Practical Ways to Improve Your Confidence

Where’s the line between confidence and arrogance?

Society has a problem with confidence. Too little, and people think you’re insecure, lacking conviction, and unsettled. Too much and you’re deemed a cocky braggard.

I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t matter.

Because what matters is how you feel. About yourself.

If you’re seeing yourself through the eyes of others, and attaching judgements based on how you think you’re perceived, you’re already screwed.

I was like this. A cocky kid, I was fearless. Loud. Verbose. Gregarious. But I’m also sensitive, and when people called me arrogant, it hurt me. It made me go inside myself. I started sanding down my edges. I nerfed who I was to try to become more accepted.

It took me nearly a decade to realise two important facts:

When people don’t feel good about themselves, they try to diminish others. They project their insecurities onto them
I wasn’t (and never have been) arrogant. Because I don’t think I’m the best at anything, or that I’m good at everything. I’m just not scared of being bad at stuff, and this gives me confidence

I know I’ll try my best. And I enjoy learning.

What Kills Confidence

So how do I continue to feel confident? It starts with winning the first battle — don’t repeatedly tell yourself you suck.

If your internal voice is putting you down, that’s damaging. Hell, it’s toxic. Because even with things you’re genuinely bad at, there are good things to focus on.

Sometimes you might say to yourself something like ‘you’re just a bad X’. If you don’t catch that thought and confront it, you’ll end up repeating it. Believing it. Your subconscious will imbibe this poison.

So when you do hear it, make a point of looking in the mirror and challenging the thought.

That’s the first step towards feeling more confident. Here are some more that I’ve had a lot of success with.

Practice, practice, practice

I know, booooo. I said the obvious thing. But before you click off, hear me out.

Imagine you’ve got a big speech tomorrow. Most people would focus on trying to memorise the script. And if you’re anxious, you’ll probably run through a bunch of worst case scenarios in your head and start dreading it.

But what if there’s a better way?

Dr Nate Zinsser, The director of West Point’s influential Performance Psychology Program, asks people he coaches to try envisioning. It’s “a confidence-building skill based on a simple but striking biological fact — your imagination stimulates actual physical changes in your body at many levels, from entire systems… to specific organs and muscles, and very importantly, to neural pathways in the brain.”

Practice in front of the mirror, but imagine it’s well received. Imagine people love it. Tell yourself things like ‘People want to hear my speech’ and ‘I’m a confident speaker’. Not will be. Am. As in, it’s already happening. You’re already that person. Sure, it might feel a little delusional. But how is ‘I’m a terrible speech giver’ any less so?

If you tell yourself you are terrible at something you are actually good at every time you try to do it, what kind of results do you think you’ll get?

Nobody gets performance anxiety before washing the dishes. You know you can do it because (unless you’re that stinky housemate) you’ve done it a million times. It’s become an automatic process.

The more comfortable you feel doing something, the less anxiety there is. But the story you tell yourself is just as important.

Harness positive self-talk. And visualise your success.

Practice in More Challenging Conditions Than You’ll Ever Likely Face

When I was a young, fresh-faced teacher, I did some voluntary English teaching in orphanages on the border of Thailand and Burma. They had minimal resources. In most classes, I had some white chalk and a blackboard. That’s it. And this was to try and teach about 40 kids. My training hadn’t prepared me for this.

By overcoming this when I was a trainee, I was able to get jobs in better-resourced schools around the world.

I’d managed to teach on a dirt floor in South East Asia to 40 kids. It wasn’t easy. But it showed me I could still have fun and teach well regardless of the circumstances.

In football, they use smaller pitches to train on so players have less time on the ball to think. In tennis, they use smaller balls to help improve reaction time and hand-eye coordination.

Give it a try now. Listen to a podcast on 1.5X speed (or faster if you normally do 1.5X). See how you feel when going back to normal.

Build Self-Confidence Through Tough Self-Care

This isn’t another bubble bath BS manifesto or call to spend 40 minutes every morning repeating affirmations.

But everyone has things that bring them out of their stressed mindsets and into something more productive. Or makes them feel like their best self.

So if you’re sat on the sofa in your free time stuffing your face with empty carbs and filling up socks, it’s hardly the foundation for an aspirational self-image.

If you’re serious about improving your confidence, stop making your life so convenient. You want a little discomfort. You need it.

Pain is inevitable. Challenges too. So don’t aim to build a life for yourself that removes all risk, danger, and difficulty.

Craft a mentality that not only survives through those things, but thrives. Do this by keeping a controlled level of discomfort in your life.

And watch how you talk to yourself about those experiences. Frame them as positive lessons and experience. Because they are.

“I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent — no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.” — Seneca

Surround Yourself With Batteries, Not Drains

Jim Rohn famously stated “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

And he’s right. If you’re spending most of your time hanging out with negative people who constantly focus on how bad stuff is, it’s going to take a toll.

We are responsible for the environment around us. We vote for whether we want to grow or recede by who we choose to spend our time with.

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As Robert Greene says in The Laws of Human Nature, “People are naturally more emotional and permeable to the moods of others. Work with human nature and turn this into a positive by infecting the group with the proper set of emotions”.

Cultivate a circle of people that improve you, enrich you, and want the best for you. (Note that this doesn’t mean people who just say what you want to hear or tell you to just get on with things.)

Do this by setting a solid example. Show them what’s possible and make sure everyone feels the spirit.

Attitudes are contagious. Is yours worth catching?

Challenge Yourself

Your self-esteem is your reputation with yourself.

Do hard things. Push yourself outside of your comfort zone. See setbacks as lessons, not reflections of your self-worth.

If you want to know what you’re really capable of, take it to the edge!

When I started working out, my gym mentor said something I’ve lived by ever since:

“Learn just enough so you know how to not injure yourself, then start lifting”

It’s easy to get to the gym and blitz through a bunch of low weight exercises or chase a pump. But neither of these will get you results.

Better to keep adding weight or reps every week and see how far you can get.

Don’t be dumb and try to deadlift 300lbs on day one. Challenges should be just enough that it’s more than you’re currently doing, but not so much you’re in danger.

If you’re not failing regularly, you’re not pushing yourself enough. Which means you’re not reaching your potential. What a waste that would be.

The world is a better place with you in it. And we want the best version of you we can get please. You owe it to us, but really you owe it to yourself.

“Failure is a detour, not a one-way street” — Zig Ziglar

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