BUILD CONFIDENCE
REASONS YOU ARE NOT CONFIDENT.
It is very easy to spot a person who is confident and one who isn’t when observing from the back of a room. These are some of the attributes of a genuinely confident person:
1. They always hold their heads up high and engage in conversation with eye contact.
2. They are always ready and prepared to answer questions in a conversation and they do so with such wisdom and understanding of the question.
3. They are level-headed and always know how to act even in awkward silence during a conversation.
4. They listen when others are talking and pay rapt attention.
On the flip side is a person who does not have confidence. It is so easy to notice such people. These are some characteristics that give them away even when they try to fake confidence:
1. They mostly have fake smiles and laughs to fill in silences during conversations.
2. They fidget or bow their heads down when having a conversation is ongoing or when people are not looking
3. They look insecure no matter how much they try.
Note: it’s not a bad thing to fake confidence when you are not there yet but please avoid these characteristics stated above, else everyone will notice you are trying too hard.
These are the reasons why I believe people are not genuinely confident:
1. YOU DON’T HAVE CLARITY: Being able to picture your most confident life gives you a clearer picture of how you look when you are confident. So picture that. When you are done picturing that: then you need more clarity. To know if you are going in the right direction or not, clarity helps. Have you ever had to give a presentation and you are not familiar with the slides? That is how it looks like if you do not have confidence. It’s like you are not familiar with the scripts you hold and that can take away a lot of opportunities from you.
2. This point links directly to the first point which is “YOU ONLY HAVE SURFACE LEVEL INFORMATION”. Having surface-level information is an easier way to look and sound not confident during a conversation. Do not fake it if you have no idea of what the conversation is about, be frank and you can excuse yourself but if not then pay attention to what others are saying and show interest. Take for an instant: you want to know more about entomology but you know nothing about biology or insects, your academic intelligence would be questioned. You wouldn’t have enough knowledge to conduct any research regarding insects, you might try but you might fail OR in a conference room with entomology professors; since you are unsure of your knowledge, your confidence level is likely to dwindle down. Hence never stop learning. Cultivating genuine confidence will definitely require you to have in-depth knowledge about issues. The more confident of a woman or man you want to be, the more you need to get deeper knowledge. Hence invest in deeper level knowledge to reach your full potential.
3. Lastly “YOU ARE AN INFORMATION HOARDER”: Yes oh yes, I said it and it is something that exists. Some people spend way too much time taking information and not enough time practicing or working on becoming what they have learned. So I will end by saying it is better to read 5 books in a year and practice what the books say than reading 500 books and never try a single thing you’ve learned. Be an action-taker and let what you learn helps you reach your goal.
A Ted talk I watched about the power of confidence by Brittany Packnett. She mentioned confidence is something that we underestimate the importance of by treating it as nice to have instead of must-have. The way we look when we are sure of our answers to when we hope to have them correct.
Three major ways to crack the code to confidence; Permission, Community, and Curiosity.
Permission is needed for confidence to exist.
We need a community that is safest for us to exhibit our confidence and solve the greatest challenges.
Curiosity helps affirms our confidence.
Thank you for reading.
Love,
Naomi.
