“Train tough, push your potential fiercely. Be ambitious and ceaseless when it comes to complete capitalization of your strengths” (Robin Sharma)

What is confidence? It is the belief that you can accomplish any goal you set your mind on, no matter the adversity, setbacks, or discouragements (Dr. Ivan Joseph, Athlete, and Coach).  Borrowing from the athletics perspective, we know that no player wins in a sport without first believing in his or her ability to win, and then translating that belief into action by practicing his or her sport every day until one day, he or she scores the highest goals and wins the match. From sports, we learn that confidence starts with belief. I talked to my sister Fedelis when I started writing this article and this is what she had to say about confidence “confidence is everything, take an example of driving a car, even if you are well trained, it takes confidence to hit the road and get the car moving." You should therefore have the belief that you can achieve your career and life goals, and that belief is the confidence that will propel you to act and pursue your goals no matter the adversities or setbacks.

Are you confident in yourself? The answer might be ‘Yes’, ‘No’, or ‘Sometimes I am confident’. And this answer may vary from time to time. This is because, in both career and life, everyone experiences moments when they are less confident and moments when they are strikingly confident. Why? Because confidence is not an inborn gift or talent, rather it is a skill you build through practice. You might be noticeably confident in areas that you are good at and less confident in areas that you are not good at. This means that with practice you can build your confidence in all aspects that will help you achieve your career goals. Therefore, to achieve your career goals, you need to invest time and resources to build your expertise, and practice and remain resilient until you start delivering work that is so great, such that people cannot take their eyes off it. This will elevate you and your confidence will soar. However, it does not mean that you should remain less confident until you become an expert in your chosen trade or profession. Instead, you should invest the time and resources, trust the process, and keep the belief until you make it. You should do it when you fear the most. Do not wait for perfection, keep moving forward no matter what.

What kills your confidence? Before I talk more about confidence killers, I want to share the story of one six-year-old girl named Noel. Noel was a charming little girl, full of ideas, and stories, fun to be around, and was very fearless and greatly confident when at home. However, at school, her class teacher’s feedback was that she was not confident, shy, and rarely talked in class. For her parents, it got frustrating because at home, the opposite was true. The starting point to address little Noel's problem was to identify the factors that were killing her confidence at school. Over time, her teachers and parents worked on the factors and eventually, Noel started displaying the same image of a confident child both at school and home.

Little Noel’s story made me reaffirm my belief that confidence is a skill that can be built day by day. The starting point is to identify what kills your confidence. Two factors kill your confidence: Internal factors and external factors. Internal factors are all the things you do to yourself or everything you neglect working on until one day you wake up, all your confidence and self-worth are lost, and you cannot recognize whom you see in the mirror.   External factors are all the negative experiences in your home or work environment that destroy your self-worth and kill your confidence.

Robin Sharma, the author of the 5 am Club book said, "If you neglect your power long enough, you will eventually believe you don't have any" and that will destroy you and kill your confidence. What goes on the inside of a person's mind and soul is what is projected on the outside. This means that the first internal factor that kills your confidence is your mindset. When you doubt yourself when your mind tells you, you cannot achieve your career goals, but you do nothing to train your soul and heart to go strong and speak to your doubting mind, you lose your confidence.  

For these reasons, your mindset kills your confidence. When you think you cannot do it, when you doubt yourself and allow fear to cloud your thoughts, you stop moving forward. Other internal factors that may kill your confidence are your bad habits, poor decisions or choices, lack of proactivity and initiative to pursue your goals, laziness, and procrastination among others.

When comes external factors, impact us and kill our confidence we allow circumstances and people in our environment to kill our self-belief. I talked to many people about external factors that have killed their confidence and hence their ability to achieve their career  and life goals, and here is the list of findings:

• Toxic work environments give no room for one to contribute and grow their expertise.
• Bad bosses who celebrate only mistakes and put you down.
• Uncooperative colleagues
• Lack of money to pursue higher education or training to build skills and expertise.
• Wrong career paths that fuel no enthusiasm to build oneself to an expert level.
• Unclear job descriptions at work make you a jack of all trades and hence the inability to rise to mastery.
• Office culture with negative competition
• Childhood experiences that kill dreams and ambitions
• Demeaning words said to you by either a teacher, parent, coworker, or boss.
• Negative life experiences that affect your self-esteem.  

The list is endless, and we all experience different factors in our home and work environment that kill our ability to achieve our career goals.

The good news is that not all is lost. You can rebuild yourself once you identify all factors that have killed your confidence. You should start by identifying the internal factors and then the external factors, then apply some of the below tips to rebuild your confidence.

TIPs for rebuilding your confidence in your career

It is time to pivot, take charge, and start rebuilding your confidence.  Two main actions can help you rebuild confidence in your career: working on your mindset and building expertise in your profession. First, take a moment to reflect and write down all internal and external factors that have destroyed your self-belief/confidence. Then ask yourself, ‘how can I rebuild my confidence? What are some of the things I can do to rebuild your confidence?’

Based on my experience the starting point is your mindset. Working on your mindset helps you change the perception of who you are. Some tips for changing your mindset include:

1. Give yourself positive self-talk, tell yourself you can do it, you can learn, you can adapt, and keep moving forward.

2. When in doubt, remember that you can replace doubt with confidence through relentless practice and persistence. Because confidence is not an inborn strength, it is a skill developed through practice.

3. Know that there will always be something you are not confident about because you cannot be good at everything, but for the things that are particularly important to you, you must practice until you become confident.

4. Reflect – make a habit of reflecting, and documenting things that make you who you are, and the things that will make you a better person. This increases your self-awareness and a crystalized positive self-concept.

5. Do it when you fear the most. I borrow the words of Robin Sharma who said, “To regularly do that which feels most uncomfortable is how warriors are born.”6. 6. Do not do self-sabotage, be your biggest fan and biggest cheerleader. If you do not believe in yourself, no one else will. There will always be many people telling you, you cannot achieve your career and life goals.

7. “Be yourself, everyone else is taken” Robin Sharma. My interpretation of this statement is you should never compare yourself with others. Know that others can always be better than you in some areas and so are you. Therefore, focus on yourself and bring out the best in yourself.

8. Accept that setbacks are part of your life and career journey. How you respond is more important. Practice choosing a positive reaction each time you experience a setback and take the positive steps required to overcome challenges. “It is in the moment that you face your deepest weakness that you receive the chance to forge your greatest strengths” Robin Sharma.

The second action is to build expertise in your chosen profession. Being an expert in something means you have the highest skills and knowledge to produce outstanding results in what you do, but at the same time, you are not intimidated by new ideas or approaches, because your expertise allows you to think outside the box and adapt new approaches and ideas.

Wondering what you should do to build expertise in your chosen career or profession? The starting point is to ask yourself “which skills, knowledge and experience will make me stand out in my career?”  and then write down the skills, knowledge, and experience that you already possess at an expert level and which ones you need to develop, learn, or improve on.  This is what we call personal skill gaps analysis.  You should know what you are good at for sure and what you need to learn. Then for the areas that you need to learn and build expertise in, purpose to learn faster and adopt the lessons by seeking opportunities to apply those lessons in your work. To keep learning, you must write down a learning plan and block prime hours in your day when you are most productive and dedicate those hours to learning your trade to the best level possible.

As you continue building your expertise, keep believing in what you already know and bring your best experiences and skills to work. Do not focus on what you do not know, but at the same time make sure to keep learning. As you build your expertise, remain patient and keep investing the hours. Remember that “The true geniuses all started as ordinary people, but they practiced building up their strengths so much and so often that showing up at world-class became automated” Robin Sharma.

I hope the content in this article helps everyone who is strangling with self-confidence in their career and life. Should you need more support or career coaching to rebuild your confidence and excel in your career, reach out through info@careerbridge.coach and our career coach will get in touch with you.

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