5 Tips to Building Confidence 💪

Today, we’re kicking our blog off with 5 tips to developing personal confidence;

1. Write out a list of what you have accomplished

2. Take ownership of your strengths

3. Surround yourself with complimentary people

4. Take more chances and allow yourself the freedom to fail

5. Stop focusing on yourself

Our first tip to help you develop personal confidence is to write out a list of your accomplishments! Every single one of us has done something, many things, worthwhile – worth celebrating. Especially if you have found yourself in a season of self-doubt, it can be very easy to take for granted you past victories or forget about them altogether. This tendency can lead to a downward spiral mentally as you feel more and more like you haven’t really done anything and your life isn’t going anywhere. By simply writing out a list of your accomplishments and the things that you have overcome, it can help you to be able to combat the negative self-talk with tangible examples that give evidence against what you might be feeling.

Tip number 2 is to take ownership of your strengths. For many people, it can seem presumptuous, rude, egotistical or arrogant to simply say what you’re good at. I know because people say those things to me ALL THE TIME! And for me, maybe those titles apply... But in all seriousness, somehow we’ve gotten the idea that projecting a false humility is equal to true humility. Sheepishly downplaying what you are bringing to the table is not helpful. It’s OK to know what you’re good at and to let people know that you possess those skills when necessary. On the other hand, this is not an excuse to parade yourself through the classroom or office declaring how good you are. We’re simply saying that you do have strengths, talents and abilities. They were given to you for a reason, you have taken the time and effort to develop them and it would be a waste not to use them.

Next on our list is to surround yourself with complimentary people.

Like we said in our last tip, it’s important to know and take ownership of your strengths. It is also important to recognize the areas where you are not as strong in or areas that need growth. We can only go so far on our own, and working together with others can take us even further. It becomes a Dream Team scenario when you are surrounded by people who have equal and opposite strengths because they can complement yours. Their strengths can fill in the gaps that you might be lacking. When everyone is working in their strengths together to achieve a goal, you’ll be surprised at how much better you feel and your confidence will grow as a result.

Next up, it’s important that you take chances, get out of your comfort zone and learn to be ok with failure. Albert Einstein famously said that a person who never made a mistake has never tried something new. How often have we let our fear of failure, fear of messing up or making a mistake allow us to miss out on opportunities we know we should have taken? Looking back, do our “what if” questions tend to be more about “what if I hadn’t messed up?” or do they have more to do with “what if I had said this, done that, put myself out there?” If I set out with a goal in my mind but come up short, yes, it can hurt. It could even be devastating for a moment. But chances are, I am a whole lot closer to my goal now than when I started. Now, I have experience, possibly made some helpful connections and in the very least have learned how NOT to do it in the future. Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time (come at me Lebron fans), said it like this: “I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”

Our final tip on developing confidence is to stop focusing on yourself. When we realize that everything and everyone does not rise and fall on me, it will help to ease the pressure we often place on ourselves. In social situations, at school or work, if you realized how often the people around you are just trying to make it and are many times feeling just as insecure, awkward or nervous as you, you’ll realize that we are all just people. We all make mistakes, but we also all have our own successes. Learning to let go and not take yourself too seriously will give you a new kind of freedom to go out in confidence just being you!

That wraps up our 5 tips on developing confidence. We know there are a ton of great tips that we didn’t cover today, so let us know what you would add in the comments below. Next week we’ll be continuing our series on Independence: All About You as we learn about accepting your uniqueness and what makes you you!