Are You Doing Confidence Backwards? (Most people are)

Who doesn’t want more confidence?

With confidence, you can do just about anything. You can certainly do more than you can do without it! ;)

While many believe confidence is something you either ‘have’ or ‘don’t have,’ confidence is a skill and, like any other skill, it can be learned.

But here is what trips most people up…they believe you cannot have both confidence and fear at the same time, or you can’t have confidence and self doubt at the same time. SO, when they feel fear or doubt, they believe they are automatically lacking confidence — and they don’t take action.

If there was anything to ever be wrong about, it’s that! ;)

Not only is it possible for those things to coexist, but that is quite the norm.

Being confident doesn’t mean you are always confident and nothing more, just as being happy doesn’t mean you don’t sometimes feel sad, mad, or frustrated.

Most people do confidence backwards — they think ‘when I have more confidence, I will take more action.’ The secret is, when you take more action, you become more confident.

Consider this saying, “The hero and the coward feel the same fear; the only difference is, the hero chooses to take action.”

Action is the differentiator when it comes to confidence. You cannot think your way to confidence and you cannot talk your way to confidence; you have to act your way to confidence. You have to do things.

The hero is just as human as the coward, and at no point is it reasonable to think that the hero doesn’t question what he or she is doing.

For example, when somebody is running into a burning building to save someone else, that doesn’t mean they’re not thinking things like, “I don’t know if this is going to work,” “I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing,” or “I wonder if I can actually make this happen.” But while they might think those things, they still DO it.

The very act of doing something, as opposed to shying away from doing something, is behaving or acting confidently.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t ‘believe in yourself’ or if you’re full of fear and doubt. As author Susan Jeffers says, you can “feel the fear and do it anyway.”

If you want to grow your confidence, you need to start taking more action. Most people do it backwards…they think ‘when they have more confidence, they will take more action.’ The secret is, when you take more action, you become more confident.

Want to know how to have more confidence and less stress in your life so you can become the person you want to become? Reach out and let’s chat.

Photo by Ethan Elisara on Unsplash