8 steps to strengthen your confidence

By Vegard Olsen


Picture: Khalid ELBAZ, unsplash.com

“Once my confidence increased everything else fell into place”.

This what we hear from many of our clients.

And that´s why we wanted to share some of the ways we help our clients increase their confidence.

Here are 8 steps to strengthen your confidence:

1 – Self talk
Be careful about what you say to yourself, cause you are the one listening.

Start noticing how you talk to yourself and how you talk about opportunities.
Change language from all the ´don´t want´s and ´don´t like´s to all the things you actually do like and to all the things you can do.

2 – Change your story
Whatever you believe in becomes your reality. Question the story that hinders your confidence and hinders you in achieving what is really important for you.

Ask yourself: Is this really true? What if it was not?
Which evidence do I have that this is actually not true?

3 – Remind yourself of your confidence
Remind yourself of the times you were confident in the past. No matter how small or big and no matter how long ago. Feel it again and think about what made you stay and remain confident. Allow yourself to feel it again!

4 – Think about everything you have achieved recently
Think about all the things you have achieved in the past 1, 2 , 3 or 5 years. You might often think about what you have NOT achieved, but take a minute and remind yourself about all the things you actually HAVE achieved. Maybe you´ve achieved allowing yourself to be honest, sitting with difficult things, facing problems, growing as a person, realized how strong you are, learned things, met people… The list will be A LOT longer than you think is even possible!

5 – Visualise
When you remind yourself of your confidence and everything you have achiveved – visualise it. Use pictures, drawings, quotes you like and put them all together on a digital of physical confidence board. Look at the board regularly. This is your confidence vitamin pill and it will lift your confidence and energy every time!

You can also visualise the things you want. A flat. Travelling. A partner. Money. Happiness. Energy. Anything and everything. Put together a board of pictures, colours and quotes. You will have a lot of fun doing it – and every time you look at it you will feel a little bit more confident.

Give it a go – what have you got to lose?
You´ve got everything to win!

6 – Become aware of and let go of fears
Go into the feeling that hinders your confidence. Maybe you feel insecure, not worthy, not deserving of, not good enough, shameful, or maybe you have a tendency to be strongly self critical. Go into the feeling and ask yourself which thoughts or fears creates this feeling. Write about it. Speak to a good friend. Ventilate. Cry if you need to. Speak to a coach, a therapist or a counsellor.

Speaking about fears, expressing them a lot, crying if you need and any form of ventilating is an integral part of increasing your presence and your confidence

7 – Remind yourself of your inner power
Think about those hard times you went through in the past – what was that inner power, that inner feeling that kept you through the difficult times? Feel that feeling again and allow yourself to be filled up again with your inner power.

You can also think about what you hate or dislike about other people. Think about 3 character traits. THIS is your inner power right now. Think about it. Feel it. How can a good dosage of this right now help you gain balance and lift your confidence. They hold the key, so sit with it, think about it, reflect on it. Can you see how allowing even a tiny bit of these 3 things right now can make a WORLD of difference to you? It´s the chilli and garlic your stew is missing right now.

8 – Be grateful for what you have
Gratitude is eternally powerful and eternally to our access. When you are feeling low or in a misery it´s important to allow yourself to feel that. But there also comes a time when it´s important it is to remind yourself of all the things you are grateful for. Even in tough times.

That you have legs to walk on. That you have arms to use. That you have life. That you have the strength to deal with difficult times. Everything you have learned in life. All the nice people you have met who helped you at the time or you helped them – whether they are in your life right now or not.

A great little exercise is every night to write down every night 3 things you were deeply grateful for today. Keep the notes and read it back from time to time. It´s an amazing confidence pill!

What works best for you?
The best answers to lifting your confidence is in you. Think about it. What made you lift your confidence in the past? What made you feel better and believe more in yourself the last time your confidence was low?

Let´s help each other!
If we all share how we lift our confidence, not only do we help ourselves but also help and inspire so many others.

What helps you to boost your confidence? What tricks, what perspective, feeling or way of thinking makes the biggest difference?

We would love to hear from you!