How To Build Confidence
According to podcaster Chris Williamson, confidence is an undeniable stack of proof that you are who you say you are. Anything else is fake confidence, easily seen through and easily shook. When you have an undeniable stack of proof that you are who you say you are, you behave confidently, because you have no doubt that you can handle what you’re doing, and neither does anyone else. After all, the undeniable stack of proof that you built is right there.
How do you build this undeniable stack of proof? By overcoming challenges. When you overcome a challenge, your confidence gets a boost. When you avoid challenges, your confidence takes a hit. It’s video game simple.
Overcoming Challenges = +Confidence
Avoiding Challenges = -Confidence
It’s a very simple formula. When you seek out and overcome challenges you become more confident. When you avoid challenges, especially ones that you are drawn to, you lose confidence in your ability to take on anything challenging. This is called low confidence, or insecurity.
If you want to be a confident person, just seek out and overcome challenges.
This is why so many confident people preach going to the gym, because a gym is a very controlled environment where you can slowly and steadily increase the challenge you set for yourself. As you make steady progress, your confidence grows as your strength increases.
The gym is where my confidence was first developed in high school. When I started working out as a freshman I could barely bench 100 pounds. By my senior year I had set a max bench of 265. Now, let’s do the math. If my arm / chest strength increased 165% over the course of 3 years, it’s logical to assume that my confidence increased by the same percentage. Add to that the other challenges I was taking on in football, track and wrestling, and we could expect at minimum a 200% increase in confidence over 3 years.
Now, physical activities are not the only way to build confidence. I rarely go to the gym anymore, because I have too many other irons in the fire. Why do I have too many irons in the fire? Because I built the confidence to take on lots of other things, by overcoming challenges in the gym in high school.
It doesn’t matter what realm your challenges are in. Now, my challenges are mostly in music, teaching, and writing. Your challenges can be in any realm, but if you avoid them, you will lose confidence, and over time you will question if you’re even capable of that challenge.
One of my favorite challenges is to travel by yourself. With no one to solve problems and figure things out for you, you are forced to take radical self-responsibility.
A 21 year old friend of mine just went on her first international trip by herself. She came back a completely different person. She seems more self-assured, more comfortable in herself, and less concerned by the challenges of life, or others opinions of her. In short, she is more confident in just about every category you could measure.
By seeking out and overcoming a challenge that she was drawn to, she gained confidence, because that is the formula. If she had avoided that challenge, and allowed her brain to rationalize her way out of doing something intimidating and unpredictable, she would have actively lost confidence in herself. She would now be a less confident person than she was, (starting to believe that she wasn’t capable of challenges) instead of going on her own quest of self-development, and returning a stronger, more capable and confident person, having slayed the dragon of fear that was occupying her imagination.
I wanted to write this article, to make confidence as plain and simple as possible. Too many people treat it like a mystery, or see confidence as some miracle bestowed on a select few and withheld from others. That’s not what it is. There is a very simple way to gain it from a very simple formula.
SEEK OUT & OVERCOME CHALLENGES.
