Being confident is vitally important to success at anything. If you’re a writer and you have the dreaded “block,” it’s tough to pound out even a single sentence. If you’re an actor and you’ve practiced your monologue a thousand times and you always stumble over a few words that are alliteration, on show night, you probably won’t have a lot of confidence when it comes to those words. If you’re a golfer and the game is on the line but you’ve three-putted the last three holes, the three footer to win will look like a 20-footer with four breaks. That’s where confidence comes in.
In each of those three scenarios imagine the opposite. The writer just wrote a best seller; chances are they will be brimming with confidence as they sit down at their keyboard again. The actor has just nailed their final dress rehearsal and the audience loved the challenging line and so come show night, it is the best line in the whole play. Then the golfer has made three really long and challenging putts going up to the 18th green. That 12-foot putt to win looks quite simple now.
Its confidence and it comes from time. I wrote in “The Quest for Confidence“ that in my practice, one of the things that I am seeing more than ever lately is the lack of confidence among highly competent and talented professionals. For some, it is the feeling that they are like the house of cards, ready to fall over the moment someone recognizes that they don’t really have any talent (lies, all lies).
Confidence is a habit; learned over time. Confidence can also be linked to intuition – knowing you are on the right course or that you have the answers, even in the absence of experience or practice.
Lots of people out there are faking confidence. Most everyone has experienced a lack of confidence in some area at some point. What to do about it?
Is it from a lack of preparation? Then practice, practice and practice!
It is from a belief that you are not good enough? Ask yourself where that belief comes from. How true is that really? Would learning a new skill help?
Or would just taking a simple action help and change the thought. Remember that confidence is built over time, through challenges and successes.
(Flickr photo via shayhaas)
Related posts:
