Monday Morning Motivational Message - Confidence

Would you say you are a confident person?

Does the answer to that question depend on the circumstances under which you find yourself? Maybe you are confident presenting to your team but not very confident presenting to senior management.

Shortly after I started my first job out of college, I was handed a binder and told to give the speech contained within the binder that was supposed to be given by the Senior Vice President of Marketing to a group of bankers.

Needless to say, I had no confidence in my ability since I'd never seen the speech, and, as you can imagine, I bombed it. 
 
​According to Steve Magness, author of the book, Do Hard Things, we get confidence wrong.

Magness believes that real confidence lies in understanding who you are and what you are capable of doing. It is being vulnerable, not delusional.

Confidence is attempting difficult things, sometimes failing, but seeing where our deficiencies are and going back to work on those inadequacies.

Magness offers these five keys to developing confidence:

1. Lower the bar - Confidence doesn't come from doing the impossible. It comes from. It comes from getting clear on what you are capable of doing.

2. Raise the floor, not just the ceiling - Performance is about how we perform on our average days. You don't raise the floor by developing an unrealistic view of yourself, you do it by taking a hard look at where you are in the moment. 

3. Shed perfection and embrace who you are - If we can come to terms with who we are, warts and all, we slowly disarm our insecurities and can handle criticism more easily.

4. Trust your training and yourself - To gain confidence, put in the work from a place of growth, not fear.

5. Develop a quiet ego - Truly brave and intelligent people don't need to tell you how good they are. They just know it. 
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When you are overconfident your brain knows it and tries to protect you from failure.  Confidence is quiet. Insecurity is loud. 
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Leave me a comment about what true confidence looks like in your life.