A couple of days ago I was faced with a challenge at work that was so towering and unflinching in nature that I trembled in its shadow.

This challenge was a couple of large projects I’ve taken on for a global ad agency, and taking them on meant that I had to deliver. Trouble is, they’re big, messy, amorphous, high profile projects with seemingly impossible deadlines.

For a moment, I felt as small as a flea sitting on the arse of a cow who’s chewing the cud in a field that you drive by at 70mph.

I wanted to leave the building and not come back. That would be easier than having to deal with all the crap, wouldn’t it? They could always find some other mug to manage these projects, and then I could be sitting at home writing articles and trying to find words that rhyme with ‘cop-out’.

Then I recognised that my fear was talking to me, and that if I didn’t do something the following would happen:

• The challenge would beat me before I’d begun. If I continued down that road then the challenge would have beaten me before I had the chance to even try to rise to it. I saw the challenge as bigger than me, and that meant that I saw myself as no match for it.
• My negative self-talk would tell me I’d fail. With fear waving at me with one hand and gripping my balls in a vice-like grip with the other, I was telling myself that it just wouldn’t work. I was automatically creating the scenario where things would go wrong and saw the chance of failure as more of a cert than the chance of success.
• My pride wouldn’t let me take a fall. My pride told me that I didn’t have to do something that I knew wasn’t going to work, that I’d be much better off keeping my reputation intact and getting out while the going was good. My identity and my pride threw made-up reasons at me for not going forwards, and if left unchecked those reasons would embed themselves in my identity and constrain everything I did.
• My Gremlin would have all the proof it needs. My Gremlin – the part of me that will use every trick in the book to keep me away from change and risk – would have some fantastic evidence to use in the face of any future challenge. “Remember those big projects you avoided Steve? Remember how you were really brave and took a step back and didn’t screw up or fail? I kept you safe Steve and we can do it again.” My confidence would be lost.

Luckily for me, I know a thing or two about this confidence malarkey. Phew.

I saw that my Gremlin was revving up to full speed and spotted what I was telling myself for what it really was – excuses and cop-outs that would damage my self-confidence and self-esteem.

How I Beat the Voice of Fear

The first thing I did was to take a deliberate step back, because I know that allows me to be radically honest with myself and see things as they really are.

It’s only when you create some space that you give yourself room to make a better choice.

Once I had the space to think and move, here’s what I did –

1. I looked at the evidence.
I took a moment to look at the evidence of what had gone before. From performing on stage, to delivering a keynote speech to delivering Big, Messy Project at a previous agency, I knew I’d faced bigger challenges and won. If I’d previously risen to challenges that at first glance seemed bigger than I was, then this was no different.

If I’d previously risen to bigger challenges, then there’s a good chance that this was gonna be easier than I thought.

2. I trusted the process.
I can’t tell you exactly how these projects will turn out in the end, for the simple reason that they’re not finished yet. Could be good, could be bad. Could be great. What I do know is that if I follow the process of delivering a complex project then the project will get delivered, and the chances are that it’ll get delivered just fine. I know that if I start with a, b and c that I’ll be ready for d, e and f when the time comes.

Looking at the whole it seems impossible, but if you start at the start and take one bite at a time then you’re able to devour the whole thing. None of us are fortune-tellers, but if you trust yourself to engage with a process the logical conclusion is the end of that process.

How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

3. I simplified things.
If I make things complicated for myself then I know I’ll have a complicated, frustrating experience. Queen Victoria famously said, “Simplify, simplify, simplify.” Or maybe it was Delia Smith. Doesn’t matter, the point is that I asked myself “How can I make this easier?” and found ways to simplify where I am right now.

4. I reminded myself of what’s important.
Ad campaigns come and go. There will always be another project, another campaign, another Big Scary. What’s important for me to is to enjoy what I’m doing, know that I’m doing my best work and to give myself space to engage with the other projects that really matter to me. If I can’t work with laughter on my lips then something’s very wrong.

There will always be a Big Scary

The projects are still challenging and will need me to think on my feet. But I’m more than up to it.

And there are other, perhaps scarier challenges I want to face. The date with the beautiful girl didn’t work out, chiefly because I was sick as a dog and just wanted to go to bed. Not with the beautiful girl for a healthy bout of horseplay, but to close my eyes and fall into a coma.

But the fact that we didn’t click isn’t going to stop me from asking the next girl out because I want to meet the woman I can laugh myself silly with, read the Sunday papers with, have riotous sex with and who challenges me in ways I can’t even imagine.

I want to move to New York City to expand my working and personal experience. I want to take my coaching business to a whole new level of expertise, exposure and fun.

And those are just 3 of the challenges out there for me.

There’s always going to be a Big Scary that makes me – and you – want to run and hide. That’s just as it should be. If there was never another Big Scary that would mean I’ve given up on life, I’d simply be going through the motions until the guy with the heavy cloak, big scythe and bad breath came for me.

Either I’m ready for the next Big Scary, or I get myself measured for that casket.

How do you know when you’ve become confident enough to do the things you really want to do?

What will it take for you to stop saying “I can’t” and start saying “Sure I can“?

It’s entirely possible that you’ve given no thought at all to this question, which is exactly why I’m asking it.

Every person I talk with has their own way of thinking and feeling about self-confidence and I couldn’t begin to count the number of different answers to this question I’ve heard.

I have my own answer that’s based on what I’ve observed from my clients and my own experience, but I wanna hear your thoughts first.

How will you know when you’re truly confident? What will it take?

Imagine a scale from 1 to 10.

10 is feeling like you’ve got all the self-confidence you’ll ever need (without ever straying into arrogance). Being a 10 out of 10 means that you feel like you’re able to deal with whatever life throws at you, learn from it, pursue the things that mean the world to you and feel wonderfully and powerfully you.

Being a 10 out of 10 means that you’re truly confident.

Being a 1 means that your self-confidence is at rock-bottom. Life scares you into inaction. You put up with things because that’s what you feel you need to do. You talk yourself round and round in circles and side step any opportunities that come along because they’re too risky or because you know you won’t succeed. You feel like you’re one of life’s victims, that all you get is the bad stuff and if life would only give you a break you’d be able to get going. If only you knew what “getting going” involved.

Being a 0 means that you can’t imagine what it’s like to be truly confident.

So where are you on that scale from 1 to 10?

What difference would an extra point on that scale make to you? What would an extra point mean for you and your life?

Now add 2 points to your score and dive into the world of differences that would spring from that leap up the scale. What’s different? How does it feel? What are you able to do now that you weren’t previously?

Can you ask that guy out now? Can you take the leap and quit your job? Would you be able to make new friends? Has a weight been lifted? Could you get going with that creative project or side business? Could you cut off that toxic relationship?

Tell me what you find…

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.

1. “Being confident means that I can do it all myself”
   On the contrary, people who lack confidence are less likely to ask for help as they’re more scared of looking weak or people saying no. With confidence comes the awareness that you do sometimes need help – whether it’s practical or emotional – and the ability to feel okay asking for that help.
2. “If I work hard enough success will follow”
   Success isn’t just about putting the hours in or working to exhaustion, it’s about leveraging your strengths and talents to make it easier while maintaining a good level of energy and health. Sure, sometimes you need to put extra work in and sometimes there’s a lot of pressure, but success comes from being plugged into the things that matter and using what you’re best at, and true confidence also means being able to prioritise your own health and wellbeing. Ignore those things and your hard work will be for nothing.
3. “I should fake it ‘til I make it”
   Focus on faking confidence or success and you’ll become a big faker. While it can be useful to step into other points of view and to try on different perspectives, trying to ‘act confident’ or ‘act successful’ is about bluffing other people and even trying to fool yourself. It’s like trying moving into the mansion when you only have keys for the cow shed.
4. “Nothing can stop me if I have complete self-confidence”
   Life will always have something up its sleeve that can rock you to your foundations. There’s always a twist coming that can throw you off course, something unpredictable that will cast doubt on things. That’s life. True confidence is your best chance for being able to navigate through those times while keeping true to who you are and what’s most important to you, but it doesn’t stop life from trying to throw you overboard.
5. “I won’t be scared of things when I’m confident”
   Confidence means that you better equipped to take risks and do the things that scare you, but that’s not a one-time thing. A rich, successful life demands that you continually engage with what matters and sometimes that’ll be the big, scary thing. You can still be shaking in the face of a challenge and be truly confident. True confidence doesn’t mean you can’t not be confident, it just means that you trust yourself to deal with whatever happens.
6. “Confidence is really about positive thinking”
   People assume that a smattering of positive thinking is all they need. Wrong. Positive thinking is like dressing a cow up as a duck and asking it to quack. It’s not going to fool anyone. The key is to have the foundation of self-confidence first, then positivity comes more naturally.

   There’s the story about the housewife standing in her kitchen, looking out the window to her garden which has become a bit too overgrown with weeds for her liking. Looking at all the weeds spoiling her view, she tries a bit of positive thinking. ”There are no weeds.”, she whispers, ”There are no weeds”.

   That little piece of positive thinking doesn’t change the fact that there are weeds in the garden. If that housewife felt better about herself she’d have the self-worth needed to do the weeding.

7. “I have to make sacrifices to be successful”
   People think they have to give up what’s important to them in order to be successful, that it has to be a personal struggle or that they have to suffer in some way. Absolute rubbish.

   Real confidence means that you know what’s most important to you and allows you to prioritise your life around those things. Sure, while prioritising what matters most might sometimes mean sacrificing the time and energy you spend on the things that don’t, that’s not a sacrifice – it’s freedom.

8. “Self confident people have big ego’s and are ‘in your face’”
   The misconception is that people who have bundles of self-confidence are in your face, ego stroking, full of themselves idiots. I know I’ve met people who fall into that category, but it’s not because they have bundles of self-confidence. Quite the opposite. True confidence has a quietness and grace to it - it’s not about getting in peoples faces and being the loudest, it’s knowing who you are, what you’ve got and finding your own voice in the world.
9. “Confident people always get their own way”
   The lie here is that confident people always make sure they’re heard and will use their confidence to exert influence so they get their own way, whether professionally or personally. That’s just not true, although I’ll accept that confident people might have more of the skills needed to influence or negotiate. People who are over-compensating will make sure they’re heard and manipulative people will orchestrate things in an effort to get their own way – none of those people will have true self-confidence.
10. “Confident, successful people set goals and achieve them”
    The myth is that success is achieved by setting goals and working towards them, and that confident people have a way of doing that that means they’ll succeed. I disagree. The stats show there’s a 70% to 80% failure rate in goal setting, and goals bring all kinds of problems to the fore. Setting a goal instantly creates a gap between where you are now and where you want to be, which can easily make you feel like a failure before you’ve even started.

    Setting a goal means that you’re looking towards something that isn’t part of your life right now, and that makes it difficult to connect with and put energy into. And of course the goals you set are too often based on what you think you should want, rather than what truly matters to you.

    Real success is achieved by playing a game that matters to you right now. It happens by engaging with something that’s important to you, and that just happens to be how people become truly self-confident.

11. “I’m just not a naturally confident person”
    Rubbish. You demonstrate confidence every single day, and I guarantee there are things you’re absolutely confident in. Are confident behind the wheel? Are you confident dealing with the detail of your job? Are you confident when chatting with a friend or your partner? Are you confident cooking a meal or brushing your teeth?

    Natural confidence is being able to choose your behaviour with implicit trust in that behaviour, and everyone has it. Some people are naturally more extroverted or introverted and that’s fine, that doesn’t mean you’re more or less confident. You have natural confidence in you, it’s simply down to working out what it feels like for you and applying the same principles to the areas you’d like to feel more confident in.

12. “Success is all about how the world sees you”
    People often look for external signs of success, whether that’s material possessions, your reputation, your status or the feedback you get. The misconception is that the more of those things you have, the more successful you are. Not so.

    While those things might indicate how well you’re doing (or what kind of impact you’re having), it doesn’t necessarily connect with genuine, happy success. How many people chase the next promotion in the hope that they’ll feel successful, only to find that they feel just the same? I know I have.

    Real success is about how you relate to what you’re doing and what it means to you.
    

13. “My levels of confidence and self-esteem were fixed at childhood”
    The lie here is that your level of self-confidence is fixed at childhood, that however much confidence you have in your teens is how confident you are for the rest of your life. The truth is that your confidence and self-esteem might rise and fall throughout your life depending on what you’re experiencing, but that you can always do something to improve how you feel about yourself and your level of confidence. Don’t just roll over and accept a lack of confidence and self-esteem, you’re better than that.
14. “If I loose weight/have a breast enhancement/get a nose job I’ll feel much better about myself”
    You know what? Doing something to improve your physical appearance will make you feel better about yourself. Bet you didn’t think I was going to say that, right? But it’s true. Whether it’s a new haircut, a new outfit or something more permanent like a surgical procedure, you’re likely to feel good about your new image.

    For a while, at least. The trouble is that it’s a very short-term strategy to achieve self-confidence. Once the novelty’s worn off it’s back to being you in your old life, with all the problems, doubts and fears that brings. So while your appearance can and does matter, nurturing healthy self-esteem is about more than getting a boob job or new nose. It’s about acknowledging who you are at your core and giving yourself the freedom to be yourself.

15. “Using affirmations is a good way to build confidence and self-esteem”
    I hate affirmations. Really, I do. The thought that the self-help industry has pedalled for too long is that reciting something over and over again makes it real. That’s like trying to become a millionaire by looking at a dollar bill a million times.

    Affirmations don’t make much of a dent. It’s trying to pull the wool over your own eyes and make something real that isn’t. Research indicates that people with a lack of self-esteem don’t believe affirmations simply because they don’t value their own opinion, and the problem is that when they fail to work they leave can leave you with less self-esteem than when you started.

I love being in a social whirl, bouncing around a room having all kinds of conversation with all kinds of people. Laughter, smiles, stories and just a little flirting – if I can have an evening with those things then I know I’ve had a good night.

I’m not particularly extroverted, in fact I’m probably more inclined towards introversion, but I’ve learned how to engage with new people in social situations, make new connections and make a great first impression.

I thought I’d put together some tips and advice for you if you find it tough to talk with new people in social situations, and if you’re shy some simple ideas for making social events much easier.

1. Don’t overthink it.
   If you’re shy then I’m sure you’d agree that you spend a lot of your time leading up to the event dreading it. You think of a great excuse you can make to not go, you think of a great excuse to leave early, and you beat yourself up about how you won’t really enjoy it, how you won’t know anybody and what’s the damn point anyway?
   

   The more you think about it the worse it gets

   Keep having those thoughts and you’ll never want to leave the house, so watch what you’re telling yourself. Talk yourself down and you’ll be setting yourself up for having a miserable time, when in truth you don’t know what’s going to happen. You might meet someone really fascinating, you might hear a great story, maybe you’ll hear a joke that makes you laugh out loud and maybe there’s a friend of a friend you’ll be glad you met.

   Look at what you might gain and don’t drag your thoughts into the pit.

2. Go to places where you’ll like people
   If you know that you don’t get on with hunters then don’t hang out at you local shooting club. If you know that you hate clowns then avoid the circus.

   The point is that in order to meet the kinds of people you’d like to meet you have to go to places where the kinds of people you’d like to meet go. I have a remarkable grasp of the obvious, don’t you think?

   What values, traits or interests do the people you get on with share? Where do these folks go? How can you get involved? You’ll find it so much easier to meet and talk with people who share something with you, so make sure you’re targeting the right kinds of places or events.

3. Smile
   Would you go and talk to someone who’s skulking in the corner of the room looking at their shoes with a frown on their face? Nope. How about someone who seems warm, accessible and friendly? It’s a pretty safe bet which one will have a better time. Check in on your body language from time to time and see what kind of image you’re portraying. Loosen your body language, put yourself where the people are and smile.
4. Nobody’s judging you, and if they are it just doesn’t matter.
   Truth is that people will always make judgments about people. We probably shouldn’t, but we do. But with that said remember this – it’s not a competition. You don’t have to compete to be the most popular, you’re not competing to win people over and there’s no prize for the highest number of handshakes or pecks on the cheek.
   

   What people might think is their business - it just doesn’t matter

   You have no control over what people will think, and you should never operate from a position of trying to control people. Some people will love you and others won’t – that’s just the way it is – so the way you behave and the way you interact with people should be independent of what others think. Relate to people in the way that makes sense to you, and forget about what others think.

5. Have an opener
   If you’re shy then it’s often those moments when you’re desperately trying to think of something to say that are most awkward and painful. While you don’t need to open every conversation and don’t need to fill every silence, it can be useful to have a couple of openers ready to pull out of the bag.

   So think about where you’re going, what the event is, who will be there and what they might have in common. Perhaps the most overlooked opener is to simply introduce yourself, and it’s one I use all the time. “Hi, I’m Steve” I say, with a smile and a handshake. Of course, feel free to use your own name.

   Once the introduction’s made, here are a few other ideas for openers –

   ”So how do you know [insert mutual friends name here]?”
   “How’s your week been going?”
   “What’s the best thing about being a [insert job title here]?”
   “Have you tried the [insert the name of something tasty or awful from the buffet table]?”

6. Expect some discomfort
   The simple fact that you’re on the shy side means that going out of your comfort zone will involve a little discomfort. There’s that famous grasp of the obvious again.
   

   Growth happens when you’re stretching yourself, and sometimes that’s uncomfortable

   Experiencing discomfort can be an awkward experience if you put your focus onto the discomfort, so the trick is to acknowledge it and recognise that it’s okay – it’s a sign that you’re on the right track.

7. Have fun with it
   
   Nobody’s going to die, nobody’s going to get maimed and nobody’s going to get pelted with rotten food, so RELAX. You’re off the hook, this isn’t a test and you don’t need to perform, so you’re free to just relax and be yourself.
   

   Forget about the rules, just do what comes naturally and enjoy it.

   Imagine how you are with your best friend – your guard’s down, you’re relaxed and you’re comfortable – this is you at your best so use that behavioural experience and apply it to a new social environment. This is playtime, so have fun with it.

8. Forget about being interesting, be interested
   Nobody likes to hang around someone who’s talking about themselves all time, someone who’s showing off or someone who’s clearly trying too hard. You don’t have to be the life and soul of the party and you don’t have to be the most interesting person in the room. Instead, be interested in other people.
   

   Be curious and be genuinely interested.

   People love being around someone who has a genuine interest in what’s going on for them, so be curious and have a real interest in someone else. We’re not talking Gestapo or Spanish Inquisition levels of questioning here, but do go to a social event with a healthy interest in the other people in the room. Do that and you’ll be a hit.

As a confidence coach I know that there are all kinds of strategies, ways of thinking, patterns of behaviour and practical tips for improving your life and feeling better about yourself, but they’re all as useful as a concrete parachute if the foundation isn’t there first. The foundation is the real you; the sparkly, shiny, naturally confident you that – way down deep - you know yourself to be.

Here are 3 ways to find your inner confidence.

1. Get to Know What You’re Made of
   I’ll often get carried away with myself when I start talking about personal values, for the simple reason that they’re one of the most important things you can know about yourself and are absolutely vital in getting real inner confidence. When it comes to values, I make no apology for waving my arms around or talking too quickly.

   Your personal values are ten thousand feet down inside you, right at the very core of who you are. They’re the things in yourself, in others or in the world that’s most important to you, and could include things like respect, progress, family, fun, nature, achievement, freedom or a million other things. They’re the building blocks, the foundations and cornerstones for you.

   Why do you think that some people and situations leave you feeling angry, frustrated, demotivated or deflated? It’s because one or more of your values is being denied, suppressed or repressed (or one of those ‘ess’ words) and you experience that negatively because it’s denying a fundamental piece of who you are. How about those times when you’ve felt really alive, amazing or buzzing? Those are the times when you’re plugged into one of your values or when one or more of your values are being expressed. Get more of that feeling by living according to your values.

   Your values are hardwired into you and no matter what happens no one can ever take them away. You can have absolute trust in them because they’re there all the time just waiting for you to notice them and use them. Get to know your values and you can start to make choices with them in mind and to align your life around them. It’s such a simple strategy, and it feels fantastic because you’re allowing who you are right at your core to live in the real world.

2. Listen to Yourself
   People spend too much time looking for signs that they’re doing the right thing or on the right path. Sometimes we get that by hearing that we’re doing well at work, sometimes it could be encouragement from a friend or loved one, and sometimes we get that feedback by seeing our material wealth or possessions growing.

   But rather than looking on the outside for those signs, how about looking on the inside at what you’re telling yourself? How about trusting yourself to make great choices? How about trusting your own insights and using your own intuition? I’ve seen these ideas scare the bejeezus out of people and you know why? Because it makes you accountable and responsible for what you get. If you trust yourself implicitly and you make the wrong choice, you’ve got nobody else to blame.

   The simple fact is that we all make mistakes and we’ll all continue to make mistakes, but how would it be if you could trust yourself to get through anything and trust yourself to continue making choice, even if you sometimes screw up? That’s the kind of trust I’m talking about, and that’s genuine inner confidence.

   Self-trust only comes when you listen to yourself and what your intuition is telling you. When you really listen it becomes easier to trust yourself to make decisions, to trust yourself to roll with the punches and to trust that you’re good enough to deal with whatever happens. True confidence follows.

3. Exercise the Muscle
   Confidence is a muscle, and like any muscle you need to exercise it so that it doesn’t shrink and atrophy. The problem is that unlike your biceps or glutes, which tend to stay in the same place, your confidence muscle can be harder to find. How do you develop your biceps or firm up your glutes? By doing exercises that are designed to develop that muscle over a period of time.

   It’s just the same with confidence. Let’s say that you’re the kind of person that doesn’t take many risks, the kind of person who goes through each day doing what needs to be done and doing it well, but not really stretching yourself. You might talk yourself out of doing something because it’s too scary or because you think to yourself ‘I’m not good enough,’ ‘that’s not who I am‘ or ‘I don’t really want it anyway‘. You live within what you know and you generally stay within a zone of safety and comfort.

   The fewer risks you take, the less confident you need to be and so the less confident you become.

   To work your confidence muscle you need to be prepared to take risks, big or small. You need to be willing to stretch yourself in a new direction, to try something new or try something in a slightly different way. You need to open yourself up to the possibilities around you and push yourself to increase what you know, what you do and even who you are.

   The more open you are to risk, opportunity and possibility the more confident you need to be, and so the more confidence you’ll develop.

   That’s how your confidence muscle works – so the big question now is, what are you going to do to exercise yours?

There are a few things that separate the truly confident from the majority - the ability to make decisions, the ability to be okay with things, the ability to trust their behaviour, the ability to plug into what matters and – last but certainly not least - the ability to listen to what’s really going on, deep inside.

I’m talking about the truth of what’s happening in your life; I’m talking about that little voice inside you that knows exactly what’s going on.

Yeah, I know that talking about’the little voice inside you’ might sound cliched or twee, but I guarantee you have one. Everybody does. It tells you the truth about what you’re feeling and what you’re experiencing, as well as the truth about the circumstances and situations you find yourself in.

It’s a pretty damn handy thing to have, let me tell you.

There have been times when I didn’t listen to my voice, when I pushed it back in its box, closed the lid, drove out to the desert, dug a very deep hole and buried it. I totally ignored what I was trying to tell myself, that I was in the wrong place doing the wrong thing, and I paid a heavy price for ignoring myself.

I didn’t talk for a month. Scratch that, I couldn’t talk for a month because my head couldn’t fathom anything that was being said let alone try to frame a response. Time became elastic, some days seemingly taking a week to pass while at other times a week would pass in an afternoon. Everything just stopped, broken, and it took over a year to get myself back together.

I know that I could have avoided all of that if I hadn’t ignored what was really happening and heard what that little voice was trying to tell me, and I know there are many others not listening who are in the wrong place doing the wrong thing.

So over the years I’ve learned to trust that little voice. I notice when it has something to say and I encourage it to say it. I give it the space and time it needs to figure out what’s happening and let me know, and man alive I’m glad that’s a lesson I’ve learned.

Your voice knows exactly what’s happening in your life. It knows that part of the deal with being human is that your feelings and emotions go up and down, and yes, sometimes they’re confusing, unpredictable and downright painful. It knows that your feelings are where you experience your life and everything in it. It knows that if you cut yourself off from your feelings you’ll be cutting yourself off from your own life and you’ll feel disconnected from everything.

That little voice of yours is your connection between you and your life.

If you’re pursuing something that isn’t right for you your voice will try to tell you. If you’re wasting time doing something that doesn’t matter your voice will try to tell you. If there’s something you crave your voice will let you know about it. And if you’re ignoring something important your voice will point it out to you.

What truly confident people know is that they need to listen to the messages they’re telling themselves, whether it’s something they want to hear or not.

Are you confident enough to listen to your own voice, even if it tells you things you might not want to hear?

I’ve been reading a couple of posts featuring the one and only Buzz Lightyear over at 6 Weeks and Men with Pens, which did 3 things:

1. Made me grin at the thought of a cracking good film.

2. Made me want to be a Space Ranger when I grow up.

3. Demonstrated what real inner confidence is all about.

What Buzz had was rock-solid self-belief. He knew he could fly, even though he couldn’t really. He knew he had to live up to the principles of a Space Ranger, even though there was no such thing as Star Command. He knew he was special, even though there were tens of thousands of Buzz Lightyears sitting on toy store shelves.

Then of course, there’s the moment where Buzz sees the truth. He isn’t a real Space Ranger. He’s a toy. T-O-Y, toy.

He sees the TV ad with shelf after shelf of boxed-up Buzz’s. He sees that he’s nothing special. His mouth falls open. He gives up.

Now this is enough to break this 37 year old guys heart, but then something interesting happens. A challenge comes along. Buzz’s friends are in trouble and they need him to be the old, special Buzz who can make things happen. In the face of huge challenge, Buzz reconnects with what he has 10,000 feet down inside him and his self-belief comes blazing through.

When challenged, he trusts himself.

Where I disagree with Brett over at 6Weeks is that this is not about faking it. If you fake confidence all you’ll be is a big faker, and if you’re not careful it’ll only increase your awareness of your current level of confidence versus the level of confidence you haven’t yet achieved.

There’s a big difference of focus between faking it and trusting yourself.

Faking it:
- means going forwards with the aim of getting away with it, scraping through or fooling people.
- is knowing you have shortcomings and trying to convince people that you don’t.
- is being aware that you don’t have what it takes and carrying on with a bluff.
- Is pursuing a course of action that doesn’t mean much to you.

Trusting yourself:
- means going forwards knowing that you can deal with whatever happens.
- is knowing that your strengths more than outweigh your weaknesses.
- is being able to choose your behaviour with complete trust in that behaviour.
- Is choosing a course of action that genuinely matters to you.

Buzz didn’t fake it. He didn’t try to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes and didn’t try to fool himself. Even though he didn’t know how things would turn out, he knew he was up to the challenge, knew that the challenge meant something to him personally and trusted himself to get going and deal with whatever might be thrown at him.

Buzz was truly confident. A big round of applause for Buzz, please.

Which would you rather do – fake it or trust yourself implicitly?

1. You’ll Get More Done.
   Procrastination is making choices from a place of apathy and disconnection – you put things off because you can’t be bothered or because you can’t see the pay-off in doing something. True confidence is being plugged into what matters and knowing that there’s a pay-off in whatever you do. True confidence is about making choices that serve you well, not about making excuses for what might not work.
2. You’ll Worry Less.
   Worrying forces you to look at all the reasons you can’t, won’t or shouldn’t do something, and chips away at your self-confidence and self-esteem. Having greater inner confidence makes it easier to get on without worrying whether things will work out or not – you simply trust yourself to deal with whatever happens.
3. You’ll Be More Attractive.
   It’s widely acknowledged that confident people are sexier and more attractive. People sub-consciously pick up on nuances of behaviour, so if you’re a big bag of doubt, fear and low self-esteem people will see that and behave accordingly. Real inner confidence is about having a sense of ease, congruence and acceptance – and that’s something that people always find attractive.
4. You’ll Have Better Relationships
   Having true confidence means that you can engage with people without worrying about them judging you or how they perceive you. Whether it’s relationships at work, at home, with friends, strangers, partners or loved ones, real confidence in relationships means being able to contribute the best parts of you without getting trapped in game playing or self-doubt.
5. You’ll Have More Fun.
   True confidence means that you’re plugged into what matters in your life, and it comes with a sense of lightness and fun. Being more confident frees you up to enjoy what you’re doing and allows you to spend more of your time having fun, whatever you’re doing.
6. You’ll Master Your Fears
   Fear is the number one thing that holds you back, and letting your fears make your choices for you is sure to shrink your confidence, your life and your sense of self. With true confidence comes an implicit trust that you’ll be okay no matter what, like a comfort blanket. That makes it so much easier to recognise the fears that are holding you back and get going in spite of them.
7. You’ll Take Better Care of Yourself
   Real inner confidence means that you’ll know when it’s time to prioritise taking care of yourself. That’s not being selfish, it’s being practical. You only have so much energy and it’s up to you to keep yourself topped up, otherwise you’ll be running on empty. Real confidence lets you see where you’re pouring your energy down the drain and gives you the choice about what you say ‘No’ to and what you say ‘Yes’ to.
8. You’ll Make Yourself Heard
   Ever been in a meeting where things were said that you had a valid point of view on, but you didn’t speak up? Ever been in a situation where you didn’t stand up for yourself and you kicked yourself later? Real confidence is being able to have a conversation and voice your opinion when it’s important for you to do so, regardless of how scary it might be.
9. You’ll make More Connections
   Your network is a vital piece of achieving continued success in today’s world, so meeting people and making connections is a key skill to master. The good news is that meeting people and networking is much easier and completely pain-free when you have genuine confidence. With true confidence you’ll be meeting, greeting, shaking hands, offering help, exchanging numbers and filling your network with the people you need.