Building Confidence: Strategies for a Stronger You
I do not use affirmations, and clients are sometimes disappointed by that. Repeating a sentence you do not believe tends to give the disbelief something to push against.
What does work is slower and duller: assembling evidence, and then running small deliberate tests that produce more of it.
Start with the inventory
Almost nobody has written down what they have actually done. Ask someone capable to list their achievements and you will get three items and a lot of hedging.
So write the list properly, and include the things you have discounted:
- Work you did that somebody else presented.
- Problems you solved so early that nobody noticed there had been one.
- The hard year you got through, which counts even though nobody gave you anything for it.
- The skills you have that you assume everyone has. They do not.
Clients routinely find this exercise more affecting than they expected. That reaction is itself information about how much has been dismissed.
Then name the ceiling
Somewhere in the list there is a pattern of stopping. Look for where you consistently ask for less than the evidence supports, and write the belief underneath it in plain language.
Usually it is one of about five sentences. I am not senior enough for that room. If I ask, they will think I am difficult. Someone will find out I am improvising.
Written out, next to the inventory, most of them look thin.
Then run the tests
Small, real, and specific. Ask for the rate. Speak first in the meeting. Send the application before it is polished. Put your name forward for the thing you would normally wait to be offered.
Size the first one so that it is uncomfortable rather than terrifying. The point is not the outcome; it is producing evidence, and a test that you refuse to run produces none.
What to do when one fails
Some will. The rule is to describe the outcome as narrowly as the facts allow.
“They said no to that rate, this quarter, for this project” is a fact. “I am not worth that” is a story, and it is a much larger claim than the evidence supports.
Write the narrow version down. Do the next test anyway. Confidence built this way arrives slowly and does not evaporate the first time something goes badly, which is the entire point.
