8 Power-Ups for Reclaiming Confidence

There is nothing more crippling than losing your confidence.

 

Without confidence, everything gets harder. You struggle to concentrate. Tasks feel overwhelming. If you stay there, you’ll even find a more long-term emotional impact, where you might fall into depression or become bogged down in indecision. Without confidence, you lose all forward progress.

 

This is why it’s so important to reclaim your confidence after suffering a blow. For a fast boost, try these eight power-ups.

Do What Makes You Uncomfortable

When you take risks, you stretch yourself in surprising new ways. This is a powerful feeling. Why? It takes confidence to step outside your comfort zone. Trying something new forces you to act with confidence, whether you started out feeling it or not.

 

Find Your Purpose

Knowing what you’re destined to do is a fantastic feeling and fills a person with confidence. If you’re unsure why you’ve set a particular goal, or are questioning what you’re doing, you’re not likely to feel confident at all. Solidifying the goal in your mind is a rapid boost to confidence then.

 

Keep Trying

It’s normal to experience failure from time to time. This kind of disaster can easily destroy confidence. You regain this confidence when you get up and try again.

 

Learn Things

Knowledge truly is power. When you really understand something inside out, you tend to be very confident (at least in that area). Continually learning new things expands your knowledge base. As a result, your confidence extends in new directions as well.

 

Drop the Idea Things Have to be Perfect

When nothing is ever good enough, confidence falters. How are you supposed to feel sure of yourself when you’re feeling things are always unfinished or lacking somehow? By accepting things as they are, warts and all, you’ll find you’re relax more and even become more confident in what you’re doing because you’re telling yourself that what you have or are doing is exactly what you need.

 

Dress for Success

How we present ourselves to the world really can affect our mental state. Wearing what makes you feel good about yourself will restore confidence. A change in attitude is only a change in outfit away.

 

Trust Yourself

When you doubt your instincts, you’re telling yourself you don’t really know what you’re doing. This is why it’s so important to ‘go with your gut’ when faced with a challenge. This kind of trust instills confidence in your ability to judge a situation or outcome.

 

Look Forward

Confidence has a hard time standing up to ghosts from the past. When you get caught up in your previous failures or uncertainties, confidence falters. Instead, look forward to positive emotions. When you recognize your potential, you start seeing just how amazing you are.

What are you really selling?

 

What exactly are you selling?

What exactly is your client or customer buying?

The obvious answer, of course is, "your product or service".

And that is true,

until you actually have to persuade someone to buy,

until "sell" involves something more than the physical exchange of money or value.

Then it becomes fairly obvious that there is something more involved.

Let me say, right now, that what you are selling is a story.

A story is

the story of a change,

the change that your customer or buyer goes through when they use your product or service.

And that is the story you have to sell.

And while that change will have physical aspects and outcomes that might involve things like health, wealth, relationships; ultimately the result your client or customer wants is the emotion, the feeling.  They want to feel free, valued, better than, at peace; all sorts of things.  And they may not articulate that, but the want will be there.  

There is a saying that people buy based on emotion and justify based on logic.

And that is why stories are so valuable.  They can tap into the subconscious level of emotions.  We are wired for story and stories are inherently built on emotion.  

So your client story is vital in your marketing.  

Where are you telling your client story - that story of change?

7 Secrets to Reclaiming Confidence that Successful People Know

Winston Churchill once said, “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

 

The problem is, enthusiasm can be hard to come by, especially when yours has taken a beating. Setbacks and disappointments have a way of knocking it down. We start doubting ourselves and lose sight of who we really are. Without confidence, it becomes impossible to try, guaranteeing failure.

 

Thankfully, we know one thing for certain: confidence can be reclaimed, as every successful person knows. Read on to discover 7 things successful people know about reclaiming confidence.

 

They Remind Themselves They Can Do It

Successful people recognize failure is normal. Getting there won’t be without bumps. The important thing when trying to regain confidence is to realize success is still a possibility…or even a probability. This is where you remind yourself of your goal and visualize success all over again.

 

They Walk Away

There comes a time where a break is the best thing you can give yourself. Confidence wavers when you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed. Doing a hobby you love, or even just taking a walk, or spending time with friends, does a lot toward regaining a positive mindset when you’re feeling frustrated.

 

They Revisit the Past

Where have you succeeded before? Where have you failed? Everything that’s come before is a teaching moment. What do you know about yourself already from these events? Understanding the “you of yesterday” is where your insights today come from. Confidence comes from using this knowledge well.

 

 

They Forgive

Hating yourself for some mistake you made isn’t going to get you anywhere and only destroys your confidence. Being able to let go and forgive the past is crucial to future success.

 

They Keep a Handle on What They’re Saying

Self-talk can be particularly destructive to confidence. How do you talk to yourself? Are you patient and understanding, or do you tend toward negativity? Grabbing hold of those mental put-downs will preserve self-confidence. Using more positive statements will build it up.

 

They Start Over

The only sure way to fail is to do the same thing, in exactly the same way, when you’ve already failed the first time. Rather than force failure onto yourself and eradicate confidence, revamp the strategy. Ask yourself how you can do things differently this time.

 

They Keep Trying

Persistence pays off. If you fail and stop, you’ll always think of yourself as a failure. It’s the person who gets up and tries again who builds confidence as they go.

 

In the end, the only way to reclaim your confidence is to put intentional work into recovering it. By using these tips, you’ll get there. Recognize the process can sometimes be slow, but success truly does still lie within your grasp, even after a setback.

 

Is your audience switching off when you present data? Part One

Presenting data is a very difficult challenge.

You are presenting as the expert.

You have worked hard to collect the data and/or to synthesize it for presentation.

It may be important that you be seen as the expert, but you are faced with the challenge of presenting this sometimes overwhelming mass of data so that an audience can understand and appreciate it.

What is the best way to do that?

Usually the first step is to design the visuals. What can we use to present this data – graphs, pie charts, lists ….?

While that is certainly a valid part of the process, it should not be the first step.

As with any presentation, the first step has got to be acknowledging what you want from the presentation.

You probably already know what that is.

It may be that you want to persuade someone to take action – to donate to your cause, to fund your research, to hire you, or to change company policy.

It may be that you want to persuade people to believe your theory about something. And underlying those outcomes may also be a desire to be seen as the expert, to be seen as relevant to the audience in some way, to be seen as credible.

So if you need to, define it first, but certainly acknowledge it, and then use it in choosing how the presentation will proceed.

In choosing the direction of the presentation, the first aim is to engage your audience.

Give them a reason to listen and not to switch off.

Make it clear why this presentation will be relevant to them, why it will be worth their while to listen. And make it clear just what they can expect to get out of it if they listen. Just because you are presenting data, does not mean you should stop making “you” a prominent word in your speech.

So start with the end objective. Present it up front. Explain why it is important for your audience to understand the data. Put the big picture first. Use stories, examples, anecdotes and analogies, not just the facts.

Your audience is used to dealing with the flood of information that each of us faces every day. They know that unless they have a reason to focus on, or to engage with, a particular piece of that information, they have to tune it out. So let them know your particular pieces of information are relevant to them. The use of stories, personal examples, analogies, even metaphors will personalise the data and engage your audience with it.

So keep that WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) aspect always present in the presentation, and you will engage your audience – the first step to having them think, act or feel the way you want them to.