The Confidence Guy

I just re-read a post from Jamie Harrop called ‘Rekindling Our Child Like Self Belief‘ that struck so many chords it could have been the London Philharmonic.

I travelled around Europe as a teenager without knowing where I was going or where I was going to sleep each day. I went on holiday to Boston, Mass. by myself on a couple of occasions, confident that I’d meet people and have a whale of a time without my friends around me. I took part in a couple of dozen stage plays at school that earned me the ‘Best Characterisation’ award in the schools equivalent to the Oscars.

There’s a bunch of stuff I still want to do. I want to live and work in New York City for a while, I want to do more great work in world-class ad agencies, I want to be the best damn confidence coach in the world, I want to be a published fiction author and I want a relationship with great girl who makes me laugh, cry and learn all the time.

I bet you have a list of your own.

I’ll also bet that too often those things stay on that list and rarely get off the page. I’ll bet there are things on your list that you know, somewhere inside, that you won’t do, be or have.

Why? Because it’s too difficult and the chance of failure is high. If you knew you could get it the chances are you’d already be doing it; the fact that there’s the chance that you could go for what you really want and not get it is enough to stop you and most other people in their tracks. But the most tragic thing in life isn’t knowing what you want and failing to get it, it’s knowing what you want and not bothering to try to get it.

Jamie’s article reminded me of what it’s like to have that child-like self belief. The kind of self-belief that means you don’t even question whether something’s possible or achievable, you just have the confidence to go right ahead and try it. The kind of self-belief that sees you pushing your own boundaries without even being aware that a boundary was there to begin with.

Where that self-belief goes I don’t know. Maybe as time goes on and you see how hard life can be and discover that things don’t always turn out as you want, you teach yourself to aim lower and think smaller. Maybe you learn to look at what you stand to lose before you look at what you stand to gain.

What I do know is that the diminishing of that child like self-belief happens slowly over time, and is one of the great tragedies of life, stripping away self-confidence and self-esteem as it goes. But it shows us what true self-confidence is all about and what’s at the centre of my methodology – being able to choose your behaviour with implicit trust in that behaviour.

Notice how I didn’t say ‘choose your behaviour with implicit trust in the outcome’? The difference is one of predictability. Nobody can predict exactly what will happen with something you’re working on, but you can predict that you can deal with whatever happens - and that’s true confidence.

Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t. But if you approach everything you do with a willingness to engage and a feeling in your bones that you can deal with whatever happens, then that’s pretty damn close to that child like self-belief Jamie talks about, and that’s flippin’ well good enough for me.

My sisters have always been in relationships. As far back as I care to remember there have always been boyfriends and husbands in tow, and when one relationship ended the next started up pretty soon after. Now, I love my sisters to pieces and I’m amazed at how strong they are and how much more they know about life than me, but this whole constantly-being-in-a-relationship thing has always puzzled me.

I’ve seen it with friends and clients too – always bouncing from one relationship to the next with little time between to enjoy being single. No time to just be “you” rather than “the two of you”.

It’s like there’s something uncomfortable about being single for some people, as if being outside a relationship leaves them out in the cold, not knowing what to do. I think there’s a fear that if they leave themselves in singledom they won’t find anyone else who’ll accept them, or that now they’re single they find who they are to be unacceptable.

When single, these people loose confidence in their ability to be themselves. If you’re one of these people, read on.

While you might be immensely capable in other parts of their lives, in a relationship your self-definition is based on who you are in that relationship and what other roles you have in your life – friend, mother, sister, etc. Outside of the relationship that definition goes and you’re left with a sense that you’re in the wrong place or even that you’re the wrong person.

I’ve worked with clients who seem to have a great life and a great relationship, but who come to me wanting to know just who the hell they are. The relationship they thought they wanted came from the need to be accepted and the fear that they won’t be.

The trick is to find a solid sense of who you are and what you’re about, a sense that no matter what happens – relationship or no relationship – you’ll be just fine. The trick is to want to be in a relationship because of everything it brings to the table and everything it allows you to be and do, not because you need to be in a relationship.

This means being brutally honest about what fears you have about being single, and finding a way to be okay with that fear. Entering into a relationship because you’re scared of what might happen if you don’t sounds pretty silly, doesn’t it? Entering into a relationship because you know how much you want to be in it strikes me as the most wonderful thing possible.

Me? My problem’s the reverse.

I’m a single guy, and to be brutally honest with you I’ve been single for longer than I’d care to be. I know in my bones that I don’t need a relationship and that my happiness isn’t dependent on being in one. Yes, there have been times in the past when I dearly wanted to be in a relationship and I opened up and made myself vulnerable to try to make that happen.

Unfortunately for me those relationships didn’t work out, which obviously sucked big time. As defensive and private as I am it’s no surprise that my big fear is being vulnerable and being rejected, but I know that allowing myself to be vulnerable is what I need to do to be in the kind of relationship I want, and that’s okay with me.

Whether you’re scared of being single or scared of entering into a relationship, it takes true confidence to take a course of action that scares you half to death.

I’ve just got back from a few days in Sweden (congratulations again on your wedding Ralphie and Helen!), where I strolled around and explored the city of Stockholm. For a vibrant capital city it’s amazingly laid back. I expected a noisy hub like London – constant din, hustle and people jostling you out of their way. It wasn’t like that at all, and I was amazed at how serene the city was.

Walking around, if I closed my eyes I could be in my sleepy home town of Tunbridge Wells such is the volume level, even in the busiest of areas. Cars stop politely at crossings; people in stores, restaurants and café’s wear smiles and will gladly go the extra mile; it’s one of the safest cities in the world and the population seems to be perfectly content in their beautiful city.

Which brings me to the point. What struck me about the Swedish is how happy they are to be right where they are, something that’s most certainly represented in the laid back nature of the city and the people.

In London, New York and other major cities, people are rushing from one place to the next, never waiting long before wanting to move onto the next thing. The next intersection, the next meeting, the next task, the next social function, the next job. I’m as guilty as the next guy for falling into the ‘gotta get going’ habit.

Using the 80/20 rule, the Swedish are happy right where they are 80% of the time and looking to move forwards 20% of the time, the rest of us are happy for 20% of the time and restless for the remaining 80%.

This difference struck me very clearly, and it’s also indicative of why goals – which in places like London and New York have been pushed down our necks by the self-help industry for at least the last 20 years - don’t work.

The very nature of goals make you look forwards at what’s next, never at what you’ve got right now. Goals have the tendency to make you feel less-than, because there’s something you don’t have now that you aspire to have in the future. Goals introduce a gap between where you are and where you’d like to be, which instantly makes part of where you are right now a place you don’t want to be.

Once you reach a goal, what’s next? Gotta have another goal. Then another, then another. When do you get to stop and just enjoy life right where you are?

Show me a goal-hungry person and I’ll show you someone who’s always wanting something better to come along, someone who’s convinced – albeit perhaps not consciously - that reaching their goals will lead to their happiness. Even if that person reaches a goal I’ll bet that it lacks meaning and personal relevance, and so the hunt for meaning, relevance and happiness goes on.

This is how the very nature of having goals can hurt your self-confidence, and is exactly why I stopped coaching people on goals a couple of years ago and found a method that works much better.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned in coaching and in my personal life (and my trip to Stockholm was a timely reminder) is to recognise where you are right now and to enjoy it.

Goals don’t matter a jot unless you have that first.

I can’t catch a ball to save my life. I suspect that if a Very Bad Man had an automatic weapon aimed at me and demanded that I either catch a ball or a bullet, I’d fumble the ball and get a bullet right in the kisser.

Fortunately I’m not a sports player or a likely target for deranged gun-owners, so there are very few times where that particular weakness of mine matters. Another of my weaknesses is that I like to be in control and have a tendency to think very logically, which sometimes strips away any spontaneity. Someone hurtling into my well-constructed plan could well be on the receiving end of a frosty reception as I hastily refocus and replan. The impact of that can be pretty harsh, both on me and other people

What I’ve learned is that my creativity and my need to have a whole load of fun can be a great way of dealing with that particular weakness. I recognise that planning everything and looking at everything coolly, is, well, just plain dull. I need to laugh myself silly and I need to allow myself to wing it sometimes.

I’ve got bags full of weaknesses and bags full of strengths, and I’ve learned a whole lot about both. I’ve seen too often that people are always quick to beat themselves up for their weaknesses, and that negative focus can quickly strip away your self confidence and self esteem.

Just as you need to be confident in your strengths, it can be a real eye opener to get to know a little bit about your weaknesses and learn some simple ways to kick them into touch.

Suzi was a client of mine whose promotion in her marketing agency meant that she had to travel around and deliver presentations to clients. She was terrified. She’d presented once before and had frozen solid, so her level of confidence about having to present regularly was zero.

She waxed lyrical about how badly organised she was, how badly she’d screwed up and how she just wasn’t a good presenter. She was really just focusing on her weaknesses (some of which she’d blown up out of all proportion) and creating her reality exclusively around those weaknesses. That’s where her focus was so that’s what her experience became, and her confidence suffered as a result.

In one session I took her through my strengths exercise, and we found that she was actually pretty brilliant creatively, had a huge amount of energy and determination, and was fantastic at connecting with people one-to-one both socially and professionally.

So what we did was find ways for her to play to her strengths in her new role. She looked at her presentations as a playground for her creativity which suddenly allowed her to enjoy what she was doing. She used her strengths in connecting with people to shift her thinking from having to present to a room full of strangers to presenting to a room full of individuals she could connect with.

Suzi’s still presenting, gets amazing feedback and absolutely loves it.

Your can more than compensate for any weaknesses you might have, so don’t beat yourself up or feel less than for having them. Here are my 4 strategies for managing them.

1. Transform them. Just like Suzi did, how can use your strengths to overcome your weaknesses? What strengths can you apply that will transform your ability to deliver? Your strengths are more than a match for any weakness, don’t let yourself think otherwise.
2. Eliminate them. Do you actually need to do what you’re weak at? If you don’t need to do it, why do it and beat yourself up about it? Like me playing catch, if you can eliminate the activity without dodging responsibility or eliminating something you enjoy or something important, by all means go for it.
3. Delegate them. Is there someone else you can give the task to? Can you outsource the activity or give it to someone who’s stronger at it than you? Again, if it’s something you can delegate without it being a way for you to dodge responsibility or avoid screwing up, then go for it.
4. Minimise them. How can you minimise the weakness? Is there something you can learn that will improve it or the impact that it has? What’s a way that you can practice or get better at something that might be a weak point? Remember, you’ll never excel at a weakness so know when to call it quits.

When I started out as a coach I gave away coaching sessions because I thought I had to. I figured that I wasn’t a ‘proper’ coach yet, and that I had to practice as much as possible to get to a point where I felt like I could charge someone for a coaching session.

When I’m working with a client who’s starting up a service business, whether it’s a coach, and interior designer, a yoga teacher, a sales consultant or a photographer – there’s inevitably a point where they’ll have to decide whether to work for free.

As I commented on Allena’s article, if you have a skill that’s valuable, a talent that’s marketable and you (hopefully) love what you do, don’t’ believe for a second that you need to give those things away for free.

As I experienced myself and as I see with clients, a lack of confidence can get you thinking you have to work for free to get started - and you need to be brutally honest about whether you really need to work for free or if it’s a case of being more confident in your capabilities.

If you work for free because you feel like you have to to get where you want, that you somehow have to pay your dues to succeed or because you feel you’re not ready or good enough to be paid yet, then you need to take a step back and look at things differently (and more confidently).

Do not give away what you can do for free because you lack confidence in what you can do. It devalues you and it devalues what you do.

That devaluation is true for your own sense of self, but it’s in others people’s heads too. When I gave away coaching sessions they rarely worked out, simply because people held the perception that if I’m giving it away that it can’t be worth anything. With the belief that what I was offering had zero value, they weren’t committed to giving the coaching a try in the same way as if they were paying.

Starting out, you need to be willing to figure out a pricing structure that works for you and your target market. Of course, there are always exceptions, and there might be times when it might be wise to work for free. Those times are when it will give you valuable experience, make a valuable connection with someone (which might lead to all kinds of other work, experience and connections) or if it’s something that’s important and relevant to you.

If any of those things are true then go for it - it’s a worthwhile thing to do. Just know when enough’s enough, because there’s always someone out there who’s willing to take advantage of someone who’s generous.

Here’s a quick round-up of some of the most useful and insightful things I’ve found on the Net recently - all with a relevance to confidence and self-esteem…

1. You’re Not the Brand I Thought You Were, Starbucks
   An insightful post relating where Starbucks went wrong with dating and relationships. Nicely done.
2. Making It
   Sam talks a lot of sense in this post about what success really looks like, and how TV seems to be making us believe it’s something else. The key point for me is when Sam says - “Be your best - even if no one’s watching“.
3. Finding Time For Yourself In A Busy Day
   I’m a frequent visitor to Dee’s blog, and this post is an excellent example of why.
4. Your Own Big Picture: How to Know What You Should Do Next
   There’s a balance between making things happen and letting things happen, as Monica’s found, and sometimes you have to evolve even if you have no idea what you’re evolving into.
5. Why Women Attack: The Affirmation Effect
   Good for you Allison, couldn’t agree more.

I’m a frequent visitor to The Onion, and stumbled across this great video.

It reminded me how sometimes the trickiest thing to do is not to begin something, but to let go and move on.

Not so long ago I was coaching full time and working from home every day. My commute was from my bedroom, down the hall into my home office. The only time I spoke with people was ordering my morning coffee and while on the phone with a client, which ended when the session was up.

I have to admit to going stir crazy and being bored silly. As much as I loved and still love coaching, doing it from home on a full-time basis doesn’t work for me. I need to be around people a whole lot more than that.

So I needed to make a different decision, and switching to coaching part-time wasn’t an easy decision for me to make. It felt like I was giving up on something that meant a huge amount to me, it felt like I was letting down my coaching peers and it felt like I’d be seen as quitting.

Nevertheless, I knew I needed more stimulation and more human interaction, and it was clear that that was more important to me than sticking with a full-time coaching business. I took a deep breath and went for it, and it was most certainly the right move.

The safe and stupid thing for me to do was to keep doing what I’d been doing simply because it was a known quantity, but the confident thing for me to do was to make a decision to move on. That’s a decision you need to make if:

1. What you’re doing no longer matters to you in the way it once did, and has no relevance to what matters to you now.
2. Neither what you’re doing or what you’ll gain along the way will contribute towards something that matters to you (in whatever measure), or is part of the game you really want to play.
3. You’re squeezing yourself into a box that’s too small for you, pigeon-holing yourself in a way that, left unchecked, will damage your sense of self.

Feel free to write the worlds foremost text on anteaters, igloos or hairnets if that’s what matters to you. Otherwise, make a decision to let go and move on.

How do you stand up? How do you walk down the street? How do you make toast? Chances are the answers to those questions are pretty straightforward (unless you’re an A-List celeb in which case you’ll have people to do those things for you).

You stand up by using the muscles in your legs, using your abdominal muscles to stabilise you and sometimes using something solid nearby to lean against or use as a surface for leverage.

You make toast by putting bread in the toaster and pushing the handle down. Sometimes you even stand up and make toast at the same time (not for the faint-hearted).

There are things that you do all the time - everything you do, feel and think - that either work for you or don’t work for you. If I look at what I did, felt and thought back in 2001 to end up being made redundant and suffering from stress and depression I can see that I ignored the quiet little voice inside me that was telling me exactly what I needed to know, carried on acting like I was perfectly happy, drank as much alcohol as I could and switched into auto-pilot so that I didn’t have to think or feel.

If I look at what I do to make myself such a good dancer, I can see that I have natural rhythm and let my body take over. Just kidding on that last one. I dance like Ernest Borgnine.

If there are situations where you suffer from low confidence - job interviews, first date, networking, etc - knowing how that feeling of low confidence comes about can open up a whole world of possibility. So the question is, how do you do you low confidence?

Here’s something to try -

1. Imagine that you’re handing over to someone else for a day, someone who will step into your life and do everything in exactly the same way you do it, even down to how you think and feel. To let them experience things in the way you experience them you need to write down a step-by-step instruction manual for how you experience low confidence in that specific situation.
   
   Think about what happens to start you feeling ‘less-than’ or doubting yourself? What happens in your head? What do you tell yourself? What sensations do you feel in your body? What’s the next thing that you tell yourself, and the next thing you feel physically? Keep going, and write down every step you can think of that would allow someone to pick up the instruction manual and do exactly what you do.
2. That’s your personalised instruction manual for how you “do” low confidence, and you might already have written down something that’s surprised you or has you kicking yourself. What jumps out at you from your instruction manual?

3. Now try turning it round and creating an instruction manual for having bundles of confidence. For each step of your manual, write down the opposite action. If you’ve written -

   1. I tell myself that I really can’t do it.
   2. I tense up my shoulders and neck.

   then turn it into

   1. I’ve done bigger things than this, so I know that I’m perfectly capable of doing it.
   2. I consciously take a moment to relax my shoulders and take a deep breath.

When you know how you experience low confidence in a particular situation you no longer have to play it out in the same way. Just by knowing how, your instruction manual has already started to be re-written.

The benefits are there if you’re willing to open up and figure out what your instruction manual’s doing. This is all about giving you a choice to do things differently, and this kind of choice needs radical self-honesty and full disclosure.

Right now I’m a happy and very relieved man. The Big Messy Project I’ve been running in my ad agency in London is over. Finally. Done with. Delivered.

The sense of satisfaction and relief is enormous – I’ve finally got some room in my head and space in my day for other stuff other than the often spiralling, politically charged shenanigans concerning Big Messy Project.

The good news is that it’s delivered right on time and doing exactly what it’s supposed to – it’s a successful delivery, which is what I’ve worked my butt off to achieve.

But there were times early on in BMP when I wasn’t sure at all whether any of it would be get delivered, and times when I wanted to run away and pretend that it was just a bad dream (worse than the one I have about being eaten alive by a 50ft Tony Robbins).

Those early please-let-me-run-away moments happened once or twice a week. I’d look at the huge to-do list and feel intimidated by the apparent impossibility of delivering everything, leaving the odd task or two sitting on my list in preference of sticking my head in the sand.

And, wouldn’t you just know it, the more I left something sitting there on my to-do list, the more work stacked up around me. The more I ignored something the bigger it got, and the more I let my work slip, the worse I felt about my ability to deliver great work. The worse I felt about my ability to deliver great work, the worse I felt about myself.

I could have said ‘No’ to taking on BMP, but that still, quiet voice in my head told me, ‘Steve, don’t run away just because it’s Big and Messy. You’re better than that.’

In a recent article, Holly Hoffman hits the nail on the head by saying ‘I don’t want to put mediocre work out into the world… I may not be passionate about my 8-5 job, but I am passionate about being a quality employee and co-worker.’

Nice insight Holly. It reminds me of a scene at the end of the movie ‘City Slickers’, when Billy Crystal comes back from his cattle-driving adventure, having previously thought about quitting his job because he just doesn’t enjoy it or get satisfaction from it any more.

With a renewed sense of vigour and a baby cow in the front room, he turns to his wife and says ‘I’m not going to quit my job. I’m just going to do it better.’

All the time you resist the crappy parts of your work that you’d rather not do you’ll never do great work, and perhaps worse, you’ll damage your perception of your ability to do great work. I’ve experienced this myself, and I know that many of my clients do too.

Make a choice to engage with the crappiest parts of your job and you’ll be surprised at the difference it makes to both the quality of your work and your level of confidence.

That’s me when I was around 4 years old (funnily enough I have a very similar polo shirt that I wear now!). Of course, at that age I had no idea what was in store for me, and just a couple of years later when I was around 6 years old I remember being asked by my primary school teacher what I wanted to be when I grew up. I reflected for a moment and torn between two options I said ‘I’m not sure. Either an artist or an inventor.’

I had two pictures - one of me in a huge studio, being swept along in the moment as I created magnificent works of art that would make people weep, and another of me in a lab coat with crazy hair surrounded by bubbling test tubes and all manner of electronic devices as I used all I knew to build Something Amazing (TM). Those two sides have always been there for me (I’m a typical Gemini) - the art and the science, the creative and the logical, the head and the heart.

In my 20’s I got sidetracked by a successful but personally damaging career in IT, which lead to me hitting my quarter-life crisis, losing my self-confidence and having to rebuild myself piece by piece, and I can see that part of the reason for hitting that crisis point is because I came to live purely in the logical part of me and pretty much ignored the creative side.

As a 6 year old boy I’d identified that both themes were hugely important to me, but ended up paying an extremely high price for it when I went forward with a life that didn’t reflect that.

Those two themes persist for me to this day, and a day where I can use my logic and my creativity is a great day because I get to use the things that have always been there and still persist for me.

Another memory that’s been a puzzle until fairly recently, is when I was 13 or 14 in my Religious Education classes. In some classes we’d ditch the normal teaching format in favour of a debate, where the teacher, Mrs Evans, would lead us all in a debate on particular topics related to religion in the world. One day, she asked me to come up to the front of the class, invited me to sit in her chair and told the class that I was going to lead the debate that day.

It felt great - I was sitting in the big chair at the head of the class, I was letting people speak and counter, and I was managing the flow of the whole thing. I remember clearly how much I enjoyed it.

Mrs Evans asked me to lead the class in a debate 3 or 4 times, and never asked anyone else. Why would she do that? I think the only reason can be because she wanted me to see something. To be honest, I’m still figuring out exactly what, but I think it has to do with leading people and bringing out what’s important to them.

Thanks so much Mrs Evans.

The great thing is that my work now - both the coaching and the ad project management - is a fantastic combination of head and heart, thinking and feeling, creativity and logic, orchestrating and leading - and that’s why it works.

I share this all with you because I’ve worked with hundreds of people who come to me with low confidence, not knowing what they should be doing, and they want to figure out how to be more confident so they can go forwards with something that feels right.

They feel stuck, like they spend just a tiny amount of time doing what they love and want more out of their lives and careers. Some of them even wonder if wanting something more is too much to ask for.

In my opinion and experience, having work that includes the things that have persisted for you is absolutely critical in terms of loving your work and getting more richness out of your working experience.

So figure out what your themes are. In your early days at school, what did you want to do when you grew up? What did you want to be when you were a kid? In your teenage years or at college or university, what did you really want to be, regardless of whether you took that route or not? What have been the most enjoyable and rewarding parts of the jobs you’ve had?

What patterns can you see? What are the themes that come out and what still persists for you to this day?

Look at the patterns and themes that have always been there for you. Those things aren’t going anywhere, and ignoring them is ignoring who you are and who you’ve always been, and that’s a sure-fire way to lose all confidence in yourself.