Worldwide Success

In the article Does Self-Confidence in Young People Lead to Success in Adulthood? we discussed how self-confidence developed in the early years impacts success later in life.  In this article we will focus on ways to build self-confidence regardless of what stage of life you are in.

Getting Small Wins

One of the fundamental techniques for building self-confidence is achieving small wins.  This is something that anyone can do regardless of talent, knowledge or skill level.  Small wins are the building blocks that will raise your level of confidence one step at a time until you become completely confident in accomplishing the task at hand or achieving your particular goal.

But what exactly is a small win?  A small win is simply a bite-size victory.  It is something that is not overly difficult to accomplish and yet has some element of challenge to it to make it meaningful.  For example, let’s say you want to be confident enough to speak in front of an audience of thousands.  If you have never spoken in front of thousands before you may want to start with a small audience, perhaps a dozen people or so, until you are totally comfortable and can start raising the bar.   Or let’s say you want to be confident enough to lead a very large project.  If you successfully manage a small project you will have the confidence to take on a mid-size project, and from there you can move to the big one.

This is just common sense.  It is the well-known concept of crawling before you run.  If you are looking to take on a big hairy task, take on a few not so big or not so hairy tasks first and complete them successfully.  You will feel a lot better prepared, and therefore, a lot more confident about taking on the big hairy task.

Building a Support Mechanism

Another important aspect of building self-confidence is to develop a support mechanism.  This is the group of friends, confidants and mentors who will be there to support you during you confidence-building journey.   It is important to have someone that you can confide in and who has experience in the area you are working on to help answer questions that you may have along the way.  It is also important to have someone who can support you during those difficult times, such as when you make a mistake, or when things don’t go your way.  Your support mechanism in a key tool in your toolbox as you work towards building self-confidence.

Avoiding the Traps of Perfectionism

If you are a perfectionist you may come up short of your own expectations when things don’t turn out perfect, and this can hurt your self-esteem.  Perfection is not always a requirement for success and many times you can do an excellent job even though it is not perfect.  If instead of rejoicing on the success of your accomplishment you focus on the little imperfections of what you achieved you will negatively impact your self-confidence.  As a successful, mature and self-confident person you need to know when to let go of perfectionism.

Learning from Your Mistakes

Thomas Edison once said that there is no such a thing as failure, there are only lessons on how not to do something.  Every time he was unable to get the light bulb to work he knew what not to do the next time, and he kept trying different ways until he eventually achieved his goal.  If things don’t work out the way you were hoping for, learn from the experience.  Don’t think of it as a failure, but as an experience that has taught you what not to do next time, and that has therefore helped you get closer to your end-goal.

Successful people tend to have a high degree of self-confidence.  But this does not mean they were necessarily confident from the very beginning, or that they are confident all the time.  Many successful people built their confidence over the years, learning from their mistakes, getting small wins, letting go of small imperfections, and having a support mechanism that helped them get back on their feet when they had setbacks.

Follow the suggestions above and you will gradually see your self-confidence increase.

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