When you look at your heroes and the people you admire in your personal life and business, you see the money they make, the attitude they have, their love life, their goals, their cars, their other physical possessions. But one of the most subconscious things you notice about them is that they appear very self-confident. People that are successful or that are accruing “success” have an air about them. They feel confident in everything they do and say. They don’t care about whether they curse and their attitude about life is that they will succeed with everything they do. It seems that everything they touch is perfection, and they are never worried about making mistakes.
You’ve probably seen this in successful people and wondered, “How do they get that? I’d like to have that too.” I can tell you that someone who’s gone through almost 5 decades in life that that self-confidence you see is key to your personal and professional success. Nothing in life can be accomplished without self-confidence.
Now I’m not saying that being self-confident doesn’t make you not afraid of anything. You can still be afraid while being self-confident. But being self-confident means that you know that what you are doing is heading in the right direction, and there are rewards on the other side of fear.
If you’re reading this, you were likely searching the internet on “how to become more self-confident”. I wish I had a magic pill for you. I wish I had a magic e-course, or a magic wand, or some easy way to turn you in a more self-confident person. I don’t.
The truth is that self-confidence comes with practice.
However, what I can do is I can enable you to be more self-confident by rote and by repetition by giving you a list of things you can do in the next 7 days to be more self-confident. Grab a pen and a piece of paper and start taking notes because if you abide by the following list of things to do in the next 7 days, you will walk out the other side being more skilled, more confident, and a lot further on your path towards your personal and professional success. Here is a list of tasks that you can complete over the next 7 days to be more self-confident.
#1. Review And Celebrate Your Recent Successes.
Review your past 12 months and list 5 of the things that you’ve accomplished. They could be major or minor tasks. They could be a promotion in your job. They could be a new skill that you learned. They could be a physical feat. They could be a repair that you did on your house or something that you built with your hands, or maybe even a new relationship, or a new baby in the household. My goal with this is for you to see that you can accomplish any small task that you really want to do. It will also start your checklist of goals that you completed.
If you want to be more self-confident, one of the best things you can do is look at where you’ve gone so far and what you’ve accomplished. By reviewing your accomplishments of the past 12 months you’ll probably find out there were things you accomplished you didn’t realize you had. And that might put a smile on your face and remind you going forward that progress can be made no matter how slow.
#2. Dress Better to Feel Better.
My second tip for you on building self-confidence is to start dressing better. About 20 years ago, the world went casual. What I mean is the business world stopped dressing formally in suits, and jackets, and ties. Eventually the world got to the more casual jeans and t-shirt of environment. What we notice now is that people that dress NICE are the weird ones that stand out. It’s rare to see a suit.
Why should you dress better?
First of all, I’ve noticed that when I’m dressed better, I feel better about myself. I look better. I’m treated better. And when I’m treated better, I respect myself more, and I respect those around me more. I’m sure you’ve heard that first impressions are important, and I can’t emphasize this enough. They definitely are. From the moment you walk into a business meeting, a partnerships meeting, a new venture, or a coffee shop, people are looking at you and judging you, and people will treat you differently depending on the way that you’re dressed. You can fight it and disagree with it, but it is the way of our world. If a goal of yours is to get more self-respect, (and that SHOULD always be a goal then a good start for this is dressing better. People will see your appearance and regard the things you say as being more honest, more truthful, and more trustworthy, and you will have an easier way getting to your goals in life and in business just by projecting confidence in the way you dress and expressing your knowledge.
#3. Focus On Your Physical Health To Boost Your Energy.
The third thing you can do the next 7 days is go join a gym. I’ve always thought a gym was an interesting place to get self-confidence because everybody that goes to a gym is at the same level. In all good gyms, everybody is equal. There are no egos. Everybody is out of shape and trying to reach a personal goal.
Everybody has different personal goals but the nice part about a gym is every single time you walk out of there, you know treated your body a little bit better. You’ve accomplished a physical goal, and you’re on your way to being in great shape. The better you feel about your body and the better shape that you’re in, the healthier you are. You’ll feel more confident that you can get through the hurdles in life.
Did you know that when you step into a gym, you are ahead of most people around you? Most people do not take care of themselves. Back in the days of the caveman, we were more active.
In the information age, we sit around on our butts a lot more, and we’re getting unhealthy. If you go to the gym, you’re going to be making instant progress compared to your coworkers and peers. And you’ll feel better about your body.
#4. Learn Something New.
The next thing you should do the next 7 days to feel more confident about yourself is go to the library and get a how-to book for something you’ve always want to learn. Dollar for dollar, a library is the best investment you can have to increase your knowledge and wisdom about any topic. Most libraries are free and huge. And every single facet of human knowledge and history can be found in a library. Everything you want to know from building a computer to repairing a car to putting plumbing in your house can be found in that building that is probably less than 10 miles from your house. Get to a local library, pick up a book or two on something you’ve always wanted to learn even if you have no intention of actually doing that task. At least reading a book about the topic will give you the confidence to know that could attack a task with some wisdom.
Being smarter about a topic has always made more confident to talk about it.
The same will happen to you.
#5. Get Into The Habit Of Creating And Accomplishing Small Goals.
After you visited a library, then look at setting 2 small goals for the next week and complete them. This also helps your self-confidence by showing you that small things within your reach can be accomplished vs. focusing on big goal and getting frustrated. We don’t accomplish big goals with a single task. Big goals are just several small goals put together. Success, and momentum begets more success and momentum. What you should always be doing is coming up with a way to knock small things off your bucket list or off your checklist, so you can say, “Yes, I got that done. Now, what’s next?” What you’ll notice is that the smaller goals that you knock off your bucket list, you are all of a sudden are accomplishing your medium and your big goals because all medium and big goals are a bunch of small goals put together.
Another reason I want you to set 2 small goals for the next week and then complete them is you need constant reminders that you can accomplish things you put your mind to. Don’t worry about aiming for a big, giant goal because you’ll scare yourself and you will likely miss it, but if you set up a bunch of small goals, you can see those. Those are tangible. You can feel those. You can reach those. If you want to walk a mile, start off taking 5 steps, and then 5 more steps, and then 5 more steps, and then 5 more steps. Then suddenly, even before realizing it, you’ve walked a mile. That’s the way goals work.
Start small, shoot small, relish the success and all of a sudden, you’ve knocked down a very large goal.
#6. Making It Hard To Ignore Your Goals.
After you set 2 small goals and completed them, then what I want you to do is to make up some signs and put them around your house. On these signs, I want you to remind yourself of your purpose in life and of one major goal you have coming up. Why do this? If you’re sitting at your computer watching motivational videos, or reading a blog post like this, or listening to motivational music, or reading a motivational book, you’ll feel great and energized. But then you must get up and go back to the real world. While you’re in your kitchen, or in your bathroom, or in your bedroom, or in the shower, you might forget about the happiness that you felt while you were reading a book or while you were watching a motivational video.
If you take a sign … just a simple 8-1/2 by 11 piece of paper, print out a reminder of a major goal in life or a reminder of something on this list, you’ll be constantly reminded as you wake up every single morning of the things keeping you motivated. When you wake up in the morning and look in the mirror, you’ll have a sign right there that reminds you about a fitness goal. Then as you are in the kitchen and that sign is on the refrigerator and you are contemplating eating good food or bad food, that sign will remind you about your fitness goal.
A piece of paper is unemotional. It’s black and white and doesn’t let you forget. Then, when you go to your job, keep that same sign up in your cubicle or on a wall around your office, and it will again remind you of your fitness goal. Eventually you won’t need these signs, but in the beginning, it’s going to help remind you of your goals when you don’t have your list of goals in front of you.
#7. Cleanse Your Friends To Make Room For Better Ones.
You should review your friends and consider dropping negative people out of your life. What they say about “You are the result of the 5 people you hang around the most,” is very true. When you hang around positive, successful people, you’ll eventually become positive and successful as a result. But the opposite is also true. When you hang around negative people, people that are constantly in your way, they’re not seeing what you’re trying to accomplish. They don’t have high goals and high aspirations and, in some cases, will purposely drag you down so you don’t accomplish yours. I know it may sound mean.
But you really have to review your friends.
Look for the people that aren’t really into accomplishing things and limit your time with them. It will save you energy, and you can put your energy towards better things in life and towards accomplishing bigger and better things with people who are on the same path that you are on of accomplishing bigger and better goals.
#8. Join A Toastmasters Club To Boost Your Speaking Self-Confidence.
Are you fearful of networking or speaking in public because you are afraid of looking like a fool?
Join a Toastmasters club. Toastmasters is an organization that’s been around for several decades. The goal of Toastmasters is to help people become more confident via public speaking. One of the most terrifying things that you can do in this world is speak in front of a group. It takes a tremendous amount of self-confidence and lack of fear to stand up in front of a group of a thousand people and tell them about your idea, tell them about your thoughts, tell them about your dreams and your goals. It terrifies most people.
However, a Toastmasters club is a place where people like this gather to work on the fear together. It’s a judge-free, fail-safe environment where you can go to get constructive criticism about your speaking skills. Once you get more confident about your speaking skills, this will reverberate throughout the rest of your skill set and into the self-confidence you are building.
If you can get better at a pretty amazing skill like public speaking, you’ll realize everything else that’s holding you back, will lift off your shoulders.
Like I said before, public speaking is a huge fear for most people. However, if you join the local Toastmasters club in the next 7 days, you can start to get rid of that fear of public speaking, which will give you more self-confidence in all areas of your life.
#9. Get A Personal Audit From A Trusted Friend.
One of the last things you can do is ask a close, personal friend that you trust (and someone who’s on the same path as you) for a personal critique of your flaws and the things that you do well. This is something that’s very scary to do, and you should only do it with somebody that you have a high level of trust with. What you want them to do is to give you a list of your attributes that they see are good about you and a list of things where you can improve.
Now, of course, we want to review the areas that you can improve up on because these are just good flaws to see from an outside perspective. But I want you to pay attention and focus on the things they tell you that are good about yourself.
Often times when we’re doing some introspective review, we don’t realize the assets that we have. Maybe there’s a particular skill that we have that’s just built-in that we take for granted, but it amazes somebody else. It helps to get an outside perspective on that, so you can understand your assets and realize that there are some things you’re just naturally good at, and maybe you can expand on those to make yourself more self-confident.
#10. Limit Your Time In Front Of The Tube.
The last thing I want you to do to help your self-confidence is look at tuning out the television news that you watch. The challenge of watching too many things on TV is that we see other people’s lives (or a polished version of them). We see other people’s failures. We see other people’s successes. The more you watch other people’s failures, you’ll end up getting vain. And the more you watch other people’s successes, you’ll end up getting jealous and bitter. Vanity, and jealousy, and bitterness are things you do not need in your life. They will interfere in the way of you building up your self-confidence.
Look at cutting back on the television news and television shows that are negative that are going to drag you down and hold you back from building your self-confidence. What should you do now?
Go back and read this list again and find 3 things you can do in the next 7 days that you know you can achieve. Of all the things mentioned above, one of the most important things you can do is to make a list of a high-level goals, print 5 copies of that, and put that around your house. Take care of that immediately. Then Consider at joining a gym and a Toastmasters club to help some other areas where you need improvement.