Baby Stepping Your Way To Self Confidence
Do you believe that some people are born confident? Well friends I am here to tell you confidence, just like any other skill we have, is learned. Sure just like any of our traits there is likely a small genetic component that is with us since birth, but the large part of our confidence level is learned. Unfortunately, our brains are really good at learning, and this means that we can really quickly learn to lack confidence.
Our brains learn from every experience we have. Sometimes those are positive experiences. We get promoted, or get complimented by a friend. But sometimes these experiences are negative, like getting fired, or someone criticizing us. Unfortunately, our brains are really good at learning from negative experiences. It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Our brains want to avoid bad things, so these events stick in our memories easily so we can avoid them in the future. The downside is that our brains are quick to focus on the negative, and these negative memories can easily get linked together in our brains to bring down our confidence.
Take a minute and think of 5 times you messed up in the past week. 5 times you said the wrong thing, or made a mistake at work, or someone said something mean or critical to you. Was it pretty easy to think of 5 examples? Now think about 5 positive things you did in the past week. 5 times where you did something great at work, or got complimented by someone. Was it harder to think of the positives? That’s normal.
Because our brains are trying to avoid pain (physical and emotional) they are alert for situations that might be uncomfortable, so when bad things happen our brains really pay attention, and they start being on the lookout for more bad things. This means our brains end up pointed at the bad, and end up ignoring the good! No wonder we doubt ourselves and our confidence is down.
The good news is that we can train our brains to overcome this tendency to focus on the bad, and instead focus on the good to boost our confidence. How do we do this? You guessed it. With baby steps.
We have to overcome our brain’s habit of focusing on the negative slowly. The first baby step is to start paying attention to the good. I encourage you to start a habit of each night writing down 5 things that you did well that day. They can be small things like I got that email sent, or my boss said good job on a project, or I made a delicious dinner for my family. The important point is to write them down. This trains our brain that these successes are important to watch out for.
It will feel weird at first, like you are bragging or you will tell yourself these small things aren’t that big of a deal. Stop that! Right now stop that thought! It’s not true. Don’t let the doubt set it. Stick with it. Your brain will start to focus on the things you did well rather than the small things you messed up on (P.S. we all mess up, all the time, it’s normal).
Try this for a week. Take 10 minutes at night and write down those things you did well. Check in at the end of the week. Is your confidence up a bit? Are you focusing more on the good things rather than the bad? Over time with many baby steps our confidence will grow, and we will feel braver to take on new challenges, which will only increase our confidence more!