4 signs that your confidence levels are impacting on your success
Over the years I’ve helped thousands of people to increase their confidence, not just because it’s a nice thing to do but because I’ve seen it have a massive impact on their personal and professional success and happiness.
Here’s just a few of the things I’ve seen people go on to achieve purely by increasing their confidence;
- Gain a place on the board of directors.
- Increase sales by 33% within 3 weeks.
- Ask for (and get!) a speaking engagement at a national conference.
- Ask for (and get!) a new contract with much better terms.
- Feature in the press and on the radio.
- Tell their boss about the bullying in the office and get it eradicated!
And yet rarely does a client come to me and say “Can you help me increase my confidence please?” It is only by exploring what that client brings to the table am I able to see that one of the underlying issues that needs to be fixed is their confidence levels. Often I have to redirect the client back and check that they really want to talk about the subject they walked in the door with or if they feel that there is an underlining issue impacting on their results in this area. By exploring this together we often find that whether they call it a lack of confidence or not that is, in fact, the real issue. (Don’t worry I will keep the techie stuff to a minimum, I just wanted to give you a little insight.)
Interestingly my books may be about building confidence, sales and success and yet the one I was asked to write by the UK’s leading non-fiction publisher was not worded as increasing confidence but about fighting fear. Whether you see it as an abundance of fear or a lack of confidence, put the two on a timeline and you will see that the opposite of fear is confidence. And so being able to build yours is critical to building your personal and professional success.
Here’s four signs your confidence levels need some loving;
Everything is fine
A sure sign that your success could be heightened is to look around you and find that everything is running along smoothly. What everything? There is not one area that could do with a tweak or that you are focusing on for future growth and development? Not one thing in your personal or professional life that you look at and think “I’d like to learn more” or “I’d like to reduce how much I do that in my life?” You see when we face fear (or try to ignore it like a dog being told off for raiding the rubbish bin!) we do our best to avoid making eye contact with the issue. The “If I don’t look over there I can’t see the problem” attitude. And that means there is a blind spot potentially hiding opportunities for you to learn and grow your confidence. So it’s also as a sign that you aren’t pushing yourself enough. And why don’t we push ourselves more? Because we fear the result we will get!
No action
If you find yourself not as busy or productive as usual, look for the fear. Remember the fear is the opposite of your confidence and as such by noticing where you lack action you can start to pay attention to the areas that could need some support. A perfect example is when you realise you’ve not taken action on something you want or dealt with something that niggles at you. Or you’ve stopped bothering to do those nice little touches you used to do when you first started working for that company years ago. The lack of spark can point to the areas that need some assistance and where you could be lacking confidence and thus impacting on your results.
Less enjoyment
It may not be an area directly connected to your personal or professional success however I often hear clients say that connected to the area that they wish to change in their life, as we work on a deeper more subconscious level they share that they notice they’ve stopped reading or going out with friends or cooking nice meals. Things that may seem completely irrelevant to success can showcase a lack of love for your life. And when we find ourselves in a rut, feeling unappreciated or like we aren’t getting the results we want, that can impact on our confidence and it can often show up in this way. So are you loving your free time as much as your professional life? They have a knock on effect to each other. And so this process can work the other way too.
You believe everything.
Worse than fake news is some of the drivel we listen to in our heads. We have all heard of the Imposter Syndrome (I can shut that bad voice up in about 1 session and if you want to get started for free click here for my free eBook on How to Fix the Imposter Syndrome.) and we’ve heard of the shiny thing syndrome (where everything looks good so we go around in circles, creating no real results – Read more here) and best of all think of the rubbish you let your head say to you. The way you berate yourself for being rubbish at that, or never been able to do this, or have you noticed how many chins you’ve got recently. All that negative talk can only hold power if you let it. So if you notice the voice in your head has become a little bit too much like the evil stepmother, crossed with Simon Cowell and The Wicked Witch from the East (or was that West?) stop that voice, it is damaging your confidence, enabling fears to grow strong and stopping you from achieving what you really wish to.
I’d love to see what it could do for you too!
