Being confident is not something that you’re born with, or that you can learn from a book. It is something you can learn from experiencing success, though. And the best way to do that is to set yourself up for success by setting smaller goals. When you achieve those small goals, you’ll start building your confidence. Here’s how to do it.
- Break Down Bigger Goals – When you have a big goal, instead of getting overwhelmed by it, break it down into smaller goals. Work backward from the due date to today, writing down small steps to achieve each day. Each day of success will build your confidence as you move forward to reach bigger goals.
- Practice Positive Thinking – Each day, start and end your day with positive thoughts. A good way to accomplish this is by writing in a gratitude journal every night before you go to bed. Then, start your day by reading what you wrote.
- Know Your Strengths and Weaknesses – It’s very important to not only know your own strengths and weaknesses but also to accept them. When you identify where you’re strong, you can lead with strength and you can improve upon most of your weaknesses if you know they exist.
- Improve Your Skills – When you know that you’re weak in an area that you can learn, that’s a good thing. You can always improve your skills. Take a course, go to seminars, hire a coach or whatever you need to do to improve the skill set that is needed to accomplish your goals.
- Network with Others – Having a group of friends and acquaintances that you can learn from, share with, and commiserate with is a great way to build confidence. When you hang around other people who value you and your contributions, you’ll start to believe in yourself more.
- Accept and Learn from Critics – It can be difficult to listen to critics. But, if you allow the criticism to help you, it can be a very good thing. Try to de-personalize the criticism so that you can look at it differently, learn from it and improve.
- Learn Time Management – One problem with achieving goals is time management. Remember that every little thing you do toward the goal matters. Even if you only do one small part of the work each day, eventually you’ll reach your goal. Allow yourself to feel successful each day that you do at least part of your list.
- Write Everything Down – Don’t try to reach goals just by remembering them. You’ll trick yourself either by not doing enough or by doing too much and not feeling good about it. Write down each step for each day so that you know when you’ve succeeded on a day-to-day basis.
Being confident starts from the inside, but is the result of taking steps to do the hard work that you need to do each day to build the good feeling inside. That good feeling is known as self-esteem. When you have high self-esteem, you can accept constructive criticism, small changes of direction, and work in a positive direction of your bigger goals.