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Get Confidence
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Confidence - Get Confidence
Wednesday, 31 March 2010 12:42

If I’m asked “What is the most frequent request you receive from clients?” it would have to be to help them get confidence. You’d probably think this very understandable, since confident people do more and therefore get more out of life. So far – so good!
But in another of my articles I say that confidence doesn’t exist, although I do acknowledge the existence of lack of confidence. Given that confidence is our natural state it’s surprising that people say they don’t have any!

While there are instances where confidence needs a boost, since most of us live within pretty normal situations which we’re familiar with, it shouldn’t generally be necessary.


So what’s the real situation for those people? I believe they’re lacking in confidence – a situation that has built up over many years through a process of conditioning and which has created negative feelings. By the time they reach adulthood they’ve taken over the conditioning process themselves so it becomes self-imposed. But I’m not really interested in analysing; I’d rather try to find a solution to help anyone who needs it to break free from this situation.

First of all though – you need to understand that knowing the cause of something is not the same as having a solution. For example, if I knock a vase from the table and it breaks on the tiled floor, I clearly know the cause – it broke because it fell from the table and hit a hard surface.  But can I repair it by putting the pieces back on the table? Of course not, I’d do better trying to stick it back together with glue!

In the same way, you can spend hours analysing why you lack confidence, but the fact is that it won’t help you one iota to get confidence!

Let’s just spend a moment though looking at the thousands of habits we have, what they are and how they serve us. If we use a simple example such as automatically locking the door each time you leave the house, you will know that there are times when, just as you’re walking away the thought crosses your mind – did you really remember to lock it? Most likely you did because you did it automatically.

Some habits could save your life – like jumping back onto the safety of the pavement when a car unexpectedly speeds towards you.  But then what’s to say that pavements are safe? Well, it’s something you learned that’s become a habit – a reflex or automatic reaction – and one that’s good to have!

The question then becomes “How can I create good habits?”  There’s a straightforward answer. You keep repeating the same action over and over for a period of time until it becomes an automatic reaction. And that will happen much more quickly if there’s emotion attached to the action. Once acquired, in fact, you may find it difficult or impossible even – to change it.

To demonstrate this I have a little exercise. Interlock your hands together in front of you. Which thumb is on top? It doesn’t matter which – just pay attention to it, then switch thumb positions so the other one is on top. That feels a little awkward doesn’t it? That’s also how not following a habit feels.

Of course it isn’t going to change your life if you just switch which thumb is on top! The point is to acknowledge that if something as easy as that can feel awkward, you’re bound to find it a bit difficult changing important negative habits. For me it’s no longer a big deal which thumb is on top since I’ve done this exercise so many times, it’s broken my habit of one in preference to another. What’s important is that the same technique can be utilized to help you to create a habit of confidence.

The question is - why has lack of confidence become a habit for you? If you think back over your life you can probably identify many situations where you’ve made a decision – conscious or unconscious – to ignore or turn down an opportunity that arose; perhaps it was on the grounds that it wasn’t the right thing to do, you wouldn’t be able to do it, it wasn’t the right time etc. Many of these were excuses rather than logical reasons, and they were made up in your head.

Opportunities come your way every day. If you always decide you won’t say yes to them because it doesn’t feel right, that starts to become a habit and you begin to say no to everything new. But doesn’t confidence come from saying yes to opportunities?

Year on year as new possibilities come your way, you probably revert automatically to your old habits because it’s easier than the energy it takes to resist them. (Remember the experiment with the thumbs?) So once again your choice is to not explore and not to try something new and, surprise, surprise, now when anything different and new crops up, you don’t have the confidence to even try them!

But it’s not all bad news. That situation can be reversed and we can set you on the path of confidence as your habit, rather than the opposite. This will be in two parts:

The starting point is to begin to disturb those old, negative habits you’ve developed, recognizing that when you say no – that’s your habit of being un-confident. While this is not a difficult process it does require you to be gentle, kind and accepting of yourself. If you’re aware that change takes time, then perhaps you’ll give yourself permission to take however long it requires. It’s difficult to say how long that will be but be prepared to measure it in weeks rather than hours.

The next time you’re feeling unconfident about something new, when you don’t want to stray from what you normally do and you want to say no – that’s the point to start. However, I’m only asking you to take note of the event and what action you chose – that’s all.

I want to warn you that this is going to happen around ten times a day and I want you to take note every time. It may be something as simple as not wanting to go to the cinema but to watch your regular television programme instead. So just note it at this stage, I’m not asking you to do anything different, and I’ll tell you why this is so important.

While simply noticing these things, others have reported that after a short period they’re noticing they’re doing it, during the incident. As they’re discussing the possibility of going to the cinema, they note their feelings and the fact that they’re again choosing not to do something. Remember, that’s all I’m asking at the moment, that you note these things. It’s important you don’t actually change what you do.

So at this stage you’ve moved the point you note things from after the event to during the event.

What will happen now is that your point of awareness that you’re choosing to be un-confident, is happening increasingly earlier in the incident. But since this is only an exercise in noticing, don’t change your choices, merely observe them.

In the end you’ll start to be aware of your thinking before rather than after the incident, which means you’ll be in a position of choice. In being aware of your thinking patterns before your automatic habit takes over, you’ll have the choice to follow it – or not! This is described as being ‘mindful’ of your thought process.

I believe it’s one of countless reasons that make mindfulness such a powerful technique to use in helping people address and deal with stress, procrastination, lack of confidence, as well as other key life issues. It’s also the reason for me using it increasingly with my clients since it puts them in control of their situation much more quickly and permanently than when I ‘use techniques on them.’

So, now you understand the process, let’s look at the theory behind it.

We’ve all got levels of change we’ll accept and levels we’ll reject. For some people these levels are high, and for some they’re low. In the exercise above I asked only that you noted. By not asking you to make changes it meant your mind would allow you stay inside your level of resistance and let the new process in – and that’s what will enable change to happen. Since the changes are minor they don’t threaten who you are. The only change being asked is that you note these incidents.

I stated at the outset that there were two processes involved. The first one, demonstrated above, interferes with old habits that have created your lack of confidence. Now we need to start addressing the issue of building new habits.

I’m going to save you some time. Instead of asking you to work out what to do next by using the information you now have, I’m going to set it out for you.

I want you to change something that’s so small you wouldn’t even bother to think about resisting it. Something that’s so small, so tiny, so minute that you feel you can easily agree to it, even though you haven’t in the past. It might be leaving the lounge door open when you normally always close it, or sitting in a different place.

Before you start – a word of warning; I’m aware that some people will want to challenge themselves and push themselves as hard as they can. Please don’t! There is, of course, a place for that - but not if you want to make long-lasting changes to habits, and that’s our intention here. Remember - Whatever you resist persists.  By trying to overcome, by forcing and fighting, you’re actually strengthening the very thing you’re trying to remove – your negative habits.

I hope you’ll trust me on this because it’s important. The smallness, almost insignificance even, of the things you do at this stage is where the real power lies.

But let’s get back now to building new habits.

You can move on to slightly larger situations once you’ve become comfortable and familiar with smaller ones so you’re building, gradually, from the strong base of positive habits.

Be patient and take the time to work up to major areas of change in your life. In that way you’ll be ensuring permanent rather than temporary change.

While simple techniques and tricks can give you confidence, they are temporary and will wear off. They’ll also leave you with a sense of failure, and this constant failing will become a habit which prohibits further progress.

So while it could take up to a year – even more – to get to the major areas, it’s the most precious thing you can possibly do for yourself to ensure these behavioural changes are permanent and will enable you to get confidence.
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