Confidence is a much sought-after commodity, even for those who you would imagine are dripping in it. Probably the most coveted of psychological commodities
Millions of words have been written about the topic and I’ve definitely not read anywhere near all of them. However, having been working with an array of amazing people over the last 30 years to support their performance, I feel I’ve got some useful perspectives and experiences that can add to the narrative about confidence.
As well as adding to the narrative, I think I can help reduced confusion and more importantly, there’s a practical offering that can be presented which will materially enhance how confidently you can build and grow confidence. Now, that gets meta very quickly, but one of the main reasons that the majority of people crave more confidence is the result of never having been taught how to create it in the first place. In fact, we probably have more experiences that teach us how to undermine confidence rather than make it, so there’s little wonder it’s an evasive quality that comes and goes as it pleases.
The Importance of Confidence
For a long time now I’ve regularly asked groups how important confidence is to them as a quality, for performing to their best. I’m professionally obliged to use a 1-10 scale, as having been trained in psychology such devices are very often the only way to gather data! The answers that I get back are usually with the majority of people scoring a number between 8-10. There’s the occasional outlier who reports a 5 or 6. It’s reassuring that there’s still individual differences to account for, but the majority definitely feel that confidence is highly important for good performance. Not a great surprise really.
However, when I then ask how much effort and time is being put into creating and maintaining confidence, again with a 1-10 scale (1 being very little, 10 being bloody loads), the number is very different. Here the numbers are typically in the 3-6 range, with quite a few lower and again, the occasional higher score closer to 10, but there are very few people who are systematically, proactively building the quality that moments before was scored as really important. The mismatch of belief and behaviour is significant.
Now, this doesn’t make a lot of sense and for the most part I think it’s down to people not knowing how to ‘invest’ in a way that might be worthwhile. From a psychology perspective, when you see a mismatch in belief and behaviour like this, the normal approach is to suggest changing the belief or changing the behaviour. But with confidence, it seems a little more complicated than just calling on the power of this cognitive dissonance .
The conspiracy against Confidence
When you dig a little deeper, there’s a whole bunch of stuff that’s conspiring against people being confident enough in a set of behaviours to actually make building confidence a part of day-to-day life.
Firstly, there’s not usually clearly identified targets of confidence that people are aiming for. They want to be confident, but when you ask “what in specifically?” there’s typically not an immediate, focused answer that would form the basis for creating confidence in the most important things.
Secondly, we’ve been taught to build confidence from results. From an early age we’re tested and given scores that are supposedly a reflection of competence, so we associate good numbers and the prizes of social recognition associated with that as the core commodities of confidence.
Thirdly, we’ve been socialised into not talking about confidence, even though it’s this really important thing. If we talk about it when we feel it’s visiting us and we’re on top of the world, we’ve been taught to be careful not to come over as arrogant. So, when it’s with us, we’re unlikely to share it and seek to understand how it happens to be present; just count yourself lucky it’s there and enjoy it on your own until it inevitably leaves you. Equally, if we’ve lost it completely and are feeling pretty bereft without it, we’ve been taught not to talk about it and ask for support, as it’s essential not to come across we weak, needy or both! There’s also a sense that when you’ve not got it, talking about it might spread an epidemic of deflating belief, so best just muddle through it on your own. So, this essential quality is a taboo subject that everyone would benefit from talking about, but no one is!
Fourthly, we’ve all been sold the dream of a power pose, faking it until you make it, or a bit of positive self-talk to boost confidence. We’re sold the notion that we’ll be filled with the feelings of those we think have the stuff coursing through their veins like some psychology rocket fuel. Our half-hearted efforts of doing it for ourselves result in us feeling little silly about doing it, or let down by the anti-climax of feeling no bloody different. The quick fix failures just conspire to increase our learned helplessness that we’re just not “the confident type” and this self-belief malarky is the preserve of the special ones.
Finally, everyone looks at those who have confidence in abundance and believe that to be a permanent state of being. The logical extension of the coveting perspective is that those who don’t have it are looking for a solution to their lack of confidence which will render them permanently confident and never having to do any more work in their self-belief every again. We’re looking for the equivalent of a fitness programme that means we go to the gym for a week and as a result have the physiological capacity of an Olympian for the rest of our lives, but without needing to train ever again. The unrealistic expectation of what the confidence end game is drastically reduces the likelihood that we’ll ever find anything that remotely satisfies what we think we’re looking for.
Unconfusing ourselves
Given all of this, anyone who has levels of confidence in place that you’re happy with and confident that they’re not going to disappear any time soon, is in the self-assured minority!
This mix of confidence confusion leaves us still knowing the right answer is that confidence is really important, but non-the-wiser about whether there is actually an antidote to chronic self-doubt, wafer thin belief and gossamer like self-worth! So, we see the high scores of importance and the low scores reflective of inaction through learned helplessness. It’s easier to get better at hoping and waiting than it is to invest in something else that probably won’t work. Wait for a fleeting visit from the confidence fairy rather than get disappointed again by the latest fad that guarantees a ticket to the promised land of positive self-regard!
As with all problems that are identified they come with the benefit of providing us with the invitation to change the story and provide an alternative way of thinking and behaving so we don’t just become part of the bandwagon of self-fulfilling phenomena. The approach that I’ll be introducing you too will set you up to be able to engage with confidence in a way that allows you to get off the bandwagon of helplessness and onto the one of agency!
So, the aim is to give you an operating system of confidence that allows you to identify the things that are most valuable for you to centre your confidence around. The approach will help you to have a balanced approach to using difference sources of evidence to build confidence, powerfully combining what you’ve achieved with how you’ve achieved it to create more than just a results based approach to belief. You’ll also be given a method that will help confidence become something that is talked about and worked on proactively, rather than being a dark secret not to be discussed. Finally, the approach you’ll be taking will allow you to be engaging with an end-state relationship with confidence that is practical, pragmatic and permanent, rather than a whizz-bang approach to magically change how you feel about yourself forever more.
Start with the end in mind - What we’re aiming for…
It's important to know early on that the approach we’re going to be working through is designed to support the fuelling of confidence that is defined by the following two definitions of confidence:
1. Confidence is knowing that you WILL DO what you say you’re going to, and
2. Confidence is knowing that simply by being 100% yourself in a situation of importance to you, it will be enough
Expanding why these two reference points are important and describing the way that they work to direct and drive your confidence over time will also help you appreciate why you’re doing what you’re doing. The understanding of the power of the two reference points will also help you decide whether you think the effort of building the approach and then using it regularly will be worth it.
Knowing that you’ll do what you say you’re going to
Very early on in my career, I heard a definition of confidence from a very good football coach that it is simply demonstrated ability. That notion stuck with me and it was clear to me that much of the job I had as a sport psychologist was to help people get really good at demonstrating their (current) ability when they wanted to and needed to. How could I work with people to help them realise how confident they should be in their ability by taking action.
As part of this thinking, in a lot of my wider consultancy work I started talking to people about the importance of commitment to an action, as it would be a folly to only put 50% effort into trying something because you’d only find out what your ability was when you only committed half as much as you could have. That seemed like a pointless experiment, as you only find out what your current level of ability is by investing 100% effort in the demonstration of your ability.
So it seemed to follow that confidence breeds commitment to action and commitment to action breeds confidence. The more confident you are, the more you just go for it in the belief that what you’re doing will work; the more committed to action you are, the more the behaviours that you lead with are filled with maximum belief, so are executed with the full power of available confidence. This virtuous cycle sits at the heart of the opportunity we have to generate confidence intentionally. Simple, not easy, but probably worth it.
When you know that the consistency with which you turn intention into behaviour is the key to building and maintaining confidence, you can start to think differently about what needs to be done so that you can exploit the full opportunity that is present.
The ability to do what you say you’re going to requires some important ground work for it to become a quality that you’ll be able to enjoy within your confidence recipe.
As we go through the method, I’ll make it clear how you’re building the foundations from which you’ll be able to more regularly and wholeheartedly do what you say you’re going to. The simple habit of committing to action from a foundation of confidence in all the right things will become a valued part of how you nurture your self-belief.
Knowing that by being 100% yourself it will be enough
In the world of elite sport (and any type of work really), there are key moments where preparation stops and opportunity arrives and is there to be taken. The time for making improvements has stopped. The time for cashing in on everything that has been created is very much present. The ability to commit to the version of you that you’ve built and just be you comes to the fore.
There was a great video made after the 2000 Olympic Games reflecting on the victory by Cathy Freeman in the 400m. Wearing her unique full body suit, she produced a superb run, overcoming all of the pressure of being the face of the Sydney Games to win very comfortably. In the film, Cathy Freeman recounts that during her warm up, she repeated to herself four very simple words; “Do what I know”. Four very simple, but powerful words that invited her to do nothing more than be herself in that moment. By being the athlete that she’d become up until that very moment in her life, and nothing else, she would give herself the freedom to find out the full power of the potential she’d created.
Reflecting on these four words in my own work, it was clear that to believe the statement to the extent that it can set you free, you have to have done a huge amount of reflecting to build self-awareness so that a deep self-acceptance could be used to harness the power of the growth achieved up to that point. What would I have to help people focus on so that they could do what they know, with full acceptance and full freedom to enjoy who they were at any point in time?
It's clear that in order to keep improving you have to both strengthen things that are already strong as well as improve qualities that are potentially holding you back. Very often there is a greater emphasis on reducing the negatives that increasing the positives. As a result, people end up more preoccupied with weaknesses potentially holding them back than they do with using strengthened strengths to propel them forward. If you’re going to be able to “do what you know” with full freedom, you have to build a structure of self-awareness that is will easily help you switch to fully exploiting all that is strong when it matters most, whilst being equally good at switching off the desire to keep improving by being committed to dissatisfaction!
Self Acceptance is the key!
It was clear to me that the more compelling the foundation of self-awareness and self-acceptance of qualities to be proud of and to highly value, the more likely you are to be able to fully commit to being yourself in those moments that have most meaning to you.
As with “doing what you say you’re going to”, the approach to confidence that I’ve built serves the requirement of being able to efficiently and effectively commit 100% to being yourself, with the knowledge that it will be enough to achieve what you want to achieve.
I’ll ensure that as the method is built and custom-fitted, you’ll get to appreciate how we’re serving this second key reference point of confidence.
With a method for continuously doing what you say you will, with the full power of being 100% yourself, then the two key reference points will remain in very good health. When they are in good health, your confidence will be both robust and high. Many other approaches tend to promote elevated confidence, but very little work is done to ensure you get great at not losing confidence; high but fragile confidence is the stuff of insecurity! By looking to build both robustness of confidence, backed up with continuously strengthening actions, there’s a very good chance that Confidence will become a familiar friend, rather than the fleeting passer by that we’d love to know, but seldom get to.