Having confidence in the personal resources that you have to face your problems or the obstacles that are crossed in your projects, is a decisive factor to achieve your goals. However, we have all come to experience insecurity and doubts about specific challenges in our personal or professional life.
Experiencing anxiety and fear in the face of challenges is natural. One of the factors that help prepare for challenges is believing in yourself and having a positive internal speech, but this is not all; Studies show that thoughts or words are not enough if they are not based on acts or actions that serve as evidence of our competence to handle the situation.
Here we review how these ideas can be included in 3 practical tips to increase self-confidence:
1. Create a Personal Hall of Fame
It is proven that the brain of athletes when visualizing the finish line, increases their physical performance and maximizes their speed. Shawn Achor - research leader of Positive Psychology - calls these moments of visualization "Accelerators of success" and argues that when we perceive ourselves capable of making a change, achieving a goal or making progress, our level of performance increases because we believe that it is possible and that our effort will truly make a difference; When our brain does not perceive that success is accessible, it reduces any additional effort because it considers it useless.
A good way to apply this principle is to learn how to create a "Personal Hall of Fame"; a place in your conscience where you store all the moments of success and private victories throughout your life: in your childhood, your adolescence, your stage as a young adult, your season in college, your first jobs and your biggest projects, achievements professional and personal. When you find yourself in a discouraged situation, take a moment in this "Hall" and remember what you have been able to do before; Discuss how these resources can help you solve the problems in front of you today and envision yourself meeting your challenges in the future.
2. Your competition increases your confidence
Competence is understood as the ability to do something or to handle certain situations, it is generally based on knowledge and experience. Dr. Chamorro-Premuzic professor of Business Psychology at University College London explains that in order to maintain a healthy level of Confidence, it must be realistically based on your competence and instead of just repeating "yes I can do this", “Yes I can do this” you should ask yourself: what do I need to do to feel more competent and do this? Once you define what you need to develop, get down to work because nothing serves better to strengthen self-confidence than action, practice and repetition.
3. Keep growing continuously
Dr. Chamorro-Premuzic also mentions that another fundamental attribute to maintain confidence on a positive level is humility, since overconfidence can produce a negative effect or stagnation. That is why it is so important to celebrate the progress we have made as it is to consider the road we have yet to travel. Remembering from time to time that there are people who have gone further than us shakes our comfort zone a little, puts our feet on the ground and keeps us "awake" and motivated to continue developing as human beings.
Sources
- Before Happiness - Shawn Achor.Confidece- Dr. Tomás Chamorro -Premuzic.
