Self-Confidence Secrets Revealed-The Key To Professional Growth
SQI Security Entrepreneur Series 25
Simple Steps To Build Unstoppable Self-Confidence
Starting in the 1960s, the self-esteem movement in the USA and elsewhere began in earnest. The idea behind this educational movement is pretty straightforward. If you foster self-esteem in students, self confidence will naturally follow.
When people are more confident, they tend to excel better in life. This has been the accepted gospel in education policy for going on fifty years now.
The thinking is pretty straightforward. It’s simply elegant, actually, since self-confidence involves one’s attitude about one’s ability to get things done.
When people have a high opinion of themselves, confidence should naturally flow, right? Not quite. It turns out that “hollow” self-esteem only tends to produce impostor syndrome and, worse yet, an entitlement mentality. Whatever achievements people get with this mindset will be quite spotty. In fact, in many cases, they are unable to replicate their earlier success.
They tend to do things right from time to time but not all the time. There is no consistent threshold of success and excellence. It turns out that the real solution to consistent victory still involves self-confidence; however, this self confidence must come from the right place.
It cannot be stimulated into existence through self-esteem. Instead, you need to build your self-confidence on the solid bedrock of competence. Let me spell it out for you C-O-M-P-E-T-E-N-C-E. Put simply, you need to be the best you can be in something.
Anything. Find it. Do it. Scale that upward spiral made possible by a feedback loop that you create. When you become competent in something, you become more confident. After all, you have shown to yourself that you can get things done.
You can show up at the right time to produce the right things to achieve the right results with the right people which then leads to the right outcomes.
This is not a theory. This is not a guess. This is not something that just happened by random luck. This is something that you yourself made happen because you chose to be competent in something. Once you see this play out, you become more confident. You start to believe that you can make things happen. What do you think happens next? That’s right.
The more confident you become, the more you do it and do it and do it. This means that you do the things that you excel in different types of circumstances. You’re able to overcome more challenges; you are able to solve more problems and you get better all around. When this happens, you become even more competent and, you guessed it, even more confident.
So, this upward spiral process repeats itself over and over again. This is called a positive feedback loop. The more confident you become, the more confident you are, the more actions you take and the more opportunities you give yourself to get even better.
The bottom line is you need to start with competence. This fuels increasing levels of confidence. Competence is the linchpin to sustainable confidence.
Compare this to somebody who just got lucky. For whatever reason, somebody found themselves at the right time at the right place with the right people to produce the right results. So far, so good. That person racked up a victory for that day.
Congratulations! However, the next day, things simply did not line up properly. For whatever reason that this person can’t quite put their finger on, things did not happen. The same thing happened the next day and the next day.
Weeks turn into months, then what happens next? That’s right. There is no confidence there. Whatever confidence this person may have achieved because they got lucky or things just worked out that one day, is gone the next day or shortly thereafter.
Do you see how this works? Do you see the big picture? You need to build your self-confidence on competence because that’s how you create an upward spiral system of positive feedback loops that enables you to become excellent.
In fact, you reach the point where you are so in-command of what you’re doing that it doesn’t really matter what you feel like. You can feel like a pile of crap the next day and still perform at a very high level. People around you may be in a file mood but it wouldn’t matter.
Things may not line up. All sorts of accidents happen. All sorts of unforeseen situations break out but, guess what? You’re still able to perform at a very high level.
That’s the difference between competence and confidence that flows from feeling right at the right time. In other words, that’s the difference between competence and simply getting lucky. You cannot afford to get lucky.
Another thing about competence is that it is objective. If you go through that process of building up your competence one inch at a time, one step at a time, one block at a time, it cannot be taken away from you.
This book uses this interplay between competence and self-confidence to help you develop unstoppable confidence that can help you scale and overcome any kind of difficulty or obstacle.
Take ownership of more areas of your life
Once you have achieved the positive feedback loop in one area of your life, you become really confident in that narrow part of your life. Again, it doesn’t matter if it’s just an inch wide and a mile deep. That’s okay as long as you get that positive feedback loop going and as long as you really feel deep down inside “I can. It’s not just possible, I do it.” If you’re able to let this sink in and it becomes a part of you, you don’t become a blowhard.
You’re not that guy who’s basically out to prove to other people who he is, not somebody talking big who has got something to prove. Instead, you develop an easy, calm, self-assurance over at least one area of your life. When you look around you and you see people doing well, talking big, enjoying themselves, you say to yourself, “You know what? I have one area of my life under control because I can make things happen there,” and you gain some self-assurance. You’re not banging a gong, saying, “Hey, look at me,” but the confidence that you get flowing from that area is real. It burns. You can call it on demand like a personal genie.
Apply your ownership mastery mindset to the next most competent area of your life.
In a previous exercise, you listed up the things that you are competent at. Go to #2. You started out with #1, now let’s go to #2. Check back with your stream of consciousness list items and go to #2. Repeat what you did in Chapter 7. The bottom line here is action.
Act confidently more often
Keep increasing competence in that target area. The more competent you become, the more confident you get.
The more confident you get, the more challenges you take on. These challenges, when properly viewed, are opportunities. Maybe it’s an opportunity to learn how to deal with defeat.
Maybe it’s an opportunity to learn how to deal with being told to wait or to handle rejection. It takes many different forms, but they all lead to the same place.
They all lead to mastery if you allow them to. The more problems you solve, the more competent you become. Keep repeating this process above. You started out with an area of your life that is an inch wide and you get to the next one, so now you have two inches wide that you’re dealing with and that you have attained mastery over. Then you move on to the next area and then the next. This is how you take ownership of more areas of your life.
Understand that self-confidence can be limitless
It’s really important to understand that competence has limits. You may be a good swimmer. People might think that you are awesome, but let’s get real here.
Chances are quite good, you’re probably not going to be the next Michael Phelps. Guess what, it’s perfectly okay. Competence has limits and that’s fine. Just allow it to give you what you’re looking for, which is self-confidence.
You’re not looking to be the very best. You’re not looking to be the next Usain Bolt or the next Stephen Hawking. Instead, you just have to push yourself to the point where you say, I did it. I
started here, now I’m up here. This means that I’ve overcome my fears, I wasn’t complacent, I pushed myself, I applied myself and now I have something to be proud of. I have something that I can take confidence in.
The secret to competence
Although competence has its limits, self-confidence doesn’t. If you think about this, the interplay between competence and self-confidence, this means that competence can be limitless as well. How? Well, while confidence can be limited by your circumstances, if you let yourself be motivated by curiosity and your sense of possibility and adventure, the sky’s the limit when it comes to your confidence in getting things done. In other words, you think to yourself, I know that I am a good businessman. I can build businesses and I can sell them, but I can also deal with setbacks. If there was a stock that crashed tomorrow,
I can deal with it. If you develop that kind of self-confidence, the sky’s the limit. All bets are off in terms of your competence because, again, your competence is linked to your self confidence.
The more competent you become, the more self-confident you become. The more self confident you become, the more you do things and you figure things out.
This leads to even more competence and even more self-confidence. It’s an upward spiral. Self-confidence can be limitless. Take confidence in this. Feel good about it. How?
Celebrate and seek out greater mastery
Self-confidence can be pushed, but it cannot be developed just by sitting back and bragging, thumping your chest, parading around like a peacock. No, it doesn’t work that way. To boost your self confidence, celebrate your current mastery, but seek out greater mastery.
How? Test your versatility, your sociability, your adaptability, your imagination and sense of possibility. This also means testing and pushing to the limit, your perseverance, tenacity and grit.
Grit is a big deal because according to a research by Prof. Duckworth based on her studies of different cohorts.
While people may vary based on their IQ and ability to socialize and other measures of emotional intelligence, grit, party defined as tenacity, is one trait that pretty much unites people who come out on top. They might not be able to get to the top tomorrow, but they will eventually get there. If you’re using this interplay between competence and self-confidence, grit must be part of the equation. How do you develop grit?
Well, it means you take more risks. The more risks you take, the higher the chance that you will fail. Instead of running away from failure and loss, you actually view it as an opportunity because that is what builds grit.
Success doesn’t build grit. Having things play out the way you had expected and hoped doesn’t build grit. Loss, failure and the risk of shame, humiliation and ridicule, those build grit. When you look at all of this in totality, you see that nothing can get you down.
Even setbacks can be victorious.
How is that for unstoppable self-confidence based on the solid bedrock of competence?
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