How to Strengthen Confidence

I spent more than 20 years in a place I call the “corporate cocoon.” It was comfortable and I usually had everything I needed to do my job. Then one day, I left that cozy corporate cocoon and started a business. Two things became immediately clear: it wasn’t going to be easy and worthless advice was plentiful. I heard things like…

“Make sure your contracts are ironclad.”
“Spend your time on the business, not in the business.”
“You need to do more marketing.”

These are true statements. But they’re worthless if you don’t know how to do them or don’t have the budget to pay others. I often found myself thinking, “Don’t tell me WHAT to do for business, tell me HOW to do it…”

In a recent blog (Confidence and Personal Safety), I made the case that strengthening your confidence impacts your safety by helping you project strength make better decisions, and control fear.

But I left the “how” question unanswered. Today, I’m going to offer a few decisions you need to make and a framework.  

Remember, confidence is simply knowing what you can rely on and what you can’t. And it doesn’t come from a single decision. Confidence builds over time and comes from an ongoing series of decisions. Decisions like…

• Leaning into honesty. Believing you or someone else is better or more capable of something than they are does not strengthen confidence. It encourages arrogance. Seeing things as they are is a good start on the road to honesty… and awareness… and self-preservation.
• Considering your weaknesses and strengths. Do you have a strong voice to get help? Do you have a commanding voice or the ability to use words to influence people? Do you have a physical presence that would make someone think twice before trying to intimidate or attack you? If you work with others, do you know who is reliable or who has some of these skills—and who doesn’t? Answering questions like these can help you understand your capabilities and vulnerabilities.
• Practicing being intentional. Decide that it’s important and worthwhile to take actions that strengthen your confidence. And then take action. Development can be fast-tracked when you shift from relying on your intuition to being intentional.

One way to intentionally strengthen confidence is to leverage the TEA approach. TEA lays out three important ingredients:

• Training helps strengthen confidence. Get informed about what disruptive behaviors are and what you can do to impact them. Exercise those skills that can be exercised. Formal training is great, but it isn’t the only option. Training can be listening to a podcast, reading a book, or reading a blog. Training may be as simple as someone sharing a tip or offering advice after you have dealt with a challenging person. The idea is simple: improve by learning. 
• Experience shows you what you’re capable of. Incredible growth comes from being able to use things you’ve learned. Knowing how to deflect a verbal assault is one thing. Doing it in a real situation is quite different. Experience helps you see where you’re getting it right and where you need to improve.
• Affirmation encourages behavior. Ideally, someone else will affirm how well you’re doing. Objective feedback can tell you what you do well and what you should never do again. And if you can’t get affirmation from someone else, take care of it yourself. Evaluate what helped, what hurt, and what you will change for next time. Affirmation can take you back to the beginning to show where you need more training.

This framework and the decisions mentioned in the beginning are a start. Your next step for strengthening confidence is to dive into training. There’s a lot of information out there. And I’ll keep posting here.

One last thought and this is important. Some people can’t strengthen their confidence using the information I’ve just shared. That group believes hope is a strategy and intuition is enough.

At Strongside, we help people reach their full potential. That includes building confidence and promoting safety. Our courses, consulting, and content can help you thrive and protect what’s most important.

Ready to learn more? Check out the options on the sidebar. And decide how you will take action to strengthen your confidence.