Do you remember how important confidence was when you were playing competative sports? Those with unshakeable confidence typically were most successful. So, what came first, the chicken or the egg? Were they confident because they were good or were they great because they were confident? You did catch that change in wording, right? I believe when someone is good at something they can gain a certain level of confidence, but to truly be great, I believe you must be confident first. I am not actually here to debate that issue, thank goodness! I do want to talk about confidence and it’s importance in being successful in our every day lives. I don’t know that anyone would deny that the more confident we are the better chance we are setting ourselves up for success, so how do we go about building and gaining confidence? I would like to break it down to 6 steps, but I am sure you have others that you would add (don’t hesitate to share them with me in your comments). 6 Steps to Building Confidence 1. Fill your head with positive thoughts and images and then think on them and speak them out loud.Did you ever feel like you willed a ball to go in the basket by telling it what to do or talked a foul ball fair (or the other way around)? Our thoughts and words have tremendous power! We have seen and felt this occurs and it is even in scripture (Philippians 4:8, Proverbs 18:21) When you visualize success, when you can truly see and feel it, you are better equipped to reach it. I remember shooting free throws, if I let any doubt in my head that I would make the shot, I tended to miss, but when I said I was going to make it and pictured me making it, that percentage went WAY up. Think about how good you felt when a coach spoke about your strengths. Think about how good you felt leaving the locker room at half time to go take the court or field after you were just pumped up with words of encouragement? You can’t tell me words aren’t powerful! 2. Keep showing up, especially when things are hard. Action will build confidence! Start by showing up for the things you enjoy in life. Showing up every day and taking some sort of action reminds you of things you are capable of. As you are more comfortable with that, start doing things that you find more challenging and things that may scare you. Don’t stress out about being awesome at them, just keep showing up and doing them! Taking action will continue to grow your confidence. 3. Set small goals along the way that you can achieve and celebrate on your way to bigger goals. Goals and Goal setting are HUGE (and will be a blog topic). It is important we set goals that are challenging and that scare us a little, but it’s important to also break those goals down into smaller, more manageable chunks. As you achieve some of your smaller goals you will gain confidence and momentum to keep moving forward. 4. Be aware of and continually work on your posture (body language). We often don’t think of how our posture and body language plays into our confidence, but holy smokes, it does! WAY back in the day, when I played basketball in college, my coach was ALWAYS yelling at us to get our hands off the bottom of our shorts and to stand up tall. This was a single to our opponent that we were tired, but it was also a signal to ourselves that we were. It doesn’t makes sense to be all hunched over when you can’t catch your breath, I mean think about it, it doesn’t help your breathing, right?!? Our posture made a difference in how tired we thought we really were. By standing up tall we not only felt better physically, but we signaled to our brain we weren’t exhausted out of our minds! When was the last time you took a deep breath and sat up straight with your head held high? Do that next time you have to make a tough phone call or send out a hard message. That small change in your posture gives you a better feeling of confidence. Now, do you really want to feel like a bad a$$? Stand in the wonder woman pose before difficult conversations! 5. Faith it til you make it and Act the part Don’t just fake it til you make it, but faith it. Know you will get here you want to be! Act the part. If you don’t feel confident, pretend you are. Stand like you are, talk like you are, ACT like you are! It is amazing how playing the part will help your confidence grow! 6. Stop comparing yourself with others or even a different version of you. Have you heard “comparison is the their of joy?” Well, it’s also the killer of confidence! Don’t do it! No good can come from comparing yourself with anyone, not even a different version of yourself. If you compare yourself to someone you are “better than” at something, you give yourself a false sense of security and may not work the way you need to. Let’s face it though, we usually compare ourselves to others, or a version of others that isn’t even reality. We start doubting ourselves, even in areas we were once confident. Please just stop! Don’t do it anymore! ****************************************************************************************************************** I would love to work with you on some of the goals you set for yourself this year! I have created a Facebook community for those looking to set and smash goals with their fitness and nutrition. I would love to have you join us at Finding My Fierce
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Welcome!I am a former dual sport collegiate athlete sharing my story, how you can gain strength, confidence and discipline too, and how I apply lessons learned from competative sports and how to turn them into real life success. Archives
April 2019
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