6 Ways to Improve Your Confidence
With Catherine Allison, Director of Master the Art
Whether we’re successful business owners with decades of experience or just starting out, we all have moments where we lack confidence. The word confidence comes from the Latin ‘fidere’ meaning to trust. Confidence is about having trust in one’s self and feeling sure about your own abilities, qualities or ideas. But how can we trust ourselves if words fail us just when we need them most? Or if we constantly doubt our abilities, feel inferior, unworthy or unprepared? There are steps we can all take to boost our confidence when self-doubt sets in. Here are my top 6 tips for building your inner confidence so you can exude confidence on the outside:
1. Tame your inner critic
We have two voices in our head – our inner critic and our inner coach. The inner critic is that negative voice we tune into in moments of stress; “You’re useless, you have no authority, no-one will want to listen to you.” At times we let our inner critic descend into a full-on character assassination in our heads. Instead, we should really be using our inner critic to refine and to improve – “OK, that didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. How can I do better next time?”. Our inner coach is the positive voice that does calm and celebration. It’s all too easy to forget to use your inner coach to praise yourself when things go well. Find that positive inner voice and use it to your advantage!
2. Be yourself
One of the keys to being confident is to understand yourself and then BE yourself. Many of us think we can’t be ourselves in a workplace setting because “that would be unprofessional”. Nonsense! The more you can be yourself at work, the better. People will see you’re being real, it shows your personal side and they’ll connect with you faster. Being confident isn’t about copying how someone else behaves, aping their way of speaking or their mannerisms. It’s about being YOU.
3. Don’t compare yourself to others
Doing so will only chip away at your confidence. When we compare ourselves to others we’re often comparing their best features against our average ones. Not only do we naturally want to be as good as they are (or better), the unconscious realisation that we are not can become destructive. It comes back to the importance of being yourself. Warren Buffett says, “There’s one thing that you’re better at than other people: being YOU.” When you start with this mindset the world starts to look better again. Your focus and energy is placed on what you’re capable of now and how you can improve yourself. Life becomes about being a better version of yourself.
4. Sit up straight
Posture matters. Standing tall or sitting up straight are absolutely essential to your confidence, your voice, your status and your gravitas. Adjusting your posture will help you look, sound and feel confident in a matter of seconds.
5. Use positive language
Without even realising it, your vocabulary could be having an adverse effect on your self-confidence. Many of us are stuck in the habit of repeating the same negative words or phrases. The more we hear, read or speak a phrase, the more power it has over us. Break the habit by changing negative language into positive language. This won’t only make you sound more confident, you’ll feel more confident too. Examples of negative language include, “Does that make sense?”, “I’m sorry”, “If only…” and filler words. Subtle language changes can make a huge difference to people’s perceptions of your confidence and professionalism. Being mentally aware of your use of negative words and phrases means you can start to control how confident you feel and sound in speech.
6. Listen to Oprah
She said, ““It is confidence in our minds, bodies and spirits that allows us to keep looking for new adventures.” New adventures sound quite fun, don’t they?
Catherine Allison
The majority of Catherine’s working life has been spent in creative agencies in client services and business development roles. She is passionate about helping teams and individuals improve their presentation and communication skills as she believes this can help them have that much needed edge over the competition, give them greater confidence and improve their chances of success in the workplace.
As well as her agency career, Catherine has a background in acting and was fortunate enough to learn from directors and actors such as Paul King, Cal McCrystal, Phil Wilmott and Toby Jones. She continues to work as a professional actor and draws on her acting experience to give people useful tools and techniques for effective communication and powerful presentations in the workplace and beyond.
Catherine currently features on the Design Business Association’s Experts Register: http://www.dba.org.uk/members-area/experts/
Catherine has led numerous in person and online training sessions for creative agencies and media companies, including Exterion Media, LPK, Gather, Momentum Worldwide, Sutton, Cultureshock Media, Studio INTO, Uniform, Momentum ABM and Amplify.