The Strategies That ACTUALLY Work for Building Self Confidence Fast!

Why Confidence Is a Crucial Skill

How would you expect yourself to take action relentlessly if you felt you were doomed to fail? How would you push through if you felt unable to achieve your goal? Why bother if you had the belief you’re not worth the effort?

Without belief in yourself, you’re never gonna take the actions needed.

Your belief needs to come first, and the results come second.

But, how can you build confidence?

While there are some great confidence building techniques out there, there’s also a lot of garbage that doesn’t work. In my journey of going from being bullied as a shy, insecure loser to building unshakable confidence, I figure out what actually works for building confidence.

Today, I’m sharing 3 effective methods.

These are the same methods that I used to build my own confidence from 0.

Note: I’ve recently created a free masterclass in building confidence. You can watch it here to start skyrocketing YOUR confidence.

1. Confidence Comes From the Past, Not the Present

There’s a crucial scene in one of the Matrix movies (I believe the second).

Morpheus is giving a speech to inspire people to fight back.

I have to paraphrase here, but he roughly says: “I stand here in full confidence, not because of the path ahead of us, but because of the path that lies behind me”. He gave this speech some time after he, Neo and the rest of the team had victories against the enemies.

His quote highlights a crucial aspect of building confidence:

You build confidence by building proof of your abilities!

Think about it like this:

If you’ve had the same job for a few years, you’ll feel incredibly confident doing it. This is because you have proof that you’re capable at what you’re doing. At the same time, you’ve done it so many times that you have a ton of positive reinforcement and feedback.

If it was something challenging you’ve never done before, you’d have way less confidence.

Or, take flirting as an example.

Imagine for a moment that all your attempts in the past have been successful.

You’d fear nothing in flirting the next time, because you have amazing experiences with it. In that example, you know that you’re good at it, and that you can make it work, which boosts your trust in yourself.

But, what if you never had that?

If you’ve had bad experiences with trying to flirt, you’d probably feel quite insecure in those instances. You’ve been hit in the face (maybe literally) with your lack of skill, which creates negative reinforcement.

There are two things I want you to take from this:

1. Confidence is domain-specific. Meaning that you would be perfectly fine in some situations, but feel terrible in situations outside your comfort zone.

2. The better you are at something, the more positive feedback you get. The feedback then boosts your confidence, which allows you to continue getting better results, creating an upward spiral.

How to Start From Scratch

Let’s assume that you starting out from 0 (like I did back in the day).

How would you go about building confidence?

Firstly:

You need to have goals for yourself!

Without goals, you will feel like a plastic bag drifting through the wind. When that happens, you’ll feel lost. Life will lack meaning (because you haven’t GIVEN meaning to it). And by extension, you’ll feel meaningless as a person.

If you haven’t already, it’s time to set clear goals.

Sidenote: If you’re not 100% clear on your goals yet, watch this video. You’ll learn the 4 crucial elements you need to set alongside your goal to make it achievable!

Found a goal?

Once you have your goal, here’s how to start building confidence with it:

The key is to start making promises to yourself and KEEP them. Every day, get crystal clear on what actions you’re going to take. Before you go to bed, you make sure you’ve done every single one of them!

There are three reasons for doing this:

1. How else are you gonna achieve your goal?

2. You’re building the skills you need to succeed

3. You build trust in yourself

Let’s zoom in on the 3rd reason:

Imagine that we’re friends. You constantly hear me talking about my dreams and goals, but I never actually take action. Additionally, I’ve already made several promises to you, but I’ve broken all of them.

Would you continue to trust me?

Hell no! (I hope not, at least)

You would probably think I’m full of crap.

But here’s the kicker:

How many times have you told yourself that you’re going to the gym (but didn’t)? Are there things you KNOW you should do, but have procrastinated on for months or years?

How many promises to yourself have you broken?

Break promises to others → They don’t trust you.
Break promises to yourself → YOU don’t trust you!

These promises don’t have to be huge at first (it’s better if they’re not) but you’ve got to start rebuilding that sense that you can trust yourself. the knowledge that you follow through on whatever you set your mind to!

2. What Are You Desperately Hiding?

Let’s dig a bit deeper.

Most confidence issues stem from deeply rooted insecurities and beliefs that we have about ourselves. It’s often caused by trauma of some sort. When we have a reluctance to put ourselves out there and shine brighter, something at a subconscious level is usually the cause.

These are the kinds of things that we don’t want others to see.

Let me ask you this:

If your sink is overflowing, would you start mopping up the water?
Or do you think it’s better to turn off the faucet first?

That’s why most confidence techniques never work.

When most people teach “building confidence”, they’re often focused on shallow techniques and tips. A couple of confidence hacks. But they never get to the real issues, which lay underneath the surface.

It’s like mopping up the water, but it just keeps flowing.

We’ve got to get to the root of the problem.

Ask yourself questions like:

• What qualities of me am I afraid others will see?

• What sort of mask do I use to hide my true self?

• What would happen if I acted as my true self?

• Why don’t I do that already?

• If I had total confidence in myself, what would I do differently?

With these kinds of questions, you want to be in a quiet spot by yourself first. Ask yourself the question and then shut up. Your mind, you know the little voice, is going to answer you. You will probably not like the answers, but listen carefully to them.

They are the deeply rooted insecurities you have to face!

In the action part below, I’ll share one of my frameworks for doing this.

3. You Follow Your Words

This is a crucial concept, and not just for building confidence.

It applies to everything in life.

Here’s the thing:

I see posts every day along the lines of “I’m terribly insecure, what now?” or “I can never be confident…” or “Getting things done is impossible for me”. At first sight, it’s simply people who are asking for help and advice, but there’s a hidden problem.

They think they’re describing their present situation.

In reality, their words describe their future!

This is because of our identity.

Our identity is the most powerful force in human psychology! We all have a strong NEED to stay congruent with who we say that we are. And once something is part of our identity, it is really difficult to change it.

Here’s the hidden problem:

When people tell themselves and others “I am X”, it becomes part of their identity over time. Our minds basically say “Oh, we’re X? Gotcha! I’ll make sure to stay congruent with that.”.

So if you keep telling yourself something like “I’m just not a confident person.”, you never will be! The part of your brain in charge of your identity will make sure of that.

Here’s an example of this:

I used to always say to myself that I’m terrible at remembering people’s names. And I would forget them 95% of the time. I would have to ask the same person multiple times what their name was, or wait awkwardly for them to introduce themselves to someone else just to hear their name.

But that all changed after I listened to a podcast.

They were talking about charisma and one of the key factors they talked about was remembering and using people’s names. Someone’s name is important to him/her so remembering it leaves a great impressing.

And so, I changed the way I talked to myself.

Instead of saying that I’m terrible at remembering names, I started telling myself: “People’s names are important to them, and I will remember everyone’s name the first time around.”.

The results?

Quite literally overnight, I went from remembering maybe 5% or 10% of names to remembering about 80% or so, maybe more. All because of this one shift in how I talk to myself.

Caveat:

Please note that I already had the ability to remember names, I just didn’t have the belief. I wouldn’t be able to start saying “I’m a great football player” and suddenly rival Ronaldo.

If you don’t have the skill yet, don’t expect instant results.

However, changing how you talk to yourself and others is what allows you to start changing that! Remember that you follow your words. So start by changing your words & at the same time start making promises to yourself and keep them.

You reinforce your new identity through ACTION, not words alone.

Reverse the “Golden Rule”

Today’s audio message is short and sweet, just under 3 minutes.

But it will help you out tremendously when it comes to confidence, self love & self care as well as your pursuit of your goals.

Check it out here:

Give Yourself a Temporary Confidence Boost

The methods above are about building lifelong confidence.

But, building it takes time!

In the meanwhile, here’s a simple 2-minute confidence hack that you can use for high pressure situations. It will give you a temporary boost in confidence when you need it most, like a job interview or having to give a presentation.

Exposing and Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

The problem when it comes to confidence is that most of the real problems are subconscious. It’s impossible to beat your enemy when you have no clue who the enemy is.

This leaves 2 questions:

1. How do you figure out what the roots of your confidence issue are?

2. Once you do, how can you work on overcoming that root cause?

That’s what the T.E.E.L. framework is for!

Trigger.
Engage.
Evaluate.
Let go.

Here’s how this method works:

The first step of the process is to force yourself out of your comfort zone to do something that triggers you in some way. Maybe it’s approaching a girl you like, and you freeze up. look for the situations in which you feel least confident and highly uncomfortable.

Put yourself in those situations.

Secondly, you need to resist the urge to stuff down your feelings. When you’re in an uncomfortable situation, your instinct will be to stuff down the emotions of fear, insecurity, nervousness and so on. You need to resist this urge.

Instead, engage with these sensations & emotions. Allow yourself to fully experience them without resistance.

When you’re doing this, you’re bringing the subconscious feeling out into your conscious mind.

From there on, we move to the Evaluation stage:

Either directly after (if possible) or later when you have the privacy to be alone, it’s time to evaluate these sensations and feelings. The fresher they are (closer to the event) the better. You’ve already allowed yourself to fully experience them, and now we’re going to question them.

Ask yourself questions like:

• Why do I feel [sensation/emotion]?

• How long have I felt like this?

• Have there been other instances in which I felt this?

• What was the first situation in which I felt like this?

• Can I point to a past event as the culprit?

When you’re asking these kinds of questions, you’re bringing your past experiences and possibly past trauma to the surface. This way, you can uncover the root issues and start working on them.

Note: Working with a good therapist can go a long way with this kind of introspection and deep work. Don’t be afraid to ask for help if you think you need it.

The final step is to let go of the emotional baggage.

In the evaluation stage, you’ve uncovered some of your past experiences that are causing your confidence issues. Now that you’re aware, you can process the event, let go of the emotional baggage and move on freed from it.

A lot of this comes down to acceptance, but here’s a key element of this:

You’ve got to take the lesson(s)!

One of the main reasons why your mind holds on to these painful experiences is that your mind is afraid. Your mind is scared you’ll repeat it unless it holds on tightly to the memory. In processing the events, think about and clearly verbalize the lessons the experience taught you.

Internalize the lesson, not the trauma!

Once your mind feels confident that you’ve internalized the lesson, it is way more willing to let go of the negative attachment to it.

With this framework, you’ll be letting go of what’s holding you back bit by bit.

Making you more confident by default over time.