Where does confidence come from?
How does one obtain their confidence in performing any given task or element of their lives?
Does confidence come from believing or seeing that something can be done, and out of sheer will one would achieve their desired outcome? What if it’s something that someone has not done before themselves? Is being confident a prerequisite for achievement?
We can agree that once you do something and you experience results, your confidence grows, but if it’s the first time you’re doing something, how do you get comfortable enough to move forward? What if you are not the risky type of person to just throw yourself into the unknown and see what happens? What if you feel that you need more familiarity first?
In my experience, it’s by controlling as many aspects of the process as possible, and every small detail and nuance that you can influence will help best prepare you for succeeding in that task. This turns the situation from feeling that you must have the nerve to do something, to a situation of operations and follow-through, one of methods. Breaking it down as much as you can so it seems simple to perform without being overwhelmed, it’s a matter of converting emotion into action.
Action, along with organization and consistency.
My most relevant experience of this process is one that I am navigating at this current moment in my professional journey. Over the past year I have been studying leadership development and obtaining a certification in executive coaching. It is my passion to help other professionals be the best versions of themselves, and I created a side business focusing on just that. Prior to starting this endeavor last year, I was paralyzed with indecisiveness, imposter feelings, and overall negativity about the sheer magnitude of such an ambition. Feeling completely unprepared and inexperienced to even consider moving forward, only to plague myself with believing that I do not have the confidence of taking such a risk to even think about pursuing this deep passion of mine.
I was able to finally break through by asking myself what exactly would it take if I were to start this journey, what specifically would I need to learn and actually do to begin moving forward? So, acknowledging that my negative self-talk wasn’t serving any productive purpose, I turned to objective actions, organization, and relentless consistency to slowly expose myself to progress. I made the commitment to continue pursuing this unknown path with one rule, that I do not let fear stop me from continuing, and anything that I was not familiar with I simply added as another action item on my ever-growing to-do list. From what initially I assumed was a problem with confidence simply became a matter of accomplishing specific tasks and timing their completion.
Over 6 months the progress I made was significant and as I reflect on what I achieved I realized that I didn’t need to be confident, but rather I needed to be organized and diligent to take small steps every day. Now, as a result of seeing this process being successful, I do feel more confident for the next 6 months because all I have to do is continue to follow the process that got me to this point. I am feeling reassured that I can take risks even if I do not have the assumed natural born confidence that we may believe we need, and I discovered that confidence is the byproduct, not the catalyst.
This is an elaborate example of how I earned feeling confident, but it can apply to more acute situations as well. The process remains the same: to identify as many aspects as possible of how to obtain what you want to achieve, organizing them, and breaking them down into smaller tasks that you can complete within a reasonable timeframe.
However, one may experience that their lack of confidence is due to being uncertain of how to identify or what to even do with those aspects. In that case it’s simply identifying specifically what it is you are unclear about, determining direct actions to perform, and ensuring their execution.
Action will breed momentum and ultimately get to you feeling confident, but first you need objective thinking and organization.
It is my passion to help empower those who are struggling with feeling inadequate or unclear of how to navigate accomplishing their goals. It would be though my coaching and development programs that we can turn these emotions into actions and look at the journeys ahead of us in a more objective lens rather than giving up before we even consider starting.