Self-confidence is knowing, acknowledging and acting your worth. It’s a magnet that attracts success. It is an ethereal idea that everyone of us desires to have as a strong trait. Naturally, it is not something we are born with, and it is not something you can achieve by dreaming or fantasizing.

Anyone with high self-confidence has made some effort and taken some actions to boost themselves there. 

“If you want to be confident you have to take action steps to develop confidence.”

If you feel you are not very competent, not very smart, or not very attractive, there is a way to enhance all these traits and resultantly your self-confidence.

Taking Actions

Low self-confidence will hold you back in your personal life, at your workplace and collectively in every aspect of life. Having confidence is indispensable, so is taking action to boost it.

Confident people are able to put their resources and energy in the right place at the right time. Rather than worrying that they are not good enough, their energy is devoted to cultivating positive outcomes.

For instance, if you are going to make a presentation and you are confident about it, you will focus on your arguments and on convincing the audience with your point of view. Contrarily, if you lack confidence in your communication skills, you are going to be pre-occupied with thoughts like “no one is listening”, or “I can’t get this proposal approved”. 

Consequently, you will struggle to concentrate, and this struggle will reinforce your belief that you are bad at giving presentations.

Secondly, the people who have built their skills in any field and have developed confidence from applied experience in their abilities, perform better as professionals. In every instance, taking actions to develop your skills and knowledge will increase your self-confidence.

Suppose you had a fear of public speaking. You can develop confidence by making multiple efforts to improve your knowledge and speaking skills. 

You would invest in observing successful speakers on YouTube. Take a public speaking class. Ask friends you trust to be your audience as you practice speaking in front of them. As you develop the ability to speak in public, your self-confidence as a speaker grows. The bonus of growing in capabilities and in confidence is that the practiced skill becomes part of your personality.

Building self-confidence is a journey that comprises various steps towards a more confident you. Another benefit of this journey is that your actions beget confidence against your fears and as you get good at one thing, you also gain the strength to fight other fears. That’s the gift of growing in self- confidence.

“Taking actions to learn and grow enables you to become a more confident person, and this helps you gain more trust from everyone around.”

Boosting Self-Confidence

There are always reasons that results in low confidence. If you want to boost your self-confidence, fix those things that make you feel less confident about yourself. No one is perfect and everyone has room to learn and grow, there is no need to feel shame for lacking confidence. 

“Self-confidence results from getting better at the things we need to practice and learn.”

Want to be able to show up to a dinner party and feel confident to play the piano? Practice. Do conversations about politics make you feel unintelligent? Read up about politics. Educate yourself. 

If you are reluctant to speak in public, listen to experienced speaker to boost your knowledge, and practice in front of friends.

“Nothing is going to be better in your life, until you take the actions needed to learn and grow.”

Your wardrobe can have a dramatic effect on your confidence level. When how you look synchronizes with how you want people to view you, confidence in your appearance will definitely follow. If you want to feel more confident at a job interview for example, dress to feel impressive by investing in improving your wardrobe. Notice I didn’t say “dress to impress’” Self-confidence is a very personal thing. It’s about you, not what other people think of you.

“Only take actions on improving the things that you feel less confident in to please yourself.”

Having an active lifestyle and exercising regularly will have a tremendous effect on boosting self-confidence. Investing in having a workout routine will pay off greatly in boosting your self-confidence. It will release a cocktail of endorphins that make you feel good. In the end, you have tangible proof that you have done something constructive.

Face your fears head-on to gain confidence by doing that particular thing every day that scares you most. 

If you have been holding off doing some inspirational videos and sharing your knowledge with others, because you are concerned that you’re not so photogenic, the only way to get past that is to come out of your comfort zone and just do it.

“As you do the action you build the confidence.”

My recent Rant & Grow podcast guest Michelle Allaire is a charming artist, actor and model. She is looking forward to having more acting and modeling roles. She was a little uncomfortable about her upcoming pool photoshoot, but we developed a plan for her to take the actions needed to boost her self-confidence.

I invite you to listen to our coaching session. If you’ve been looking for tips on how to increase your self-confidence, you’ll find them in this podcast episode.

Just click on the play button to listen to the podcast right here.