Confidence is on of the most common topics my life coaching clients bring to me. Often they think that their problems would all be fixed if they only could be a “more confident”.
Working with a confidence coach is indeed a great way to improve your confidence. At the same time, I believe it is important to acknowledge the following:
Courage is much more important than confidence
Confidence is the result of doing something you are not confident at. It is not a precondition!
If we believe we need to have confidence first before we do an activity, then we have it the wrong way around. Remember when you learned how to drive a car? You probably did not have confidence about driving at the beginning, but you practised driving anyway and eventually you got to a stage where you could drive confidently and on autopilot. So what we really need is courage to do something despite the lack of confidence. The confidence will then come through practice.
Too much confidence can be dangerous
It’s OK not to be confident at everything. Indeed, if we are too confident, we may undertake tasks that are too risky or even harmful; like the character in the Catherine Tate Show who gets herself into trouble by constantly saying “I can do this” and stepping into situations that require skills she does not have.
If I tried to work with clients who suffer from PTSD because I am overly confident of my skills, I would put the wellbeing of my clients at risk because I am not trained for that kind of work.
If you are promoted into a new leadership position at a new company, it would be prudent not to feel too cocky from the beginning and rather listen and learn first before making assumptions of what needs to be changed in your new team.
Personal effectiveness requires both confidence and good self-awareness of when it’s better not to be confident.
You already are confident
When clients tell me that they lack “confidence”, they make their problem bigger than it is. Confidence is not an on-or-off state. It’s a spectrum. We all are pretty confident in many areas of our lives, eg you may be confident making purchase, using public transport or driving a car.
When my clients want to work with me on confidence, the first step I take is to help them define the issue in more detail. I ask in which specific areas they lack confidence. Is it knowledge on a specific subject, or applying a skill or meeting a target?
Once we have narrowed the issue down, the problem becomes much smaller, more tangible and manageable. We can then create a strategy for dealing with the specific issue.
In this short video I share a few ideas on how to go about increasing your confidence:
You don’t have to do it on your own
In the same way as a personal trainer will help you reach your fitness goals much faster, working with a life coach will help you become more effective in hitting your life goals. So we are are here to help! You can book a FREE Discover Call or a Trial Coaching Sessions with me or one of my hand picked associate coaches here. We would love to hear from you!
