Everywhere you look, there are life-long career professionals losing confidence in their ability to stay competitive in our rapidly changing society. Concurrently, no one in society has a long-term lock on any market niche, and no body of information affords a strategic competitive advantage for very long. The reality of our times is that everyone is feeling at least a little unsure of himself, overloaded with information, and constantly battling interruptions. In that sense everyone is in the same boat.

Even Tom Peters says it’s normal to be confused, and why not? In an age of one technological breakthrough after another, the challenge and stress of trying to “keep up” is taking its toll. By 1995, new technology breakthroughs throughout North America arrived once every 17 minutes, along with 10 services associated with each breakthrough. By the year 2000, we witnessed 17 major technological breakthroughs per minute, with an associated 200 services quickly following on their heels.

In such an environment of information and communication overload, it is easy to feel anything but confident. After all, your ability to keep pace is all but impossible. You can remain confident, however, despite the pace of change. What do confident people do to maintain confidence independent of the frequency of change they’re exposed to? How they maintain a sense of breathing space along the way?

Self-Confident People Radiate Power and Health

People want to be around self-confident people and to be like them. Self-confidence, fortunately, is a skill you can practice. Self-confidence is the person who walks into a job interview knowing that he or she has the skills and knowledge to handle the position being offered. Self-confidence is the woman who asks to be promoted based on an assurance that the promotion is deserved based on her past work. Self-confidence comes from feeling you deserve to have and be what you want.

Why Is Self-Confidence So Important?

Self-confidence is a prerequisite to success and happiness, since performance is so often based on attitude, rather than aptitude. Success or failure can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For example, if you want a promotion or a raise but are not confident that you deserve it, you are likely to let your doubts get in your way. You may be reluctant to directly approach those in charge of promotions. Or you might couch your request in a vague, indirect manner — using terms like “maybe,” “if,” and “sometimes.”

A confident person applying for a new job writes a cover letter that says, “I will do … for your company” and, “I look forward to hearing from you.” This implies right from the start that the applicant will be interviewed and will be hired. The less confident applicant couches the correspondence in terms of, “I could do… for your company” and, “I hope to hear from you.” This, on the other hand, implies doubt. In the mind of whoever reads the letter, that doubt easily extends to the applicant’s appropriateness for the job. Confidence means taking a positive approach — an approach that rubs off on other people.

Confidence also can help increase your effectiveness through the idea of positive reinforcement. If you expect to do well at any particular endeavor — from performing a task on the job to achieving social acceptance outside the job — you are likely to do far better than you would if you expect mediocrity or failure.

Teachers have known for years that students who are told they are progressing well in spelling or math tend to achieve far more than students who are told they are having problems. Doubts compromise your effectiveness, and self-doubt makes it unlikely that you can effectively market yourself. It’s like trying to sell a product you don’t believe in. You can’t commit yourself to it wholeheartedly.

How to Become More Attractive

Self-confidence increases your attractiveness to other people, and that in turn can increase your effectiveness. So much of what we do — at work and outside work — is done with or through other people. When they sense you are confident, they want to be around you, support you, and even be like you. They “go to bat” for you and generally assist you in being as effective as you can be. It makes them feel good to be around someone who has a positive, enthusiastic, “can do” attitude. On the other hand, people tend to shirk away from someone who is continually worried, self-doubting and skeptical.

Peace of mind, a contentment with life, is only possible through acceptance of yourself, which will lead to acceptance of others. Many forms of destructive behavior can be traced to a lack of self-confidence. For instance, a mid-level manager at a high technology firm constantly befriended new employees, only to spread rumors about them later. This man, unsure about his own place in the company, felt it necessary to destroy the reputation of new employees. Obviously, such behavior could only destroy his own position in the long run.

Confidence seems to create a resiliency that allows you to bounce back from failures. Positive self-esteem provides a reservoir of inner strength — a constant that is not dependent upon others and the situations you find yourself in. Conversely, a lack of self-esteem saps your energy with worries about acceptance and accomplishments, creating a downward spiral when those worries do begin to hamper your effectiveness.

Strategies for Building Self-Confidence

You are not stuck with your present degree of confidence. If you have ever found yourself thinking, “I’m just not a very confident person,” you are wrong. Confidence is not handed out at birth — it can be developed. Developing it is hard work, even lonely work. When you begin to work on becoming more self-confident, you may not even get a lot of support from others. Do it anyway; they’ll come around sooner than you think.

A first step in building self-confidence is to take a good look at the roots of your lack of confidence: Where does it come from? In what situations is it more of a problem? In what situations do things seem a little better? Finding the answers to questions like these can help you dispel personal myths, emphasize positive occurrences, and begin a realistic program to build your confidence.

In my own case, I spent years convinced that I wasn’t as smart as a lot of other people. Even though my record in high school was well above average, I felt that I could never compete with my truly brilliant friends. Until I was about 30 years old, I was certain that brilliant people like those I had known in high school were not at all uncommon, and that I, of course, would never quite achieve that lofty status.

I finally realized that my school friends, in an upper-middle class community in Connecticut, were not actually representative of the entire population as a whole. Simply understanding the roots of my lack of confidence — and dispelling some myths about it — bolstered my confidence enormously.

I find it helps to determine the exact situations in which one feels more or less confident. Don’t ruminate about them, write them down; and continue by writing a plan of action for improving the situation. For example:

I feel most confident when . . .
I feel least confident when . . .
Some things I can do to improve a situation of low confidence are . . .

For example: I feel most confident when I know I am wearing clothes appropriate to the situation, when I am physically fit, and when I am among people I know well. I feel least confident when I am among strangers and when I feel I have taken on more than I can achieve in a given time. To improve a situation that instills low confidence, I need to look and feel my best, to be organized in my work, and to recognize that everybody suffers a certain amount of discomfort in a room full of strangers.

You can also gain a lot of information about your personal level of confidence by examining how you act and react at home, at work, alone, and in the company of others. The following questionnaire used by Samantha Reed Horn is designed to help you pinpoint situations which may have buy accutane india precipitated feelings of low self-confidence.

Indicate “true” or “false” after each statement:

1. I tend to successfully complete tasks that I attack wholeheartedly. _____
2. I feel uncomfortable about the amount of formal education I’ve had. _____
3. I check and re-check to make sure I have done things, even though I really know they were done. _____
4. I have frequently wished that I could act more spontaneously more of the time. ____
5. I have no qualms about meeting new people of either sex. ____
6. Sometimes it seems that everyone is seeking my opinion on something. _____
7. The one word that best describes me in my childhood, and to some extent today, is “inadequate.” _____
8. I have always regretted that I could not live up to my parents’ expectations for me. _____
9. I get enough feedback at work to know that I am performing satisfactorily. _____
10. I have often found myself thinking self-condemning thoughts. _____
11. I feel I don’t have the right to criticize anyone for anything because I have my own failings. _____
12. I feel a sense of accomplishment from my work. _____
13. Basically, I accept and respect myself for who I am. _____
14. I often find myself worrying about what others think about me. _____

It isn’t difficult to review your answers and see where some problems might lie. For example, if you answered “false” to #9 (“I get enough feedback at work”), you may sense a lack of confidence at work that stems from ambiguity about your performance. In this case, the remedy may be in taking the initiative to ask for feedback. This is particularly likely to boost your confidence, because people who perform poorly generally get plenty of feedback.

Another example: If you answered “true” to #2 (“I feel uncomfortable about the amount of formal education . . .”), your lack of confidence in this area may mean that you expect to achieve less than your educated colleagues and therefore do achieve less. Many great achievers in history had very little education. You might be surprised!

Practice Confidence Building

Beyond analyzing the sources and situations concerning your level of confidence, there are some specific strategies you can adopt and steps you can take to learn and practice confidence building. First, set reasonable expectations for yourself. Practicing self-confidence won’t change you overnight. Self-confidence will allow you, however, to make the best of what you can do.

The suggestions discussed here are strategies for you to try one step at a time — gaining self-confidence in increments and allowing each small achievement toward it to spur you on to even further confidence.

Know what you do well. Your confidence may be so low that it seems you do nothing well. But stop and think about even the small things that you do each day — from organizing your mail to meeting self-imposed deadlines for routine chores. You may be surprised to find some abilities and positive features that you haven’t given ample credit to in the past. Making a list works well. You’ll find that by emphasizing the positive, you’ll gain confidence to work on the less positive.

Please yourself. Extending yourself to impress others runs counter to the idea of confidence. You may need to spend more time doing things simply because you want to do them and because they make you feel good. These are the activities in which you are most likely to succeed and which are most likely to bolster your confidence when they go well.

Look for small victories. Maybe you didn’t get that promotion, but pat yourself on the back for getting asked for your opinion in a meeting or for completing that report ahead of schedule. Don’t figure that all is lost if the big accomplishments elude you for now. If everything seems to be falling apart in one area of your life, look for achievements in another.

Reward yourself. Enjoy your successes. Celebrating success helps you take the focus off your mistakes. When you finish a budget or report on deadline, take yourself — and others — out to a movie. When you get some long overdue positive feedback, treat yourself to a lunch hour at a museum or buy yourself a book. Let other people know you are celebrating and that they are important enough to you that you want them to share.

Learn from mistakes. Don’t let mistakes drag you down by dwelling on them. Instead, regard them as lessons, stepping stones that give you a higher vantage point for better knowledge and wisdom. Be glad that you’ve learned that lesson and will not make that mistake again. But give yourself permission to make some mistakes and to be a little less than perfect.

Sound confident. Practice using positive terms in conversation. For example, no matter what internal doubts you may have, simply try saying, “yes, we will get that done,” and “I can get it finished on time.” Your confidence will likely lead to a better chance of accomplishing what you’ve said you will do. Practice speaking without saying “but,” “maybe,” “if,” “I’m not sure,” and other such uncertain words and phrases.

Look confident. No matter how you feel today, dress and groom yourself as you would on a day when you were feeling on top of the world. Remind yourself to stand as if you want to be an inch taller and walk with a firm, purposeful stride. When you keep your head up and maintain good eye contact, those around you act more interested and confident in you. And that, in turn, will build your confidence.

Initiate conversations. It’s not easy to simply start talking to people you don’t know, but force yourself to do it anyway. We all start as strangers. What’s the worst that can happen? Not much. They are unlikely to turn heel and run away or to act insulted or angry. Starting a conversation with a stranger at a conference or a party will build your confidence, because they likely will respond with interest. They will view you and treat you as a self-confident person.

Prepare discussions. Play through any forth meetings, interviews, or conversations ahead of time. This prepares you to handle any obstacles that could arise. Write some notes to yourself about topics, questions and responses. If you’re at a loss for words in social situations, make some mental notes about all the topics of “small talk” for which you could ask questions or initiate discussions. These might range from the weather to the front page news of the day. What you say may not be as important as the fact that you are able to say something with confidence.

Imitate self-confident people. Identify the people around you who seem to have a good degree of self-confidence, and watch what they do. I find this technique to be particularly effective. Is it how they work, what they say, how they carry themselves? Select one small behavior at a time and try to emulate that. Dr. Kuriasky says, “Imitation is, after all, a key to learning. If you are attracted to self-confidence in others, it’s a good bet that you have the capacity for greater self-confidence in yourself. That which we like or envy in others usually reflects our own values.”

Experiment with roles. In the privacy of your own home, preferably in front of a mirror, act out the self-confident attitudes and manners that a confident person would show the world. I heard a tale about a man who has eight different hats, ranging from a baseball cap to a Texas ten-gallon hat. Every morning, he puts on a different hat depending on what challenges he will face that day. Then he pictures himself meeting those challenges while he looks at himself in the mirror. Use whatever works for you.

Increasing your self-confidence is primarily a matter of finding out what makes you feel good about yourself and then practicing the relevant behavior patterns. It means assuring yourself and others that you have made and will continue to make some worthwhile accomplishments — without shrugging off any accomplishments as “too insignificant to count.” As you display this attitude more and more, others will soon increase their confidence in you. And that will lead to even greater self-confidence on your part.