Wanna know the difference between a confident person and an unconfident person? Lasers.

Confident people have lasers in their brains.

Okay, you got me. Confident people don’t really have lasers, although I think that would be pretty cool. No, the real difference is in how they think.

All of your behaviour, whether wanted or unwanted, comes from how you think. Watch out, here comes the science…

Your brain has around 100 billion neurons, with each neuron connected to around 8 thousand others. These connections, or synapses, are the pathways of the brain and enable information to flow freely and allow you to think and do. Some of them will be like motorways, throwing around huge amounts of information really quickly, while others will be more like a little country lane blocked by a tractor and three dozen cows.

These pathways determine how you think. The stronger pathways will be the things you’re best at and the ways you think naturally, while the weakest pathways will be the things you’re weakest at and the things you might struggle with.

So if you want to be more confident, you have to learn how to think more confidently. There’s good news and bad news here.

The bad news is that it’s almost impossible to pick apart that wiring in your brain. It’s so complex and so deeply woven together that you’ll be pulling at threads forever in an effort to deconstruct and understand what’s going on. That’s why people can spend a lifetime in therapy, because there’s always something else to untangle.

The good news is that your brain is just brilliant at making new pathways. Your brain is designed to build new pathways when old ones don’t work effectively; your brain is designed to constantly make itself more efficient. Those moments of clarity and insight you sometimes get are moments when your brain has learned a better way of doing something or thinking something, and it’s the moment that a new, stronger pathway is born.

So don’t worry, you’re able to build new pathways that allow you to think more confidently. Here are some pointers.

When Life Knocks You Down

Life will always have something up its sleeve that can knock you down, and the confident way of thinking starts with recognising that you have a choice about what happens next. Do you roll over and let life trample on you? Or do you learn what you can, let go of the crap and get moving again as soon as you’re able?

The confident way of thinking is recognising that the bad stuff isn’t down to what you did or who you are, and doesn’t mean that you’re a little bit crappier at this living stuff than you thought. The bad stuff is just as valid as the good stuff – the trick is to learn from both and not let the bad stuff keep you away from what matters to you.

When You Want to Do Something but Don’t Think You Can

A big, scary challenge comes along – what do you do? Do you look at the wall you have to climb and tell yourself “That’s too big”, “That’s not possible” or “I’ll end up looking stupid”? Or do you look at the wall and ask yourself “How do I start?”.

The confident way of thinking is to not fall into the trap of seeing the big, scary thing as bigger than you are or to focus on all the reasons you’re not good enough to achieve it. You’re bloody good. Don’t forget that.

You have all kinds of skills, experience, strengths and talents you can use, plus your ability to learn new things is pretty staggering. Even if you don’t know how to do something now, you can always learn how.

When You Talk Yourself Round and Round in Circles

Do you find that when you have a decision to make you sometimes go round and round in circles trying to make your mind up? You almost persuade yourself to go one way, then the next moment you almost persuade yourself to go the other way.

Indecision is commonplace, particularly as we have more choices than ever. When faced with a choice, the confident way of thinking is to be willing to make one. Sounds simple enough, but the spiral of indecision is often triggered because you just don’t want to make a choice at all. It’s much easier to delay it by talking yourself round in circles rather than sucking it up and making a choice that might turn out to be “wrong”.

The confident way of thinking is to recognise 3 things:

1. Confident decisions are based on the things that are most important to you.
2. Recognise that you can deal with whatever happens once you’ve made your decision.
3. Sometimes it simply doesn’t matter that much.

When You Meet New People

We meet all kinds of people all the time. Through work, through friends and through family there are always new people bouncing into our lives. Do you put up a wall when meeting new people? Do you clam up or close down in an effort to not screw up or not look silly?

The confident way of thinking is to accept that there will always be new people in your life, and you’ll always need people to make your life interesting, fun and successful.

The confident way of thinking is to allow yourself the best opportunity to make connections and nurture relationships of all types. The truth is that other people are more likely to be more interested in themselves than to be out to get you or waiting for you to trip up and – here’s the thing – whatever judgements they make about you is their business.

Take it easy, you don’t have to exchange every piece of information about yourself in the first 10 minutes and you don’t have to go out of your way to impress. Instead, just relax and look at how you think and behave when you’re around people you’re already comfortable with.

When People Make Things Hard for You

There are situations where someone else might be making things hard for you. Your partner might be putting you down all the time, your boss might be giving you all the crap to do or a co-worker might be bullying you. A friend might have turned nasty, a family member might be guilt-tripping you or someone might be overly domineering and demanding. We all meet people like this and find ourselves in these kinds of situations.

The confident way of thinking is to always remember that their behaviour is about them, not you. Don’t allow what they’re doing and thinking to affect what you do and think – and specifically don’t let it affect your own self-worth. Instead, look at what you’re able to do. Can you still do a great job? Can you still be a great friend? What can you bring to the table or what conversation can you have that will help?

The confident way of thinking is to be aware that it’s not your job to change them and you don’t need to put the responsibility for solving the problem on your own shoulders. What you can do is make choices about how to make your experience a better one. Sometimes, that means getting involved while other times it means stepping away – the point is to look beyond the drama and deal with what’s under your control.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how confident people think. Let me know if there are situations where you’d like to think more confidently, and I’ll show you how in a follow up article.