Enhancing Self-Confidence – Keeping Your Edge

Are some people born confident? Sometimes it seems that way to those of us who have had to unearth the roots of confidence virtually on our own. One business woman I know had a great insight from her own struggle. She remembered how her mother would criticize any woman perceived as going overboard in the attractive/assertive department with a disdainful, “She likes herself.” As she grew older she realized her mother was using that expression as a synonym for “she’s conceited,” but it must have delivered an early internal twist that stayed with her through adulthood. Whenever she started to feel strong and confident, along came the pangs of guilt and worry that she might be crossing the undefined boundary into “liking herself too much.”

Another woman talked about her lack of a family model for shaping and molding self confidence when she was a teenager. Since her mother was shy and anti-social, she looked to her very outgoing and nurturing dancing teacher as a role model, and filled in the gaps with self-help books to more deeply understand the origins of self-esteem.

Self-confidence can definitely be developed and expanded, a fact supported by personal experience. Though I spent the first half of my life grabbing at self-esteem and compensating for the lack of it, today the techniques I successfully used to enhance my own core confidence are also working well for many others. I’d like to share some with you here:

1. Commitment to Evidence
A common mistake we make is spending a lot of time trying to find out-in-the-world evidence that our lives have value, without any real clarity about what that evidence would look like if we found it! It’s a pattern reminiscent of a hamster spinning the wheel in his cage. One way to disrupt the pattern is to simply give up the pursuit.

Just decide to be committed to the fact that “I make a difference.” Then begin collecting evidence, however small, to support that commitment. This may take the form of a journal, log or scrapbook where you write down the evidence: something nice someone says about you, an accomplishment, something good that happens in your presence or something you enjoy about life.

2. Competence vs. Confidence
When the feeling of confidence is not strong, it may be a sign that you need more competence. For example, you wouldn’t want your surgeon to have confidence without competence. On the other hand, noticing what standard you are unconsciously comparing yourself to may reveal that you have set an unrealistic benchmark for feeling confident at your level of competence. If you come from a commitment of competence vs. a feeling of confidence, then even though you may not feel completely confident you will know that is acceptable for your level of competence.

3. Letting in Acknowledgment
Do you allow acknowledgement to come in, or do you discount it in your head–or even to the person bestowing it by saying something like, “It’s just my job.” You may be receiving acknowledgement of your value all around you while you are busy discounting it. Remember if you don’t let it in, it won’t be there to support when you are in need of a self-esteem boost.

4. A Statement of Identity
What is the identity of YOU? Is it a person of value who can co-create with others, or something else? This can be a little tricky to discover since it is somewhat like sneaking up on a shadow. With my own dyslexia, I overly identified with being “broken” most of my life. Until I defined my own mission and started identifying with it, anything I did seemed to center around fixing “broken,” the proverbial treadmill experience.

A mission in life used correctly can be both a lantern for guidance on your path and a shield to protect your self-esteem. I don’t know how I would have ever gained real core self confidence without an expressed mission in life to commit my life to. I like to think of it as being the steward of my own mission. Without this mission-steering mindset I seem to drift slowly towards a collection of complaints.

How are you nurturing your self-esteem? To repeat some useful advice: If you are not going to value yourself, why should anyone else?

Martin Brossman – Success Coach / Trainer / Author – www.CoachingSupport.com – martin@coachingsupport.com Podcast: www.Inquireonline.info