One of the most popular topics on blogs right now is content about how to have more confidence. It’s driving me bonkers! I’m unsure what the fascination is with the subject.

Having gone through the whole confidence battle myself and come out the other side on top, I think I can share a few things that will help everybody.

Act as if.

Rather than be caught up in the foreplay of overthinking, considering and asking too many questions, just do.

“Quite simply, what has worked for me is to just get on with the task and tell myself I’m becoming an expert while being in motion”

Getting going is the part we’re all missing when it comes to confidence. You can’t be confident unless you get some experience at whatever you want to be confident at. This advice sounds simplistic because it is.

I’ve become more confident over the last five years by running up miles in the beaten-up VW Beetle that was my mind and body. Through gaining experience, I turned that VW Beetle into a Lamborghini by trying things and executing.

There’s no pretending when it comes to confidence. You only start to believe you are confident when you begin taking action. I could probably wrap it up right there and you’d be done when it comes to confidence. No more self-help secrets and private masterminds are required.

Act as if you are already confident and your mind will believe you. Your mind only believes what you tell it. Tell your mind you are confident and you will gain more confidence in the execution. That extraordinary mind will then do as you tell it.

Sit up and stand up straight soldier!

I always believed this one was total hocus pocus or maybe even a Jedi Mind Trick. It’s not. Confidence is also in the way you move. People feel confidence in you through your presence. If you need to perform at 110% in say a speech as an example, you have to stand up straight and physically be confident.

Now this is harder than it looks so here’s what I did: I stood on the stage with my back straight. I then rolled my shoulders back and poked my chest out slightly. Each movement on stage was acted out as if I was Arnold Schwarzenegger posing for the Mr Olympia Final (that’s hard as I look nothing like him but stay with me peeps).

Simply having a confident physical presence allowed the audience to be confident with the words and advice I was delivering. Even if each point I presented was not completely thought through, the effect was still the same. I came across as confident.

So, next time you want to be confident, try this out for yourself. Pick your own hero who’s oozing confidence, to be the person you imagine when you go into your confident pose. No matter how ridiculous this seems, it works. Don’t question, just do.

Self-talk is key: three words to confidence.

Okay, let’s not overdo this confidence lesson. The self-talk in my head when I need to be confident is very dumb and easy to copy. The three words I use are:

“You got this!”

Say those three words whenever you need to be confident. Say them over and over until they drown out your negative inner voice that wants to doubt your ability.

“Doubt is the disease that sabotages your confidence”

I had no idea about blogging as an example. I just believed I’d find a way and I did. My doubting brain told me that I was hopeless at English and couldn’t master grammar to save my life. That aside, I just used these three words to silence the inner critic.

Your inner critic is only right if you let it be. Back yourself. Talk to yourself like a winner (not a loser) and you’ll have more confidence. No need to buy that book on confidence anymore. No need to read another self-help, pump up blog post that gets you all warm and sweaty.

Disconnect from the outcome.

Confidence is about putting the outcome aside. Everything you do is a lesson and will give you confidence. Being tied to the idea of what the outcome looks like allows your doubting mind and your inner critic to come back to the main stage of your attention.

Where your energy flows to, is where your focus goes. Focusing on anything other than being confident about your daily battles will give you the results you hate. Nine times out of ten you can’t control the outcome anyway.

So focusing on doing your best and being confident will take you so much further. Like I keep saying “You got this!”

Swag it out like whatever outcome you achieve is phenomenal because you are incredible for waking up each day and just giving it a crack!

Say yes and learn later.

Confidence comes from saying yes and deciding to figure out the strategy later. If an offer or idea resonates with you, then say yes. You’ll find yourself gaining more experience by doing so. My superman complex used to make me carefully think about each offer I was presented with to assess whether I had the skills and capability.

Now I choose offers and proposals that bring me joy instead, and I use my newfound confidence to say yes, and know that I’ll learn what I need to execute properly along the way. Failing that, there’s someone I know in my network that can fill any blanks in regardless so I’m very unlikely to fail.

BUT even if I fail it’s all good because I still learned heaps, got experience and had fun in the meantime. All of which made me more confident. Confidence is unstoppable when it starts to compound through experience and taking action.

Remember that all of us have no idea including me.

This was something I learned through a podcast. If you look at your heroes and get to know them as friends, you’ll quickly realize, like I did with my own heroes, that they have no idea. Your heroes just act as if and see what sticks.

When approaching any goal with this in mind, you find an inner confidence to have a go and see what happens.

“When you realize we’re all flawed, it sets you free to try stuff and execute on a few wild goals that you may not succeed at”

I have no clue about most things and that’s where the beauty lies. Stop idolizing and be confident in your ability to get sh*t done.

We’re all extraordinary when we believe we are.

Belief in yourself is key to having confidence. The truth is that all of us can be extraordinary no matter where we come from, our nationality, the struggles we’ve gone through, what books we’ve read or who our current friends are.

The opportunity to be extraordinary exists for all of us. Let this very idea give you the confidence you need to change the world because you can.

You don’t need more self-help articles on confidence: You need to understand you’re already extraordinary.

If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net