How to have more Confidence?

No!! These pieces of advice will not work for you.

If you want to improve your self-confidence, and if you are focusing on what's being shared on the Internet in the past few weeks, then you will find a lot of advice such as self-acceptance, learning to love yourself, knowing your values, knowing your principles, and all of these kinds of stuff available on the Internet. And I am telling you right now ''No. They will not be effective, and they will not work with you.''

While these pieces of advice are very effective and very important in the process of improving your self-confidence in general, they will not work for you because as a normal human being, you want the fastest road to improving your self-confidence.

And these pieces of advice can work, but work only in collaboration with a coach or a consultant, or if you are willing to do it in the long term and if you are patient enough.

But when you are trying to make a change in your life, most people want this change to happen as soon as possible.

That's why as good as these pieces of advice are when you are listening to them and trying to apply them, when you will not find real progress and real changes happening immediately in your life, you will drop them as fast as possible.

And that is why in this article, I want to share with you the summary of what you can do right now, or the golden rule of improving your self-confidence.

So, let us start right now. But before we speak about anything, I want you to stand up.

Yes, because we will do a small exercise together, and I want to demonstrate to you this golden rule of self-confidence, but in practice.

So, I want you to leave what you are doing and stand up.

If I told you, ''I want you to do 50 push-ups right now''. Are you capable of doing them?

Most probably 90 percent of the people, especially if they are not athletic, will say directly ''no, we don't think that we can do 50 push-ups''. Right?

What about if I told you, ''do 30 push-ups?''

Still, a lot of people will say ‘’no, I'm not capable still.’’ And most probably, you will also say directly ‘’no’’. You will not say ‘’maybe’’, you will say ‘’no. I am not able to do them.’’

OK, then I want you right now to stop reading and go and do some push-ups and see how many you can do.  After doing these push-ups, come back and continue.

Did you do the push-ups? OK, so let me ask you ‘’how many push-ups have you done?’’

Maybe you have done two or three. Maybe have done five or ten. No matter how many you did, the most important thing that I want to emphasize here is that first, when I asked about the fifty, you said ‘’I cannot do it’’ (most probably). You did not say ‘’maybe’’, you said ‘’I cannot’’ directly and decisively.

Second, when you tried right now, you discovered the maximum number that you can do, based on your capabilities currently.

So, here is another question. What if over the next 30 days, I told you that we are going to work together so that you are doing push-ups each day, and then we are going to see what will happen after thirty days? Do you think that after thirty days of consistent push-ups and trials and errors, you will get the same number that you are getting right now?

For example, if you are making two push-ups as your maximum number right now, do you think after thirty days of consistent practice you will make only two still? Or do you think you will make ten? Or you will make twenty? How many repetitions do you think you will make?

If you are good enough or if you are taking it seriously and pushing yourself, most probably you will reach fifty push-ups by the end of the thirty days, or maybe even earlier. But if you are moving at a constant pace, then definitely you will make more than the two, the three, or the five, that you made on day one. Right?

And that is exactly the core of self-confidence.

Self-confidence, or the golden rule of self-confidence, is that you choose an area, and then you say to yourself ''I want to improve my skills in this specific area''. And then after defining this area and defining the skill(s) that you want to improve, you start doing it. And then you will get feedback, and then you correct yourself and do it again. And then you get new feedback. So, you modify and correct yourself and do it again. And you keep doing it over and over and over. That is the golden rule of self-confidence.

Because if you keep doing it long enough while analyzing and adjusting, you will get better. Exactly like the exercise of the push-ups that I told you about.

So, keeping confidence aside, and keeping the comparisons that you will do in your head between the push-ups and anything else aside, let me remind you that, in the beginning, you didn't know where I'm taking you, but you believed that through consistency you can improve the number of push-ups. Correct?

The same thing will happen in any area of your life. If you keep consistent enough, then you will achieve what you want in this area and improve your skills and confidence.

And that's why people hire a coach in the first place. Because he or she pushes them. This coach pushes this person to do specific actions and behaviors that he or she is worried to do, or that he or she is avoiding doing in the first place.

For example, imagine me working with you to push you to do push-ups each day and to stay consistent until you hit 50 push-ups on day 30. That is exactly why people hire a coach to support them. To give them the push that they need to take this leap of faith and to keep doing it over and over without getting demotivated.

Coming back to the push-ups exercise. After 60 or 90 days, or whenever you reach the target of 50 push-ups, I believe that you will feel a boost in your self-confidence. And you will believe that you are invincible and that you can do a lot of things. And most probably you will feel this dopamine rush. Right?

Now, if I asked you in the middle of this happiness and dopamine rush if you are capable of selling something to someone else, or if you can be the best salesperson in the world in a specific industry or your company, even if this is not your current title or your job. Would you say ‘’yes, I can do it’’?

If I give you a target and told you ''sell this month what's worth 1000 dollars.'' even if you are not working in sales, are you capable of doing it?

Most probably you will say, ''I don't know, but ‘maybe’ I can do it.''

And then, from your answer, you will discover two things.

First, because you started the exercise of the push-ups with the belief ‘'I cannot do it'', and then after doing the same training consistently, you discovered that you can, you will also discover that this reflected on your mindset in other areas of your life. So, instead of saying to yourself ''I cannot sell to someone'' directly as you said before doing the push-ups, in the beginning, you'll find yourself saying ''maybe it will start like the push-ups, and then after this, I will be able to sell''.

So, your answer will not be a decisive ''no'' like what you said at the beginning with the push-ups, you will now say ''maybe and maybe not'', because you have in your head the experience of the push-ups that you did before. But on the other hand, you still will not say ''yes'' directly.

What does this mean? This means that you cannot be ''automatically'' self-confident in every area of your life.

Because people believe or have this picture in their minds that if you are self-confident in a specific area, then you are automatically self-confident in public speaking, communicating, selling, negotiation, or anything else.

No. Your self-confidence will be higher in specific areas and lower in other areas.

But the difference is that, if you have the right mindset, and you are already confident in some areas, then this is a particularly good start. Because you will have the mindset of ''maybe with enough repetition, learning, and getting feedback, I can improve.''

You will not say ''no, I will not try'' because you know that with practice you can do it, and this is a very good start. And you have this good start because you are self-confident in another area. And at the same time, you cannot expect or just say ''yes, I can move from this area to this area and I will be confident 100% automatically.''

That is exactly what I want to demonstrate.

So again, as a summary of this episode, the golden rule of self-confidence is that you choose a specific area, define a specific skill that you want to improve in this area, and then you practice this skill. While practicing, you will get feedback. You correct & modify, and then do it again, over, and over and over and over until you become better and with becoming better you will also become more confident.

And most people’s main problem is that they never start. They want to be great swimmers without even dipping a toe in the water. So, if you have a problem, because you are worried to take a specific step, or because you cannot stay consistent, or because you are lazy or anything else, then hire a coach or a consultant or get an accountability partner to work with you.

The second thing is, if you are confident in a specific area, that does not mean that you are automatically confident in every other area. But being confident in a specific area makes it easier for you to adopt the right mindset and to say to yourself ''maybe I can learn and get better in this new area'', and be open to new experiences and practice some specific skills until you get better.

And again, self-acceptance, learning to love yourself, focusing on your values and principles...etc., are all great and they work. But they will not work with you immediately because most people want something that works as fast as possible and can show them that they are making progress. And these things need time and patience.