Today I want to talk to you about something that’s foundational to having the career or business you want. And that is self-confidence. Because you aren’t going to get very far if you don’t believe you can.

Most of us believe that people are either CONFIDENT or they’re NOT. 

That SELF-CONFIDENCE is an attribute we’re born with. 

But it’s not.

Self-confidence is a skill we develop if we choose. 

And it’s definitely a skill WORTH developing because being self-confident is linked to having greater success, making more money and overall having a happier and more satisfying life and career.

I’ve got a lot to share on this topic and it’s something that affects so many people, so let’s dive in.

The first thing I want to share is that there’s a difference between CONFIDENCE and SELF CONFIDENCE. And it’s very possible to have ONE without the OTHER. 

But before I share the difference, I want to first share what both words have in common and that is, that confidence comes from the Latin word meaning TRUST. So, confidence is about having TRUST in yourself and your abilities.

But where they differ is that CONFIDENCE is backward-looking, and SELF-CONFIDENCE is forward-looking.

You gain confidence through experience. 

You learn to trust or have confidence in your ability to DO SOMETHING when you’ve already successfully done or achieved it before.

Self-Confidence on the other hand, IS FORWARD-LOOKING. It’s about having belief or trust in yourself and your ability to do things even though you’ve never done them before.

So, confidence is based on having tangible proof. That’s where KNOWING you can do it comes from. Whereas, self-confidence is about a having faith or TRUST in your ABILITY to do something; to figure it out.

So, if your boss asks you to lead an initiative and you’ve successfully done dozens just like it before, you are very confident in your ability to be successful at that thing.

You’re probably not going to worry whether you can do it, wonder whether others will judge or criticize you or get stuck in indecision or overwhelm. No, you’ve done it. So, you know you’re going to rock it.    

But if your boss asks you to go do something new that you HAVEN’T done before and you’re NOT a self-confident person, you might feel the instant flare-up of self-doubt. And you’ll wonder things like “what if I can’t do it?” “what if I look foolish?” And even when you dive in, you’ll likely continue to torture yourself a bit with those doubt. 

Whereas if you ARE self-confident and your boss asks you to go do something new you haven’t done before, you immediately start thinking about how to go do it. You’ll plan it out, chunk down the actions, pull other people in who’s skills or experience you need, put it on a timeline and then go do it.

Look at the difference between the NOT self-confident you and the Self-confident you in these examples. The NOT self-confident you is full of anxiety and tortured thoughts that make your life so miserable even if you DO manage to get the thing done you’ll feel miserable doing it. Whereas with SELF confident you, there’s no drama, because you’re too busy figuring out how to do it to even wonder about all the what if’s that could go wrong.  

I’m thinking we’d all rather be the self-confident one, right?

The non-self confident one is probably going to learn to be overly reliant on feeling confident whereas the SELF confident one is going to become gre

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