Clients often come to me looking to grow their confidence.
Perhaps they want to apply for a promotion. Or speak at a conference. Or have a difficult conversation.
They believe that a lack of confidence is holding them back.
Invariably we get into a conversation about the nature of confidence, and how it's different to competence.
Consider babies.
They are confident as they take their first steps. They're not competent, yet. But they dare to try. And even when they fall over, they dust themselves off and try again (perhaps after a short grizzle). Eventually they become competent.
Confidence is the thing that may allow us to eventually become competent. But it doesn't come from competence.
Nowadays, I believe that confidence is innate - something that's built into all of us.
But many of us, as adults, get caught up insecure thinking. We start to tell ourselves that we can't do something, often because we believe we wouldn't be able to handle the consequences of failing.
On this basis, a baby would never learn to walk because it's inevitable that it will fail at the beginning. But the baby doesn't get caught up in insecure thinking. It just stays in the feeling of innate confidence.
The secret to having more confidence is simply to do less insecure thinking.
You don't need to adopt a positive psychology mindset or hype yourself up.
Just pay less attention to insecure thoughts as and when they arise.
