Blog · Confidence
Confidence is not a feeling you wait for
Most people are waiting to feel confident before they act. It usually works the other way round.
Blog · Confidence
Most people are waiting to feel confident before they act. It usually works the other way round.
“I will speak up when I feel more confident.” “I will apply for it when I am ready.” It sounds sensible. The problem is that the feeling often never arrives on its own.
Real confidence tends to come from evidence: you did something, it went fine (or it did not, and you survived), and your brain files it away. The next time, it is a little easier. Waiting to feel ready skips the only step that actually builds it.
The trick is to take steps small enough that you will actually take them. Not “give the presentation” but “ask one question in the meeting.” Not “change careers” but “have one coffee with someone who does the job.”
Try this: write down one thing you have been waiting to feel ready for. Now write the smallest possible first step towards it. Do that step this week.
Notice how you talk to yourself before and after. Would you speak to a friend that way? Much of NLP is about noticing that voice and changing its tone — not into forced positivity, just into something fairer.
Sometimes self-doubt has been around so long it feels like part of who you are. It usually is not. It is just well practised. That is where one-to-one work can help most.
The simplest tool I teach, and the one people keep using long after our sessions have finished.
It is two in the morning and you are still editing something you said at lunch. Here is what is going on.
If you have promised yourself you will stop, more than once, the problem is probably not your willpower.
Book a free twenty-minute call. Tell me what is going on and I will tell you straight whether I can help.