What is it?
A feeling, a behaviour, a frame of mind?
I’m sure you’ve heard people say, “You should be more confident”, heck you may have even said it yourself, but what does it mean?
We probably all think we have a sense of what ‘confidence’ means, but is it the same for all of us, and do we know what constitutes confidence, what’s the recipe? After all it’s difficult to make a cake without a recipe, a bridge without a plan or, even a plan without an idea.
So what’s the recipe for confidence?
I would offer it could be this… and even if it isn’t exactly this, it’ll be a good start.
In order to ‘be’ confident, you need to find something to be confident in. So; finding a passion for something might be a good place to start, because if you’re not passionate about something, then you’ll find it hard to take the next step towards confidence… and that’s developing a competence. That takes the ability to keep going when things get hard. Without passion, it’s likely you’ll give up.
Once you’ve acquired a level of skill at whatever you’ve chosen, then you can grow the final of the three constituent parts… courage. Courage is what you need to take that leap, when every fibre of your being is screaming stay put, keep your head down and maybe it’ll all go away.
So there you have it. Confidence is made of three things… passion, competence and courage.
Developing confidence in one area also helps you develop it in others, if you work at it.
In our business we help people go from good to great and great to awesome communicators. We help them to grow more confident by being passionate about our work, being knowledgable and always looking to stay ahead of the curve.
Finally, because of our passion and knowledge we’ve become courageous enough to put ourselves out there in a world that generally sticks its head in the ground, shoots itself in the foot, and then wonders why it, at best, goes around in circles.
So now we all have a map. It may not be perfect but it’s a starting place. It’s up to all of us now whether we follow it… or not.
Ants
