As a personal coach one of the most common requests I receive from people is to help them to build confidence. At first glance this is quite understandable, after all, if people felt more confident they’d do more things and get more out of life. So absolutely - building confidence makes sense.

You may well have read one of my other articles where I state that confidence doesn’t exist! What does exist is lack of confidence. Confidence is, in fact, a natural state of being, yet people believe they don’t have it. Sure there’ll be some extreme situations where confidence isn’t evident so an extra boost is needed, but most of us spend most of our lives in fairly ordinary territory where the situations are very familiar.

What I suggest is actually going on is that those people lack confidence. This negative feeling has built up over many years of conditioning, and by the time they reach adulthood, much of this conditioning has become self-imposed. Now I’m not proposing to start on some form of analysis here, I’m far more interested in finding a solution for them and everyone else who needs it.

Just a side note: because you understand the cause of something it isn’t necessarily the same as having the solution. A simple example will demonstrate what I mean. Let’s say you fall out of a tree and break a leg. The cause is simple - you fell out of the tree. So how do you want to repair the leg? Is the answer to put you back in the tree? No! The solution is to go to hospital and get treated. Do you see now that the cause and the solution different?

The same is true for lack of confidence; you can spend hours, days, even years analysing why you lack confidence. Generally though this isn’t going to help you acquire the confidence you’re looking for.

At this point I think it’s useful to briefly explain habits, what they are and how they work for us. We have thousands of useful and positive habits in our life. A simple example is that when you leave your house you automatically lock your door. Do you remember those times you walk away and you’re not sure whether you locked it or not? Well you probably did because you were on autopilot!

A life saving habit is, for example, when you’re walking across a road and a big vehicle comes bearing down on you at great speed. You leap to the pavement and safety. Why on earth should you do that? There’s nothing genetic that says pavements are safe, but it’s something you’ve learned. It’s a habit. It will save your life. Habits can be good.

Now the question becomes, “So how do we build good habits?” Well, the answer is straight-forward, you just repeat the same thing again and again over time. If there’s emotion attached to the habit you’ll learn faster. Once you have the habit built in it can be a little difficult to change it. Some would say impossible, I don’t know about that – but let me give you an example.

Clasp your hands in front of you and just notice which thumb is on top. It actually doesn’t matter which one it is, just pay attention please. Now switch your two thumb positions so the other one is on top. This feels strange doesn’t it? This is what it feels like when you don’t follow a habit.

Changing which thumb is on top is unlikely to change your life. However, if something as simple as this has an uncomfortable feeling associated with it, can you see why it can be so difficult to change some negative habits? I’ve done this exercise with the thumbs so many times with so people, that for me now it’s almost arbitrary which one goes on top because I no longer feel the difference. So the habit I had is more or less broken. We can apply similar techniques to help you build a habit of confidence.

Let’s return to a lack of confidence and the reason it’s become a habit. It’s likely that during your lifetime so far, situations have come up and you’ve chosen not to be confident about them. Yes I really mean that. It may not have been as conscious as that, but what probably happened is that a new opportunity presented itself and you chose not to give it a go. You possibly made something up in your head about what could go wrong or why you wouldn’t enjoy it etc. It doesn’t matter what the excuse was, the example still stands.

Every day opportunities arise, and if you repeatedly decide not to take them up because it doesn’t feel good, then this starts to become a habit. You start to say no to everything; you’re starting to lay down the habit. Well surely confidence is largely about saying yes to things?

Years go by and as more new possibilities come to you, you automatically fall back on habits. After all, it takes a little energy to resist a habit, remember the thumbs? So you choose not to do something, not to explore, not to step into something new. Now you’re in a situation where new things come up and you don’t feel confident enough to try. What a surprise!

We can reverse this process and put you on a path of having a habit of confidence rather than a habit of un-confidence. There are two parts to this.

First - let’s start by interrupting the old negative habits. The habit of saying no is a habit of having a lack of confidence. This is a straightforward process, it just requires that you’re kind, gentle and accepting of yourself. Change will take time, but being aware of that means you can give yourself permission to take the time you need to make the changes. How long does it take? That’s very difficult to say, but the timescale is measured in weeks rather than hours.

The place to start is after the very next time you feel a lack of confidence. The time you want to say no to something new, or you choose not to do something different. All I ask you to do is to notice the event and what you chose to do.

Repeat this every time this happens. Trust me - this will happen tens of times a day. Simple examples like when you go out for a meal and decide not to choose a new item on the menu. Instead you go for the same dish you always have. I’m not asking you to change. I’m just asking you to observe what happens. This is very important so I’ll explain it why.

As you start the simple practice of observing, what most people report is that after a while they start to notice during the incident that they’re doing it. As they’re looking down at the menu and seeing new items, they notice how they feel and the fact they’re not choosing them. Again – I’m asking you to just observe. Please keep doing what you’ve always done because this is important.

What has happened in this phase is that your point of noticing has moved from after the event to during the event.

As time passes you’ll find that the point at which you notice you’re exercising your choice to have a lack of confidence, is getting earlier and earlier in the incident. In other words, it’s getting nearer to the start. Remember this is just an exercise in observing. I’m asking you to still stay the same.

Eventually you reach a point where you’re aware of your thinking before the incident. Now you’re at position of choice. Because you’re going to be aware of your thinking patterns before the automatic habit takes over, you’re going to have a choice about whether to follow it or not. This is all part of becoming mindful of your own thought processes.

It’s one of the many reasons why mindfulness is so powerful in helping people deal with major life issues such as confidence, stress, procrastination and so on. It’s also why I’m using it more with my clients now. It puts them in control quicker and more permanently than just doing techniques to them.

You now understand the process we used in the exercise above, so let’s try a little theory.

All of us have a level of change that we’re prepared to accept and a level of change that we’ll resist. Some people have high limits, some have lower. In the above exercise all I’m asking for is observation. By asking you not to make changes, you stay below the resistance level.

By staying below the resistance level your mind will allow the new process in. This will enable the change to occur because it’s not threatening who you are. These are very small changes. The only change being asked is one of observation.

As I mentioned earlier there are two processes we can use. The one above is designed to interfere with the old habits that create lack of confidence. Now let’s turn our attention to building new habits of confidence.

To save you the time of working out what to do, while I think there’s probably enough information above for you to get the idea, I will still lay it out here.

I want you to find the smallest, tiniest, the most imperceptibly minute areas where you can say yes to something that you would have said no to in the past. An example might be something as simple as sitting in a different chair when you eat your meal. I’m looking for changes that are so small you won’t resist them.

A little warning here. Some people feel they have to really challenge themselves, to push themselves to the limit. Sure there’s a place for that, but if you want to make long-lasting changes to habits, this is not the way to do it. Whatever you resist persists. So by forcing, fighting and trying to overcome, all you’ll be doing in effect is strengthening the negative habit.

Please trust me on this point. It’s the smallness, the almost insignificance of the things you’re doing that are the real power.

Now back to the building the new habits.

Once you become familiar and comfortable with the small situations, then move on to slightly larger ones. You’re gradually building from the strong base of positive habits.

Allow yourself time, it may take a year or more until you can move up to those major life areas that you feel you need to change. By taking the time it will be permanent change. Simple tricks and techniques to give you temporary confidence will wear off. And what’s worse, what comes with them is a sense of failure. This constant failing itself then becomes a habit which stops you moving forward.

Giving yourself time to make permanent behavioural changes is the most precious thing you can do for yourself.

[tags] lack confidence, building confidence, lack of confidence, personal coach, feeling, opportunity, exercise, autopilot, habit, life, lifetime, emotion, Habits, excuse, change[/tags]