He would thrash talk his son and even knocked over his golf clubs in an effort to distract him. Through numerous hours of deliberate practice, Tiger Woods learnt to thrive under pressure. His relentless work ethic made him confident in rising up to the biggest challenges.
Perhaps you feel unconfident about public speaking or performing in front of others. Think about how to make your practice sessions more stressful such that it is similar to the actual environment. You could invite your close friends and family to watch you as you practice, tweak your exercises such that they are more challenging or lay down a punishment for failing to do well in your practice to ramp up the pressure. For more ideas on how to create pressurizing practice routines, click here.
Practice makes perfect. If you are unconfident about performing under pressure, simply practice under pressure such that when you face the big moment, it is totally normal to you.
Baby Steps to Great Strides
Being confident is a journey and not a destination. You would not instantly become the most confident person around. There are times that you would feel insecure about yourself and that is totally normal. Start from making small changes to your thinking patterns and routines consistently. Before you know it, those minute changes would have lead to great improvements, making you a more confident person.