You don’t “have” confidence. you build it.
If you were asked “who is Roger Bannister?” would you know the answer? If not, that’s okay because not many people would. He is an athlete, who may not have the name recognition as most professional athletes or the hall of fame level success of past greats. However, his accomplishments were nothing short of incredible during his time. That’s because in 1954, Roger Bannister was the first person to ever run a mile in under four minutes (3:59 to be exact). Leading up to this, it was thought to be physically impossible for any human, then or in the future, to be able to run a mile in that time. Countless athletes before him had tried, and no one was able to complete the challenge. Roger thought differently, he thought it was possible, and believed he would be the one to accomplish the task. He didn’t attribute this success to any specialized training, new shoes or any other gimmick. Rather, he had the confidence in his abilities, and knew he could do it. And he did.
This in itself is amazing, but what is even more incredible is what happened after. He only held the record for a whopping 46 days, before someone ran a mile in 3:58. In the months that followed, more and more athletes all broke a four minute mile. Before, everyone thought that it was absolutely impossible and would never be done. It was only once they were shown it could be done, did they gain the confidence to complete it themselves. This led to the aptly named “Roger Bannister Effect” in which all it takes is one person showing that something is possible for others to believe they can do it themselves. Now, nearly 70 years later, a four minute mile is the standard for most professional runners and a goal for so many collegiate athletes to strive for.
You might be thinking “This is a really interesting fact, what the hell does this have to do with me?” especially if you’re not striving to be a professional runner. The fact itself? Probably very little. The idea behind it though, that has everything do to with you. There are probably things within our lives we view as impossible, simply because we believe we can’t do them, just can’t do them well, or have never tried doing them because of it.
1. quieting the inner critic
Regardless of the task or activity, the lack of confidence in our abilities is the major obstacle preventing us from even attempting it. We tell ourselves a myriad of excuses for why we can’t do something, “you don’t know how, you’ll fail if you try, you’ll never be able to do it”. Our internal narrative falls to the side of negative, and saps our confidence. A key step to building our confidence is to change that narrative to a positive one. Because we can’t just go get more confidence, or “life-hack” our way to being more confident. We need to build it, which does take effort and practice. However, when we break it down into smaller steps, we can build it in a variety of ways. And it all begins by reframing our negative internal dialogue to a positive one.
2.Break it Down
When we view an activity that we lack confidence in, we might be viewing too much of it. If we lack confidence in our abilities to cook, we might be thinking about all the different dishes in the world and methods to cook them that we’ll never master, so our confidence in our abilities to cook are shaken by the idea “I’m not a good cook”. Which is ridiculous. You don’t need to be able to whip up any dish imaginable to be able to cook, or even be a good one. Rather, to build confidence we can focus smaller, on manageable tasks and goals. Rather than needing to cook every dish, we can focus on cooking one dish. And eventually, cooking that dish well. The narrative then changes from “I’m not a good cook” to “I cook this very well!” and with it, the confidence in our abilities begin to increase.
3. get comfortable being uncomfortable
We can continue to build our confidence by stepping outside of our comfort zone. This doesn’t mean taking a huge step or leap and hoping for the best. Rather it means taking a look at what is a realistic next “level” for whatever it is we are doing and attempting it. Keeping with the cooking example, maybe it means adding something extra to the dish we cook well, or a new dish that is similar in nature. Trying these new things, challenging ourselves, and embracing failure as a learning opportunity is going to build our resilience and self-assurance. The more steps we take outside our comfort zone, the more things become possible. With it, the more our confidence grows.
4. focus on strengths
We also need to balance our strengths and our weaknesses. Improving our weaknesses is an important piece to building confidence, but spending too much time focusing on what we are “bad at” will have the opposite effect because it can leave us feeling frustrated and less confident in our abilities. Rather, we need to allocate more time to improving strengths, because ultimately our strengths are what will make us more successful and build our confidence. In regards to the cooking example, we might struggle with one style of cooking and excel in another. Instead of spending our time and effort on the area we struggle with, we can allocate more time to the area we excel at and instill greater confidence there.
5. Putting it together
When we build confidence in one or two aspects of our life, it seeps into all the others. By reframing the negative self-talk, starting small and stepping out of our comfort zone we build our confidence. It can be applied to different activities and works best when we focus on our strengths. If we are learning an instrument, focusing on a type of music we play well will instill the confidence we need to try and play a specific song within that genre. If we begin to play that song well, we can step outside our comfort zone and play it in front of a select group of people to build our confidence even more. The confidence we feel playing music, will in turn help us feel confident in different aspects of our life.
Confidence plays a pivotal role in our personal development. Believing in ourselves and our abilities is what encourages us to take calculated risks, embrace new challenges and overcome the different obstacles we will face. Our internal narrative becomes “if I can do this, I can do anything” and we look for different opportunities to propel our lives forward. It enables us to reach different levels of success and to continuously improve as a person. When that happens, we also can become the example. We can show what is possible, and encourage others to have confidence that they can do it themselves.
