Being confident has a lot of benefits, but suffering from a lack of confidence can impact just about every facet of your life negatively if you let it.  There are heaps of tips and tricks out there to help you believe in yourself more, but there’s one fundamental starting point that you must begin with if you want to give your confidence levels a big bold boost.  Here is it…

Bulls Eye

If you’d like to be a bit more confident (or a lot) it’s really important that you narrow down specifically what being more confident looks like to you, otherwise – as with any goal – you’re unlikely to achieve it or reach the level of satisfaction you’re looking for.

Specificity really is your best friend when it comes to achieving anything in life, because when you’re clear on exactly what you want it becomes much, much easier to take the right actions and achieve your goals.

So for example, if you’d like to be a more confident presenter at work you need to consider what that actually looks like to you in real life.  Or in other words, what evidence do you need to see in order to know that you’re a confident presenter?  Some examples of your evidence might be: –

• Feeling calm before a presentation
• Being able to engage the audience
• Getting good feedback

Once you’re clear on what ‘evidence’ you personally need to see you can then start to build an action plan around your answers to help build greater confidence.  So if we use the example above, your action plan could look like this: –

• Evidence:  Feeling calm before a presentation
  • Question: What would help you feel more calm before a presentation?
  • Answer: Being fully prepared and having enough time to pull together valuable content that I know well.
  • Action: Ensure you plan your preparation well  in advance, and conduct quality research so that you feel knowledgeable on the subject matter
  • Outcome: Rather than hoping your nerves don’t get the better of you, do everything you can beforehand to prepare thoroughly as this will improve your confidence levels and ease any anxiety

• Evidence:  Being able to engage the audience
  • Question: What would need to happen for you to know the audience was engaged?
  • Answer: The majority are paying attention, asking questions and writing notes
  • Action: Make sure your presentation content is relevant to your audience, that you prompt engagement by asking questions, and include exercises to improve participation
  • Outcome: Rather than hoping your audience takes part, do as much as you can to prepare and control the situation as this will give you a greater sense of confidence

• Evidence:  Getting good feedback
  • Question: What would you need to do to ensure good feedback?
  • Answer: Present useful information in a clear and concise manner
  • Action: Make sure you know what your audience wants and structure your presentation to meet their expectations
  • Outcome: Rather than just talking about what you want, for as long as you want, getting to understand your audience will help put you at ease and improve how confident you feel about delivering a valuable presentation

You can apply this same thought process to ANY area of your life that you want to feel more confident in – all you need to do is get clear on what ‘feeling confident’ looks like to you in each specific scenario, and then build a simple action plan that helps you achieve the ‘evidence’ you’ve identified.

By being specific you will give yourself a greater sense of control over your emotions rather than simply just hoping you’ll feel more confident as time goes on.

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Written by Faye Hollands – Director at Outshine Consulting and Busy Working Mumma.

Faye is an accomplished Career Coach, Small Business Coach and Productivity Specialist who has successfully coached countless clients on how to create a career they love, get more done in less time, and achieve personal and professional success.

To receive your FREE MP3 download of Faye’s popular teleseminar ‘How To Create A Career You Love‘ and weekly articles to improve your career, business and time management skills click here.

You can contact Faye on +61 2 8323 4335 or email fayehollands@outshineconsulting.com