Building Strength pt.4
Self-Confidence
Self-confidence is what gives you the resilience to approach uncertainty head on.
We can develop self-confidence in ourselves but the common-view today has it all wrong.
Shouting affirmations in the mirror every morning won’t make you more confident. (awesome short clip about that here) Because you’re human. When times get tough, and your affirmations aren’t ringing loud anymore, you need more. You need evidence that you are who you say you are.
You’ve Done More Than You Think.. Remember It
You need evidence to back up your affirmations. You need evidence of yourself overcoming hardships and making your way through difficult experiences. If you’re alive to read this, you’ve overcome many obstacles!
You learned to walk? That wasn’t easy.
You had a falling out with a friend and survived? That was hard.
You took a hard math class, studied and passed the exam? You didn’t think you could do it and you did.
The point is, if you graduated high school, I guarantee you have overcome hundreds of hard times. Remind yourself of those moments to gain confidence. When things look uncertain and you start to question yourself, remind yourself you’re not going in blind. You’ve done this before.
What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done? You did that. Before you did it, you didn’t know if you could come out the other side. And then you did. This next step will be the same.
You’ll always have doubts. Even the most confident people in the world will have some doubts. It’s your job to quiet those doubts. To remember life has never been easy. You’ve overcome so much. You are the type of person who survives hard sh*t.
Building More Confidence
They key to building confidence is to keep doing hard things. The more recent a piece of evidence, the more we believe in it.
If you’re facing a scary road ahead, and the last time you were brave was a decade ago, you actually have more evidence that you’re not brave.
To fix this, I think it’s important to always be challenging yourself in some way. That can be in any number of ways.
Personally, I like to do a weekly workout challenge where I do something so difficult that once in a while I do fail. The other thing I like to do are cold showers and cold plunges. I don’t do them for the health benefits as much as for the mental resilience of doing the uncomfortable thing that I don’t want to do.
These challenges could even be saying hi to a stranger everyday or eating a food you don’t like. You decide what would be meaningful to you.
I’ve found implementing regular challenges in my life to be helpful in many ways, some I didn’t predict:
increased confidence
increased focus
enhanced view of self (I like me more)
Use the hard times you’ve endured until now to do more hard things today and prepare for hard things tomorrow.
Build confidence today to be ready for challenges tomorrow.
Key Takeaways
Affirmations are bulls*it
You’ve overcome hundreds of hard times
Challenge yourself regularly to create more evidence that you are who you say you are
Brains Gains
When’s the last time you were in a bad situation and you didn’t think you would make it? But then you did. Don’t forget that.
PS. Check this clip on self-confidence from the man running the entire length of Africa
Your Biggest Fan,
Noah “BigNerd” Sochaczevski