Imagine a situation when you’ve been offered an opportunity of a lifetime, everything is ready to set it in action, you’ve got the necessary skills, but you still think that you’re not good enough for the job. People expect you to accept it, but you say 'no,' because you feel the need to improve in this area or get some experience in another.
The moment you make this fatal decision, you realize what kind of damage you've just done for yourself, and, despite that, you still believe that someone else would be better for this job. Isn’t just a thought of it a frustrating experience?
At this moment, you have 2 major options:
1) Accept that you’re an insecure and timid person
2) Do something about it.
Unless you’ve chosen the first option, let’s do something about it!
When I was in my high-school years, I would consider myself an insecure person. Every decision was a struggle for me. I wanted to please everyone, which led me to do things that I wasn't interested in doing at all. I’ve accepted the first option, but then I’ve encountered an acting coach who taught me a few power poses exercises, which eventually led me to my confidence building journey.
Later, when my acting coach wasn’t around, I was in search of a person who would be able to push me in my confidence training daily. I've realized that the coach was inside my mind all along. I called him Confidence Sensei, and from now on, he was always there to push me a little harder when I was about to give up.
After years of training, I've filtered out 7 areas that must be trained regularly to maintain the proper amount of confidence for everything that you may need in your life journey, and Confidence Sensei is there to keep you on track.
1) Exercise
This is a foundation. If you start your day with a few sets of 15 - 20 push-ups, you'll feel the difference right away. Do it for a week, and you'll be ready for your first public speech. It doesn’t have to be push-ups, of course, any regular exercise will do. Physical activities decrease stress hormones and boost the ones that are responsible for your happiness. This simple change in the hormone’s dynamic transforms your inner dialogue when you face the tasks that require confidence. Now, you’re highly likely will make a more confident decision. While exercise in itself is always an excellent choice to start building your confidence, you still have to challenge yourself to actually make that confident decision, which leads to the next area.
2) Practice small confident active decisions
Making no decisions is a decision as well, so be careful with that. Small active decisions, on the other hand, are the best low-risk practice to build up your confidence one small step at a time. Pick an area where you struggle to make a decision. Possible settings: grocery shopping, getting ready for a date night, or choosing a movie to watch. Once you’ve chosen a low-risk area, now it’s time to prepare yourself for future decision-making. Let’s say. You need to choose what movie to watch, and instead of sitting in front of a TV and scrolling through the endless list of movies, decide in advance what specific film you're going to watch so that the next time you open 'search,' you know exactly what to type in. Don't let yourself slip into the rabbit hole of indecision. Apply the same principle for other small and active decisions to build up your confidence for the big ones.
3) Wake up at the same time every day
When you do so, you develop a habit that makes your life a little bit more predictable, and when it is so, you won't be lost in your decision-making process. You start to trust yourself more because your body can rely on your regular wake up time and, therefore, you can be more confident. While when you don't care about your waking time hours, your life becomes chaotic, and it's much harder to make any decisions in any area. Now let's move to some of the more challenging areas.
4) Practice public speeches
This one is the best investment you can do in your confidence and your carrier. There are so many opportunities nowadays to practice and study orator's skills, and my favorite one is the Toastmasters organization. They have classes almost in every major city all around the globe. The most important part is not to just sign up for the club, but actually attend it and give speeches. The club is a safe environment where you can develop a confident voice in front of the public. The speaking clubs are amazing, before AND after each speech, every speaker receives a generous round of applause, which is in itself a fantastic confidence boost. You’ll learn how to speak, listen, and practice thinking in front of the crowd, so then when you need to make your confident decision, you know your strong and weak points as a speaker.
5) Take acting classes
This is a fun one. I understand that for some of you who've never taken any acting classes, the idea of it may sound terrifying. Do it anyway. Acting teaches you how to be truthful with your emotions, and the most common way of getting there is relaxation. You’ll learn various techniques of voice and body relaxation you’ll free your muscles from tension, so the real you can come out. When there's no tension, there's nothing to worry about. Therefore, it's easy to make a confident decision. As a bonus, you'll practice your memory skills each time you memorize a monologue to read in your acting class.
6) Record yourself
For some reason, this simple and enormously powerful practice is overlooked. If you're afraid to listen to your voice, it means that your voice, tone, and body language aren't in their best shape. I know, when you listen to your voice recording, it may sound like torture, I've been there myself, but your job is to work through all the elements that are bothering you, so your next speech can sound better and which is most important, more confident. If you do this analysis after every speech, you’ll become a master of your voice and body after 10 sessions. And remember, however bad, you think your voice sounds now. Every one of us has a 'perfect natural voice' that is pleasant to you and the people around you. If you're confident in your voice and body language, you can easily ask for a raise at your job or even act in a movie. Your ambition is the limit.
7) Practice being you
Last but not least, this is a reminder not to lose a sense of who you are. When you study people with admirable confidence, your job is not to copy them, but to study their learning process. When you try to become confident like someone else, you may actually do some damage and appear like an arrogant person. Confidence is not about being externally confident, but about being able to internally make decisions that scare you and dare to act upon them. Work on the inner confidence, and the external will come.
Now, with the help of your private Confidence Sensei, you'll be able to act upon any decision that you've made, and nothing's going to make you hide in the sand, avoiding making hard decisions. Make sure your Confidence Sensei is pushing you to work on all of the above 7 areas of confidence development. Listen to him carefully. Do not ignore him, and you'll surpass your master. Do the first step and record yourself NOW, so you’ll be able to know where to start your confidence building journey.
