How to Build the Confidence You Need to Achieve the Career Success You Dream Of

No doubt about it – if you desire any level of career success, you’ll need a healthy dose of confidence.

Whether you decide to apply for that new job, or start your own business, the key to getting out there is believing in yourself. Confidence allows you to focus on the task at hand, without wasting your energy and time worrying about what other people think.

Confidence is a necessary trait in life that helps you achieve more in life. Working at building your confidence, though, doesn’t always come easy, but the benefits are so worth it:

Key Benefits Of Building Confidence

1) Improved Performance

Confidence can help you improve your productivity at work while encouraging you to go for more challenging projects, or increase your chance of getting a promotion. The more confident you are in your abilities, the better you will perform.

2) Ease of Social Situations

Those who are more confident tend to be at ease in social situations. There’s no need to rely on others for validation of their self-worth – they are free to be themselves. Confident people radiate positive energy that attracts others to them.

3) Better Health

Confidence can help improve your mental health and overall health. Knowing your worth, value, and skills can help you feel happier, stronger, and more secure mentally and emotionally.

4) Overall Happiness

Boosting your self-confidence can help to improve your overall happiness in life. Those who have a healthy level of confidence often report being happier and more satisfied with their lives than those who struggle with their confidence.

5) Less Insecurity and Doubt

Confidence helps you become more self-aware of your worth and value. This helps you to easily smash feelings of insecurity and doubt that may creep in.

Confidence is a trait that, once worked at and built up, can get you very far in life. Self-confidence isn’t tangible. You can’t touch it and say, “This is confidence.” It’s something we get a feeling for when we (or others) have it. It’s trust in ourselves and our abilities.

Likewise, we can recognize when someone lacks it. Even when they try to attempt to compensate for it, we sense it and feel bad for them. The good news is that self-confidence is a soft skill, which means you can learn it and apply it to your daily life. It’s not fixed, like your height for example.

It’s mainly based on your mindset and the actions you do to follow through.

Nobody is born with a limitless supply of self-confidence. In fact, confidence can seem elusive. Sometimes it feels wonderful; other times, not so much. But you can build your self-confidence. Here are five things that you can do to help boost your self-confidence:

1.) Recognize confidence is a skill you can learn.

You can set a goal and take small steps daily at gaining confidence. Learn more about confidence by reading and applying information about gaining self-confidence.

2.) Get inspired by thinking about prior successes.

Your accomplishment record becomes a time-line for your growth. For those days you feel like nothing is going right, reviewing your list helps you see that you may not be where you want to be, but you’re not where you used to be. Things you can document is how increased your company’s bottom line, how you helped the organization fulfill its mission, and problems you solved on your job, in your department, or section.

3.) Expect success.

Consider the The placebo effect when expecting success. Gemma was having problems sleeping because of anxiety. She thought it better to get prescription medication to help her sleep. Her doctor was against the idea because of a pre-existing heart condition that could have significant side effects. After a week, Gemma returned to the doctor determined to get the medication. Instead of giving in, her doctor prescribed a placebo. Gemma came back for her review and reported an improvement in her sleep patterns. Her doctor noted how her perception of the drug had given her a sense of security that enabled her to sleep better.

The placebo effect, while debatable in its effectiveness in the medical field, creates a sense of comfort in the patient’s mind. A victory mindset mimics a placebo. We pursue our goals more when we sense we will win no matter what. Our odds seem greater like we are placing our goals on a scale that is already tipped in our favor. We feel so much better about the potential to win; we see setbacks as insignificant in the face of the bigger picture. Developing this victory mentality sets a stage for us to achieve our goals before we even execute them. Like Gemma, we sleep better if we condition our minds for success and expect it.

4.) Seek opportunities that position you to use your talent or skills.

Take risks. If you want to excel at work, you’ll need to move beyond your comfort zone. Focus on gradual growth you can sustain, and the small victories will add up. Deliver a presentation at a staff meeting to prepare for addressing the crowd at your annual convention.

5.) Think about on how your life can change with more confidence.

When you reflect, it gives you the ability to break down the tasks into logical steps. You can think of it as a reenactment of the procedures that were taught. Determine how you want to live their life and how being confident can help make that happen. Often, that requires looking into the past and being honest about where you’ve been so that you can get a better sense of the future.

6.) Study confidence-building techniques.

Confidence is a skill you can learn. For instance, practicing self-care emotionally, mentally, and physically can help you improve your overall health. Be kind to yourself when you’ve make mistakes, you’re only human. Refuse to compare yourself with others because you are unique. And when you are tempted, remind yourself that you are enough as you are.

Another confidence-building technique is to embrace responsibility. Taking responsibility for your life and how you allow life to affect you. Following through on these things will actually help you feel confident. Yes, sometimes the very best way to boost your confidence is by taking action. So, embrace that self-doubt and act anyway.

7.) Spend time with positive friends.
Those who you surround yourself is your inner circle. Your inner circle can be either negative and exclusive or positive and inclusive – People whose social circle is positive and inclusive find themselves achieving their true potential; and people whose social circle is negative and exclusive have problems experiencing personal growth.

Your inner circle should bring out the best parts of the real you. They should not inhibit or prevent the best parts of you from developing as they should.

You should never have to agree to an action or an idea that you don’t agree with in your inner circle. You should never have to suppress yourself nor should you be less than all that you can be. If you feel the people around you are keeping you from growth, you have a duty to yourself to replace them with people who will empower you to be your true self.

8.) Set realistic goals that lead you to your ultimate lifestyle.
Dreaming your vision of your life is a wonderful start, but nothing keeps you accountable like setting actual goals. Having goals is the difference between achievers and daydreamers. It keeps you on your toes as it puts the vision into focus.

Visualize what you want to achieve in the long run and craft your short term or daily goals. This helps you plan how to achieve the goals. It helps you know what activities you will need to engage in and what type of personnel you will need to incorporate. Setting time lines around your goals will also drive you to work smarter towards the end goal.

Important: Setting unrealistic goals that are difficult to achieve will only cause you to become discouraged about your abilities. Start by setting small goals for yourself that you can reach quickly. Once you’ve achieved some success, you can move on to harder goals.

9.) Question Your Inner Critic
Some of the harshest comments we hear come from ourselves. When your inner critic becomes overactive and inaccurate, you may start to suffer from low self-esteem. To help combat your inner critic, look for evidence to support or deny the things that it is saying to you. Find opportunities to compliment, congratulate, and reward yourself, even for your smallest accomplishments.

10.) Do Something Every Day That Scares You
The best way for you to overcome fear is to face it head-on. Getting out of your comfort zone and facing your fears will help you to gain more confidence. By doing something that scares you every day, you’ll start to gain confidence from those experiences and will quickly experience a boost in your self-confidence.

11.) Visualize Yourself as You Want to Be
Visualization is a powerful technique that requires you to see a picture of yourself that you are proud of, in your mind. When struggling with low self-esteem, we often have a poor perception of ourselves that tends to be inaccurate. Practice visualizing a beautiful version of yourself achieving your goals, to help you boost your confidence.

12.) Affirm Yourself
The trick to making lasting changes it to shift the way you view yourself. We tend to believe what we tell ourselves, so repeating positive affirmations daily will help to boost your self-confidence. To get your mind to accept the positive affirmations quickly, phrase them as a question. Our brains are wired to seek answers to a question, without analyzing if the question is valid.

Self-confidence is an integral part of who you are. Understanding why it matters can mean the difference being happy and being miserable. Having that self-assurance can help boost your relationships and career. You’ll also be able to inspire others to become happier, more fulfilled individuals. When you’re confident, you know what you bring to the table, what you want, and how you’re going to get it; you refuse to let insecurities build up or doubt to creep in. This helps you to go even further in life and protect the confidence you’ve already built up.

For many people, building up confidence doesn’t come easily. Those who seem to have incredible confidence have worked extremely hard for years to build it. Every day we are bombarded with numerous elements that can threaten our self-confidence, external influences and our inner critic constantly deflates it by telling us we’re not good enough.

The good news is that you can develop the confidence you need to help you achieve the success you desire. With these tips you can start to take charge of building yourself up and boosting your self-confidence. Once worked at and built up, confidence is one of the keys to help you get very far in life