Confidence - it's more important than you think

More confidence is probably the number one request I get from my clients when they first start working with me.

It can be confidence in asking for the sale, confidence in asking for the money, confidence that they are actually in the right line of business, confidence that they can deliver the results, confidence in charging the rate they feel they deserve, and so on and so on.

So how do we get this confidence? The simple answer is we don't. Confidence is not something you can go out and get. Confidence is there inside of you, it is a God given part of your make up already. It's something you were born with.

So why is their such a lack of confidence?

In a nutshell, it's the contaminated thinking that creates a smoke screen and doesn't allow the confidence to shine through. Think of it like this: it's just like the sun is always there, we know it's there, except some days it's cloudy and we can't see it or feel it, and we perhaps forget that it's there.

The thoughts are the clouds and they can range from anything like “you're not good enough”, “you can't charge that much, who do you think you are?” “You're not ready to do this yet, no-one wants to listen to what you have to say”, “it's not the right time”, and so on.

And for many people the clouds are out all the time. For some they are out some of the time, and for others very occasionally. I'd love to say my clouds are never out, but I am human, and I haven't met anyone whose thoughts never act as a smokescreen sometimes.

So what to do?

Now this is simple, but not easy to start with. ........... Don't do anything.

What??? I hear you say, then how am I going to get rid of the thoughts? And that's the paradox because we can't ‘get rid’ of the thoughts. In fact, if you have tried this, and I'm sure you have, then you'll know just how difficult that is, it seems that more negative thoughts come in and you just feel worse and worse.

That's because you are just piling more thoughts of how to deal with this on top of the thoughts that are already there, adding to the mass of clouds and making the confidence feel further and further away.

So instead of more thinking, the simplest way is to just acknowledge that they are there and KNOW that they will settle down because our thoughts always do. And to know that this is just thought, and that thoughts always change. And the more you do this, the quicker they will settle and the more confidence you will have more of the time.

You don't have to DO anything - this is about awareness. Your thinking is creating the feeling of un-confidence by covering up that inbuilt confidence. Your feeling of a lack of confidence is an inbuilt signal to you that your thinking is not serving you well right now because you are not feeling the way you want to.