Developing Self-Confidence

Note: The concepts and many of the words in this article are shared with the kind permission of Alan Sieler. They are taken from a paper of his entitled ‘Towards Positively Shaping Your Professional Identity’. I am extremely grateful to Alan for his clarity, wisdom and willingness to share. Alan is the founder and director of the Newfield Institute, an international ontological training and consulting company.

What way of being – in other words, what type of language, emotions and body – will support you in effectively co-ordinating the future you want for yourself?

One key aspect is confidence. Your confidence speaks to how you participate in being creative and innovative. If you lack confidence, you believe that you cannot do certain things and you tend to not want to explore or expose yourself to something new.

But what is confidence exactly?

Confidence is a feeling, a belief, or an opinion. It is not a hard and fast thing. The significance of this is that it is changeable. Confidence is something that, once we understand it, we can choose to change.

Confidence can be regarded as a two-fold opinion:

i) You have the competence to engage in certain actions and / or have the capacity to learn to take such actions

ii) You will not be damaged by negative opinions (of others or your own) of the actions you take

Let’s take an example of speaking in front of a group of twenty-five or more people. You are confident (but not “cocky”) when you assess that your conversational actions will be effective, and when any possibly negative assessments do not say something about your fundamental worthiness as a human being, but can be regarded as potential sources of learning. Being confident does not mean you don’t experience nervousness, which is an understandable emotion when going into a situation where you cannot predict what will happen. However, it means that you are not “gripped by panic” or “frozen by anxiety”.

But what happens if you lack self-confidence?

If you lack self-confidence, then your opinions, especially your core opinions about yourself, will tell you that you cannot do certain things. You might experience the mood of anxiety, a mood in which you do not feel safe, that you may be damaged, and that you may not have the approval of others. You most likely anticipate negative assessments and anticipate that you will have to deal with the shame that comes from not having the approval of others.

Basically, in this process you are living in the future, painting a negative scenario. This scenario consists of a range of opinions, which you are potentially treating as facts. These opinions typically include:

i) You assess that you will be judged negatively.

ii) You assess that those judgments go to the heart of who you are as a person and that they speak of your lack or worth.

iii) You assess that you will not be able to deal with these negative judgments, so you do not enter into situations where you might be exposed to them. The result is that you withdraw yourself from the possibility of participating in new situations and exposing yourself to new experiences.

Rather then being sources for learning, your negative assessments become sources of self-recrimination, reinforcing the existing negativity that has become an integral part of the structure of your nervous system.

Confidence is changeable

As a result of confusing your opinion of ‘lack of confidence’ with being a hard fact that’s fixed rather than an opinion that’s changeable, you can begin to think you are describing how you are permanently, rather than remembering that you are an adaptive, ever-evolving individual.

Even if the opinion that you lack confidence is valid at one point, there is always the potential to learn to practice a different, confident way of being.

Lack of confidence as a description as well as an explanation

Lack of self-confidence can become a description as well as an explanation of why you cannot engage in certain actions. “I can’t ask him out because I’m shy,” or “I can’t talk in front of groups because I’m not assertive enough.” You make the mistake of thinking you’re describing how you really are, when really it is an opinion that is perpetuating how you see yourself. So it ends up being not simply a descriptive process, but a generative process in which your description becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Feeling trapped

Lacking confidence, you may believe that you are caught in a trap. The thinking goes like this:

• Confidence is important in order to take effective action

• But I do not have the confidence to take action

• So if I can’t take action

• How can I become confident?

Here’s how …

Moving from lack of confidence to confidence

• Firstly, have a look at where your opinion comes from. Opinions are often a reflection of a community’s values, for example, a family’s values or a cultural community’s values. There is the possibility of entering into a different story to the bigger narrative that you may be caught in i.e. transcending these traditional (or cultural) narratives. Whilst still a part of your community, you can observe your cultural narratives and accept them, and at the same time, if they are not serving you in some other area of your life, step out of them. Accepting them may be important for continuing to participate as a member of the community, and does not mean you speak against the narratives. It simply means you are able to be aware of when they might “come into play” to limit you. You are able to recognize them and move beyond these limitations.

  An example of this might be a woman who’s grown up in a social culture where modesty is prized and talking about yourself is regarded as bragging. It follows that she lacks confidence to speak about her achievements, but she is now working in a company where this is necessary for career progression. By transcending her cultural narratives i.e. putting them to one side at work, she can start to break the habit of feeling it’s wrong to talk about herself and learn to become confident when letting people know what she’s achieved. She will still able to observe her cultural narratives in the areas in which they take care of her (belonging within her family and social community), but at the same time she can step out of them and take care of what matters to her in another area of importance in her life i.e. her career.

• Remember that any negative assessments from others are merely constructions based on that person’s standards. For this reason, the negative assessments, while they may be valid, still say less about you and more about those making the assessments (and what their values are).

• Holding other people’s negative assessments as opportunities for learning and growth can take the negative power out of them. The trick lies in hearing them with an open mind, taking them for what they are – opinions - and if they’re valid, accepting them with curiosity. Rather than beating yourself up about ‘failing’, focus instead on how you can grow from these opinions.

• Most importantly, the essence of moving from lack of confidence to confidence, is by doing, or simply, by acting differently. It is about continually taking small steps, which accumulate into big steps over time, but at the time can be so small as to be almost imperceptible. This will probably require patience and persistence, and not allowing expectations of “overnight change” to set you up for disappointment. You can only take action one-step at a time, gradually extending yourself in ways to contradict your opinion of lack of confidence. Remember, we are the sum of our practices.

Practically making these changes

Look out for my next blog post in which I share more about how you can consciously start changing your language, mood and body i.e. your ‘Way of Being’, in order to consciously develop and practice self-confidence.

Become your own best resource

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