What are you good at?  Singing?  Cooking?  Leading a team?  Empathy?  Maths?  Design?  Running?

How about confidence?  You good at confidence?

See, the real truth about confidence is that it’s a skill, and just like any other skill you can learn it.

Learn

By the time you turn three years old and you’re feeding your toys into household appliances, your brain has around 100 billion neurons – these are the doing cells in the brain.  Each of these neurons is connected to around 15 thousand other neurons, and it’s this network that allows you to think.

These synapses connect together to form circuits of wiring, patterns of thought that your brain uses to “do stuff” (that’s the technical term for it).  This is your grey matter, and new connections are formed in your grey matter whenever you learn something new, see something in a new way or acknowledge or understand something.

This is all learning is – building new connections that allow your brain to process things in new ways.

Just like any other skill, self-confidence is a pattern of thought wired into your brain; a circuit that gets triggered when it’s needed.  If your self-confidence pattern isn’t used much or isn’t efficient at getting a result, learning is what enables a new, more effective self-confidence circuit to be built.

And like any learning process it feels awkward and deliberate at first, simply because your brain doesn’t have an efficient circuit yet.  It’s like learning to juggle – tough at first, but you get better.

Which brings us onto what gets you to Carnegie Hall…

Practice

It’s been shown that through practice the density of grey matter in the brain increases.  Taxi drivers in London, for example, are required to learn and pass a test called “The Knowledge”, a notoriously difficult test that demands learning every street in London (although somehow my cab driver always seems to be the one who skipped lessons).  The posterior hippocampus (I’m pointing to the lower central bit of my head now, see?) in London cabbies is bigger and denser than in you or me, simply because their brain has adapted and grown in response to the need.

So practice builds grey matter in the parts of the brain where it’s needed, but new research shows that white matter increases with practice too.  A fat called myelin is produced in your brain when you practice something deeply, as author and thoroughly nice guy Daniel Coyle describes in detail in the brilliant “The Talent Code”.

Myelin insulates these circuits from signal loss, supporting the ability of these circuits to fire at maximum speed and ensuring that whatever skills you’re practicing work as efficiently and effectively as they possibly can

Your circuits, self-confidence included, are just like muscles – the more you use them in the right ways the bigger and more effective they get.  The less you use them, the smaller and less effective they get.  Practice is what makes the difference.

Confidence Gets in the Way

Okay, so that’s the science bit.  The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’ve seen that even though someone can be really bloody good at something, their lack of confidence stops them from using a skill or from practicing.  An insufficiently developed self-confidence circuit means 3 things:

1. It’s harder to practice the skill of confidence because you’re not confident enough to practice.
2. A poorly developed or inefficient self-confidence circuit makes it harder to practice other skills that require self-confidence to pursue.
3. Circuits that aren’t fired due to a lack of self-confidence will not get used as frequently and will fall into disrepair.

So I began to see confidence as something that gets in the way of firing other circuits – it can stop the circuit of another skill firing, and it can even default to a different, tried and trusted circuit to fire in its place.

If you lack confidence that you can build a business, for example, then you might not entertain the idea of becoming self-employed.  You might fire a pattern of thinking that says it’s best for you to stay in a job you don’t like because there’s more security and it doesn’t require you to have a more developed confidence circuit.

If you’re not feeling confident enough to go on that date you might turn someone down unnecessarily or you won’t ask out that guy or girl you’ve met.  Even though you’re normally sociable, you might even “choose” to avoid certain social situations or to retreat into yourself.

This is all your brain selecting circuits based on what it knows to work, and I think that that self-confidence acts like a meta-circuit – if it isn’t fired then it short-circuits any subsequent firing mechanism.

You end up not feeling confident and not following through.

I wanted to bounce this off someone, so I emailed Daniel Coyle and asked him.

What Daniel Coyle said

“I think you’re right to think of it as a meta-circuit — and also one that gets built from the earliest ages — and thus would be immune to quick fixes.  So while it grows exactly like a skill, it’s also pretty well wired in so that it’s easy to fall into old patterns.  One neurologist I spoke with compared existing behavioral patterns like sled tracks on a snowy hill — the more you behave in a certain way, the more likely your sled is to fall into those tracks.  So that “backsliding” moment you’re speaking of — when someone seems to have it, but still falls into old patterns of non-confidence — would be expected. Even if they’ve worked with you for a year, they’ve still got decades of “non-confidence” circuitry that’s fast, fluent, and ready to fire.

So the question becomes, how do you stop that from happening?  How do you demarcate old and new?

The places that seem to have the most success in these areas (that I visited) are good at demarcating the old and the new (places like KIPP and the Shyness Clinic), they use a cohesive suite of cues and signals to help create a new persona — and by your website, you’re doing some of the same things.  Also, it seems that playing up the difficulty and arduousness of this can have a good effect — it cures people of thinking there’s a quick fix and allows them to see the truth — this does take time. It’s exactly like a gym workout — and you’re training people to run a marathon, not giving them a one-minute makeover.”

I don’t believe that it’s necessary to create a “new persona” – it’s a case of creating a new way of thinking – and so the separation of old and new is something that’s very central to how I work. (This pleases me, because I hadn’t thought about it before Daniel mentioned it.)

Daniel’s also right in saying that it’s hard.  It’s hard to leave behind years of efficient (if ill-serving) wiring and risk going into the unknown, just like it’s harder to run a marathon than it is to stroll down the street.

The real truth about confidence is that it requires you to make a choice based on your potential to learn and practice rather than your existing boundaries.

Even the most confident of us have moments when self-confidence seems to vanish quicker than a pre-election manifesto promise (ooh, topical).

What you can’t do is think that losing confidence in yourself means that you’re not confident.  You still have confidence, you just have to apply it.  Here are 3 of the biggest reasons you lose confidence in yourself and what to do about them.

1. You’re somewhere new

If you’ve arrived somewhere in life you didn’t expect it feels pretty scary.  Unfamiliar territority, new people, new challenges – it’s easy to lose confidence when you’re somewhere new.

But who said that’s not how it’s meant to be?  You’re supposed to be feeling a little scared; if you weren’t then where you are wouldn’t matter, and that would be a dull place to be (believe me, I know).  So don’t think that shaking in your boots when faced with something new, big and scary means that something’s wrong – it’s just means that it’s the first time you’ve been here.

But please remember that you’ve been in new places before.  Your first day at school or college.  A new job or a new relationship.  Life is full of “somewhere new”, and you’ve got through it all just fine and learned all kinds of cool stuff to help you deal.

So use what you’ve learned and use what you know to be true.  Start at the start, do what you’re best at, make decisions that serve you well and trust yourself to make a new decision when you need to.  You’ll be better than fine – you’ll be confident.

2. You start role-playing

Your brain’s very cool, I want you to know that.  It has a bunch of maps stored away, maps that help it navigate through situations based on the routes it’s learned in the past.  Left to it’s own devices your brain does the most efficient job it can of plotting a course from point a to point b and keeping you safe on the way.

But sometimes your brain is where the problem lies.  There are times when your brain picks a really old map, something it’s used time and time again successfully, but it completely forgets that the landscape might have changed.  In the blink of an eye your brain picks a pattern of behaviour that’s out of date and no longer matches with who you are and what matters to you today.  Sometimes, your brain picks a route that emphasises safety over results.

Let’s say there’s a family occasion that means you have to head home to see your folks (and siblings if you have any).  You love them, of course you do, but they drive you a little nuts if you spend too long with them.  At some point when you’re back home with them you start behaving differently.  Maybe you get a little moody.  Maybe you get a little silly.  Maybe you get a little irritable.

You start playing the role of the person you were years before; whether that’s the 8 year old little angel, the 16 year old stroppy teenager or the 21 year old rebel without a clue.

At a party filled with strangers you fall back into the role of a nervous teenager.  At an important meeting you fall back into playing the role of an ill-experienced new starter, scared to speak up.  With your parents you fall back into the role of a child.

I hear this a heck of a lot, I really do.  People switch back to who they’ve been simply because their brain brain matches the inputs it’s receiving to the best developed map it has for safely navigating through the circumstances it finds itself in.  And that means you sometimes start playing roles that no longer apply.

Playing a role switches you immediately from the capable, resourceful and confident you to a you that might be none of those things.  Watch out for these moments when you swicth roles, because they’ll always make you feel like your confidence has vanished and it’s only by noticing them that you can take a new, better direction.

3. Your Expectancies Get Muddled

In addition to switching roles at the tip of a hat, you also carry around a huge, fat rulebook, containing all the stuff that you and other people should do.

This rulebook is constructed from expectancies – everything you expect of yourself, everything you expect of others, and here’s a real brain-teaser, everything you expect others expect of you.

Yep, that’s right – it can be a real mess.  You carry around with you an expectancy set that says things like “I expect my boss to listen to me”, “My manager expects me to be quiet when we’re meeting with the CEO”, “I expect my friend to jump through hoops” or “My partner expects me to not display affection when we’re in public” – dozens, hundreds of expectancies piled up on top of each other that guide your thinking and your behaviour.

Different expectancies flying around that are often in conflict with one another leads to one thing – second guessing.  And what does second guessing mean?  It means you can’t have confidence in your behaviour.

So leave the rulebook behind.  So stop living your life according to a set of expectancies that might not be true.  Don’t assume how you should behave, don’t assume how other people need to behave and don’t make assumptions about how other people expect you behave.  It’ll drive you crazy.

You Lose Confidence Because You’re Not Paying Attention

Put simply, you feel like your confidence vanishes because you’re not paying attention to how you’re thinking.  Each of these 3 causes occur when an automatic thought pattern gets triggered that you don’t notice.  You don’t need to understand how these patterns came about or how they work, you just need to recognise them so that you can trigger a new, better behaviour.

That’s where the magic starts, learning to recognise those situations where you feel your confidence leaving you, acknowledging the thoughts that take you there and making a deliberate decision to do something else, something better.

So I’m interested to know – when you feel your confidence leaving you is it because you’re somewhere new, because you’re playing an old role or because you’re behaving according to your expectancies?  Let me know in the comments.

I want you to forget all about self-confidence.  That’s my aim for everyone I work with and that’s a point I want EVERYONE to reach.

Let’s say you’re learning to dance the merengue.  And why the hell not.  At first you have no clue, but you’re aware that it’s some kind of South American thing, kinda like the lambada or salsa.  Your first classes are tough.  You’re clunking around, trying to remember what step’s coming next while forgetting that you should already have switched to a closed position.  Your feet ache, your partner is sympathetic but frustrated, and you’re wondering if you’ll ever nail it.

But then something interesting happens.  The music starts to make sense, the steps start to flow together rather than being separate, and you start to feel it.

You loosen up, start enjoying it and as you continue to “practice” you have it nailed.  The moves come naturally and you’re even able to improvise beyond the steps you’ve been taught.  You and your partner move as one, the rhythm always letting you know where you are and allowing you to be right there in the moment, a big smile slapped across your face.

I don’t dance the meringue personally because I dance like Ernest Borgnine, but I make a mean omelet.   I can establish trust with someone in moments.  I can always find humour in life.  I can spot problems in a digital marketing campaign and I can belt out a cracking version of “Beyond the Sea”.

I do all of those things without worrying about whether I’m confident enough to do them or not.

And that’s exactly where I want to take people.  To a place where the question of whether they’re confident enough never arises.

Because it’s the point at which you forget about being confident in something that you strike upon your natural confidence.

So while at first a new endeavor might feel clumsy, hard or awkward, with practice you can reach the point where confidence is felt in your bones.

Forget about confidence.  What matters is the dance.

Here’s a little video post that, besides offering a key strategy for building confidence and having more fun, could make you either smile or throw-up.

So what would you love to say “What the Hell” to?  What have you just said “What the Hell” to, and what happened?

The cops turn up at your house and arrest you.  “Holy crap” you think, “I’m in a whole heap o’ trouble.”

Picture that for a second for me will you?

You’ve been arrested because of something, or some things that you believe in.  This belief of yours is something you know to be your truth, it’s something that sits 10,000 feet down inside you, right at your core.

It’s one of your foundations, a cornerstone for who you are and a marker for what matters to you in life.

When you live in line with this part of yourself it feels like you’re being natural, graceful, congruent.  When you listen to this part of yourself it tells you which way to go and it gives you the strength to carry on even when times are impossibly tough.

Listening to that part of you is what it is to feel confident.  Truly, quietly confident.

But now, in this hypothetical scene I’ve asked you to picture, you’re accused of being someone who believes, trusts and uses that part of yourself.

The accusation is that you’re someone who believes so fundamentally in who you are and what’s important to you that it shapes your actions and your world.

You’re accused of having the confidence of your convictions.

The prosecution will be interviewing people you know, those closest to you, asking them about your beliefs, behaviour and background.  They’ll be looking at your work and your relationships.  They’ll be looking deep into your life; picking it apart to gather all the evidence they can find to support their case.

My question is, when your day in court comes along, will there be enough evidence to convict you?

You better darn well hope so.

Confidence is a tool you can use in your everyday life to do all kinds of cool stuff, not least to stop fighting with yourself and freely plug into the things that matter to you.

Here are 63 things YOU can do to be more confident.  Pick a couple that jump out, give them a shot and let me know what happens.

1. Sign up for that evening class and enjoy it.
2. Ask your partner or best friend what you can do for them today.
3. Hit the gym.  The physiological effects will leave you feeling great.
4. Go to a networking event and focus on how you can be helpful rather than being nervous.
5. Get crystal clear on the things that truly matter to you.  If they’re not in your life, you need to bring them in.
6. Write a list of the things you’re tolerating in your life, then write down how you can remove, minimise or diminish each one.
7. Look at a great win or success you’ve experienced and give yourself credit for your part in it.
8. Next time you’re at a social event, don’t just stick with the people you know – have a conversation with someone you don’t know and you never know what – or who – you’ll discover.
9. Next time you talk yourself out of doing something, say ‘What the Hell’ and go do it anyway.
10. Do one thing each day that makes you smile (inside or out).
11. Learn the 7 biggest confidence mistakes, and then fix ‘em.
12. Ask out that girl or guy you fancy the pants off (only if you’re single, don’t want to get you into trouble).
13. You have to keep your mind well fed, so write a list of 20 things that keeps your mind feeling nourished and make sure you’re giving them room.
14. Stop squeezing yourself into boxes based on what you think people expect you to act like.
15. Catch yourself every single time you tell yourself that you can’t have, won’t get or aren’t good enough to get what you want.
16. Take yourself off auto-pilot – make deliberate decisions on what really matters to you.
17. Next time you come up against a risk or a challenge, listen to yourself and see how that dialog can be improved.
18. Scared of looking silly? You and everyone else.  It’s no biggie so don’t let it stop you.  Say it with me – “It just doesn’t matter.”
19. Don’t think for a second that you can’t be confident.  There are already loads of things you do with true self-confidence, you just have to notice them and get familiar with how it feels.
20. Listen to your doubts – they’re there to let you know what you need to prepare for.  Use them to your benefit as you move forwards.
21. Think of a time when it felt like a whole bank of switches in your head flicked to the on position.  What were you doing and what’s the reason it felt so great?
22. You’ve got a whole bunch of out-dated rules that determine what you do or don’t do.  Tear up your rule book and notice how free you are to make great decisions.
23. Sweep aside the roles and labels you slip into without thinking, and just be you instead.
24. Look at how you’re using the 5 Principles of Self-Confidence in your life.
25. If there’s someone in your life who puts you down or makes you feel small, you owe it to yourself to let them know that you expect something different from now on.
26. Flirt.  It’s a harmless way to play around with connecting with people and having fun.
27. Reveal a little bit of the real you in a relationship that might feel like it’s in a rut.
28. Notice and welcome all of your experiences – the good stuff as well as the bad stuff.
29. Always recognise that you’re more than a match for any situation you might find yourself in, no matter how tough the going gets.
30. Don’t get swept up in the drama of what’s happening right now, look for more useful ways of engaging with what happens in your life.
31. Don’t automatically give in to the instant pay-off – it often means you’re selling yourself short.
32. When you feel like stamping your foot and yelling “I deserve better than this!”, take a step back and say “I can BE better than this.”
33. Confidence sometimes means admitting you’re wrong – always be ready to hold your hand up and change your mind.
34. Trust your instincts.  They know what they’re talking about.
35. Fear is a way of letting you know that you’re about to stretch yourself and grow your confidence.  Use it to take yourself forwards rather than run away.
36. Imagine you’re visited by a successful, confident, attractive and vibrant version of you from the future, and listen to what they want to tell you.
37. Don’t feel like you have to do everything yourself – sometimes the most confident thing to do is ask for help.
38. Take a chance on something tomorrow.  Anything, big or small, just take a chance.
39. You need to be around people who make you feel like YOU, so spend more time with the people who support and encourage you and less with those who undermine you.
40. Stop struggling against the things you don’t like in your life – create an environment around you that flows and allows you to be you.
41. No man’s an island, and you need to participate in the world you around to feel confident.
42. Do something bold in the face of your challenges and fears.
43. Work on developing the skills you need to win at the things that matter to you.
44. The body is a mirror for the mind, so shifting your body into a confident state can have surprising results.
45. Don’t get disheartened or demotivated when you get to 90% with something you’re working on – push through and you’ll see that the last 10% is where the magic happens.
46. Keep comparing yourself to others?  Stop it, don’t try to validate yourself through comparison – you’re just peachy as you are.
47. Put your head above the parapet at work and speak up if there’s something you think could be improved or if you have an idea you think has legs.
48. If there’s something you’ve been struggling to understand for a while, stop trying to understand it.  Accept it just as it is, fully and wholly.
49. Shy with new people?  Not a problem, that’s allowed.  Just don’t overthink it, start beating yourself up or thinking you’re less than because you’re shy – the more you think like that the worse it gets.
50. Your environment directly impacts your self-perception, so if you’re surrounded by clutter, paperwork and rubbish put a morning aside to clean up your stuff and get organised.
51. Write yourself a daisy list and start making things happen.
52. Don’t make your happiness or self-worth dependent on being in a relationship or being validated by someone else.  Find your inherent value first, and your relationships and confidence will be immeasurably better.
53. Your strengths can be used to overcome any of your weaknesses.  Don’t let them undermine your confidence.
54. The longer you leave that big thing on your to-do list the more it’ll drain you and the bigger it’ll seem – get it done and free yourself up.
55. What golden threads, themes, patterns and passions have always been in your life?  If those things aren’t present in your life right now, you need to shift your priorities.
56. Your body image does matter, because if you have a bad relationship with your body you won’t be feeling confident in yourself.  Get trim if you need to, just make sure you get along with your body.
57. Get the Truly Confident Living Home Study Course and dive right in.
58. Try a new path.  The well-trodden paths of your life can easily turn from familiarity to apathy and disconnection.  A new path wakes you up.
59. Don’t say “Yes” to taking on a task simply because you don’t want to rock the boat – you can politely decline requests you can’t meet and don’t need to create an excuse for it.
60. Look at the people you respect who seem confident – don’t copy them, but identify what do they do differently that conveys confidence and what you can learn from it.
61. Make a plan to do something, then follow through.  Achievement gives you important self-reinforcement.
62. When you feel yourself focusing inwards and becoming paralysed with doubt or fear, switch to focusing outwards at what you can engage and interact with.
63. Still beating yourself up for failing or screwing up? It no barrel of laughs, so it’s much better to recognise that everything, whether it turns out or not, is practice in living a rich life.

As part of my mindfulness treatment for CFS I came across the poem below.  I’m not the kind of guy to share a piece of poetry without good reason, so read ahead and afterwards I’ll tell you why it’s important for you and your confidence, and I’ll explain just what it’s got to do with Yoda.

The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
- Jelaluddin Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks

Whaddaya think?

My question to you is this – how many of your experiences, both good and bad, do you really welcome in?

It’s easy to welcome in the good experiences; a great mood, a large cheque, a successful project, an exciting new relationship, a great promotion, laughing with good friends or some great sex are things you’ll be more than happy to meet at the door with a broad smile and invite on in.

Hell, most people would invite them in, cook them a nice meal, take them on 2 week holiday to a stunning Greek island, buy them a yacht, offer to give them one of your kidneys and propose under the stars with a bottle of Krug and Tony Bennett serenading.

But what about the crap stuff?  How welcoming are you of the stuff that you’d rather pretend wasn’t there?

Do you welcome in your fear?  Do you welcome in your insecurity?  Do you welcome in your weaknesses?

True confidence is about knowing yourself, and that goes for the “dark side” too. And that’s why Yoda was wrong. He had a couple of good points to make, sure he did, like “Do or do not, there is no try” and “Name your fear must be before banish it you can.” Even “When 900 years you reach, look as good, you will not.”

But he was wrong about the dark side.

If you’re resisting the stuff you don’t want – the guests in your house you’d rather got the hell out – you’re creating conflict and struggle within yourself.  That resistance means you’re not engaging fully with yourself, it means there are parts you’re not accepting, parts you’re fighting with and parts that you end up tolerating.

That can only have one effect – to drain you.  Resisting, fighting, struggling and tolerating a part of yourself or your experience will drain your energy, drain your perception about who you are and what you can do, and ultimately drain your self-confidence.

The poem says “Welcome and entertain them all“, and it came as a timely reminder to me of something that I learned long ago – everything in your experience is equally valid, but the real power comes from the meaning you attach to each experience.

Invite in each experience with laughter, curiosity and grace, and [puts funny voice on] become a truly confident Jedi you will.

A thought occurred to me.  Just why would someone want to be more confident anyway?

What’s so great about it that would make someone get off their butt and do something?

Here I am, prattling on about how great true confidence is, but if nobody feels like they want to be more confident then I’m talking to an empty room.

Here’s my thinking…

Let me know what you think – leave your ‘What’ in the comment section.

Podcast: Play in new window

So here it is, my first video blog. Watch in wonder as I move and talk in perfect harmony, while giving you some confidence building tips.

I’ve boiled down a bunch of what I’ve learned about confidence to give you a simple, 5 step process for being more confident. This is as simple and effective as it gets. Let me know what you think.

Note: You see those grey hairs? They were put there individually in post production – those are all CGI grey hairs. The same guys worked on this that put the armies of orc’s into Lord of the Rings. Very cool.

Podcast: Play in new window

Next up in my series of confidence interviews is the indefatigable Tim Brownson.

A fellow coach and a Brit living in the sunshine state (I’m not jealous at all), I’ve been reading Tim’s stuff and talking nonsense with him online for a while now.  He’s alright in my book.

Tim always has something interesting (or funny) to say, so I wanted to get his views about confidence and poke my nose into his experience of it.  I think it’s a great interview and I could have chatted to him for hours (next time you’re over I’ll buy you a beer Tim).

Listen in and let me know what you think.

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About Tim
Tim Brownson is an English Certified Life Coaching living in Orlando, Florida.

His blog, The Discomfort Zone, is a rather left field approach to self development and one that should not be taken lightly. You have been warned.

Podcast: Play in new window