“The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.” — Sven Goran Eriksson

What is confidence?  This is a great question to ask because confidence is a precursor to getting results.

When one of my mentees asked me how to improve their confidence, I realized I needed to get a better handle on what exactly it is.  It’s one thing to have it,  another to know how to help others cultivate it.

In my experience, confidence comes from having a belief that you’ll figure it out or find a way. The pitfall is to base your confidence only on your competence.  The problem is that you don’t yet have competence in new areas. I think the most powerful vehicle for confidence comes from within, when it’s a mission or a vision that compels you to march on no matter what. 

In Overachievement: The New Model for Exceptional Performance, John Eliot, Ph. D. writes about what confidence is and what confidence is not.

Key Take Aways

Here are my key take aways:

• Confidence is knowing and going.   Use your mission or vision to build your confidence
• Confidence comes before success.   Confidence comes before competence.  It’s your confident action that will lead to success.
• Don’t base confidence on your competence.   Don’t tie confidence to your results.  Instead, take confidence action and focus on what you control.

Confidence is Knowing and Going

Confidence is about having a vision and executing against it.  According to Eliot, confidence is knowing and going.  Eliot writes:

“If the road ahead does not excite you, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to persuade yourself to enjoy it.  Even if you could, the result would not be confidence.  Confidence is a vision coupled with the execution of that vision — knowing and going.  As one of my other favorite "overconfident" athletes, Joe Namath, used to say, ‘To be a leader, you have to make people follow you, and nobody wants to follow someone who doesn’t know where he is going.’”

What Confidence is Not

To really know confidence, you need to know what confidence is not.  According to Eliot, the following is a list of what confidence is not:

1. Confidence is not your track record.  Confidence comes before success, but you shouldn’t base your confidence on your success. 
2. Confidence is not a button to be pushed.  Confidence isn’t something you turn on only when you need it.  You cultivate it, particularly through confident thinking when you face adversity.
3. Confidence does not change your physical skills.  Confidence won’t make up for a lack of skills or ability.  However, confidence will help fuel your effort to build your skills before they start paying off.
4. Confidence is not about "building self-esteem."  While believing in yourself is important, it should be based on something you truly believe.  You can cultivate your confidence by building competence.
5. Confidence is different from "false confident."  Telling yourself you are confident, when you are not, is not confidence.  You are either confident or you aren’t.
6. Confidence should not be confused with strategy.  Don’t blame a failure or loss on overconfidence, if the issue really was a lack of preparation or the wrong approach or strategy.
7. Confidence is not arrogance.  Arrogance is thinking your better than someone or too good for something.Having a passion for success and a belief in your ability is not the same as arrogance. 

My Related Articles

• Real and Durable Confidence
• How To Boost Self-Esteem

Photo by pincusvt.

“If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.” — Jesse Jackson

Where does real and durable self-confidence come from?  Lasting confidence doesn’t come from your track record.  It doesn’t come from outside factors.  Real and durable confidence comes from the inside out.  Learn how to build self-confidence through simple confidence skills that you can practice daily.

In Overachievement: The New Science of Working Less to Accomplish More, John Eliot, Ph.D. writes about real confidence.

Key Take Aways

Here are my key take aways:

• Confidence comes before success.   Confidence has to come before success so that you can take effective action towards your success.  If you simply base your confidence on your track record, then you have a weak foundation.  When failures or setbacks happen, you lose your confidence.
• Don’t base your confidence on external factors.  Rather than externalize your confidence, such as on your track record, you have to base your confidence on what you control and your ability to take action.
• Confidence is a mindset.   Confidence is a decision.  You have to decide to be confidence and drive from there.  You have to ask yourself, what would you do if you were confident and act like that.

First Comes Confidence, Then Comes Success

Don’t build your confidence from your track record.  That’s fragile.  Base it on things you control, such as your mindset and your actions.  Eliot writes:

“You make a big sale, close a deal, or hit one out of the park, and you feel great.  But that delight is not to be confused with real and durable confidence.  First comes confidence, then success.  Otherwise, there would be no billionaires or candidates for the White House.  In fact, people who base their confidence on past or even current successes often lose their sense of dedication and commitment.  It all seems so easy, so why keep working hard?  Worse still, by basing confidence on your track record, you open yourself up to a nasty fall.  When you run into a series of setbacks or outright failures, you are less likely to be able to pick yourself up and fight back.”

Don’t Depend on the Approval of Others

Avoid dependent confidence.  Own your confidence from the inside out.  Eliot writes:

“Bouncing back is even harder if your confidence comes from outside factors: depending on the approval of your spouse or college classmates, on the bottom line of your business, on your coach or the critics, on the opinions of analysts reviewing your stock at Merrill Lynch or in The Wall Street Journal.  This is what psychologists call “dependent confidence.”  We see this a lot among athletes who are extremely confident under a coach who thinks they’re a real ‘go-to” player.  But when they graduate from high school or college or move to the next level and run into a coach who may not be as impressed, their confidence — and their ability to perform at high levels — evaporates.”

Confident Thinking

You build your confidence by starting with a confident mindset and confident thinking.  Eliot writes:

“Soon after Arnold Schwarzenegger arrived in the United States in 1968, he made a prediction.  He would become a movie star, make millions, marry a glamorous woman, and wield political power.  The young Schwarzenegger’s past stacked up quite heavily against such dreams:  He was an Austrian body builder short on money … and on English.  But he didn’t rely on feedback from others to decide how he would approach his future.  Whatever you think of Arnold’s acting or his politics, it is hard to deny his brilliance as a confident thinker.”

My Related Posts

• 6 Strategies for Building Self-Confidence
• Confidence Quotes
• Getting Out of a Slump

Photo by schumachergirl1956.

Does fear of failure hold you back?  Don’t be the person in your life that holds you back.  Be the first person that picks you up when you fall down.

Perfectionism can get in the way of your best results.  Don’t let it push your off your path.  Mistakes are a part of life.  You can either embrace them and find the lessons, or you can try to avoid them and become a shadow of your potential self.

In Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated, David Burns teaches us why it’s great to be able to make mistakes.

Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• The make mistakes path is unlimited.  I think contrasting two paths, helps illustrate the point. The fear of failure path is limiting and stressful. The make mistakes and learn path is unlimited.
• Avoiding mistakes limits your growth.  If you operate under a mindset where you can’t take chances or make mistakes, you limit your growth and your experiences. Additionally, you get worse at dealing with mistakes because you always try to avoid them.
• Make mistakes and learn.  If you operate under the mindset that you can make mistakes and learn, you stay in the game, grow and adapt. I think you also get better at dealing with mistakes. This can be anything from your own self-talk, to a support network, to your approaches for learning.
• It’s when you stop getting on your horse, that you slide down.  If you keep getting knocked off your horse, but you keep getting back on, you get stronger, faster, and continue to climb. I think in life you’re either climbing or sliding, and it’s when you stop getting on your horse that you slide down.

Why It’s Great to Be Able to Make Mistakes
Burns writes the following:

1. I fear mistakes because I see everything in absolutist, perfectionist terms — one mistake and the whole is ruined. This is erroneous. A small mistake certainly doesn’t ruin an otherwise fine whole.
2. It’s good to make mistakes because then we learn — in fact, we won’t learn unless we make mistakes. No one can avoid making mistakes — and since it’s going to happen in any case, we may as well accept it and learn from it.
3. Recognizing our mistakes helps us adjust our behavior so that we can get results we’re more pleased with — so we might say that mistakes ultimately operate to make us happier and to make things better.
4. If we fear making mistakes, we become paralyzed — we’re afraid to do or try anything, since we might (in fact, probably will) make some mistakes. If we restrict our activities so that we won’t make mistakes, then we are really defeating ourselves. The more we try and the more mistakes we make, the faster we’ll learn, and the happier we’ll be ultimately.
5. Most people aren’t going to be mad at us or dislike us because we make mistakes — they all make mistakes, and most people feel uncomfortable around “perfect” people.
6. We don’t die if we make mistakes.

My Related Posts

• 13 Negative Motivation Patterns
• 10 Distorted Thinking Patterns
• Fear of Becoming Who You Truly Are
• How To Overcome Resistance
• How Experts Make Decisions

Photo by kaibara87

“Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.” — Anonymous

What are the secrets of self-esteem?  While there are many things you can do, there are some proven patterns and practices.  One key practice is  challenging your negative self-image.  Another key practices is shutting down your inner critic.

In Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated, David Burns shares some insights about self-esteem.

Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

• Know the 4 D’s of low self-esteem.  The 4 D’s of low self-esteem are: Defeated, Defective, Deserted, and Deprived.
• Challenge your negative self-image.  One of the keys to turning around low self-esteem is to challenge your negative self-image.
• Turn off your inner critic.  Another key to turning around low self-esteem is turning off your inner critic.
• High self-esteem can reduce negative emotional reactions.   When your self-esteem is low, it’s easy to respond with negative emotional reactions.

Re-evaluate a Negative Self-Image
Burns writes:

“One of the cardinal features of cognitive therapy is that it stubbornly refuses to buy into your sense of worthlessness. In my practice, I lead my patients through a systematic re-evaluation of their negative self-image. I raise the same question over and over again: “Are you really right when you insist that somewhere inside you are essentially a loser?”  The first step is to take a close look at what you say about yourself when you insist you are no good. The evidence you present in defense of your worthlessness will usually, if not always, make no sense.”

Challenge your negative self image.  Put your evidence to the test.  See 10 Distorted Thinking Patterns to see if any of the distorted thinking patterns are impacting your self-image. Some examples are all-or-nothing thinking, over-generalization, and labeling.

Turn Off That Inner Critic
Burns writes:

“Just as your feelings do not determine your worth, neither do your thoughts or behaviors. Some may be positive, creative, and enhancing; the great majority are neutral. Others may be irrational, self-defeating, and maladaptive. These can be modified if you are willing to exert the effort, but they certainly do not and cannot mean that you are no good. There is no such thing in this universe as a worthless human being.
“Then how can I develop a sense of self-esteem?” you may ask. The answer is – you don’t have to! You don’t have to do anything especially worthy to create or deserve self-esteem; all you have to do is turn off that critical, haranguing, inner voice. Why? Because that inner critical voice is wrong!”

The key is to turn off your inner critic.  See How To: Use the Triple Column Technique for an effective way to turn your inner critic from a critic to a coach.

The 4 D’s: Defeated, Defective, Deserted, and Deprived
According to Burns, the following are key points about a depressed self image:

1. A depressed self-image can be characterized by the four D’s: You feel
   Defeated, Defective, Deserted, and Deprived.
2. Almost all negative emotional reactions inflict their damage only as a
   result of low self-esteem.
3. A poor self-image is the magnifying glass that can transform a trivial
   mistake or an imperfection into an overwhelming symbol of personal defeat.
4. The more depressed and miserable you feel, the more twisted your
   thinking becomes.
5. Conversely, in the absence of mental distortion, you cannot experience
   low self-worth.
6. You cannot earn worth through what you do. Self-worth based
   on accomplishments is not the genuine thing.
7. You can’t base a sense of self-worth on your looks, talent, fame or
   fortune.

My Related Posts

• How To: Boost Self-Esteem

Photo by icultist.

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” — Buddha

You can defeat your negative self-talk using techniques that some of the best therapists use.  If you don’t have high self-esteem by default, you can build it by design.  You can treat self-esteem as a skill and develop it by using specific techniques.

In Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated, David Burns writes about three techniques for improving self esteem.

3 Techniques to Boost Self-Esteem
Burns identifies 3 techniques for boosting self-esteem:

• Technique 1. Talk back to that internal critic.
• Technique 2. Use Mental biofeedback.
• Technique 3. Cope don’t mope.

Technique 1 – Talk Back to That Internal Critic
According to Burns, technique #1 is talking back to your internal critic.  He suggests three ways:

1. Train yourself to recognize and write down your negative, self-critical dialogue when it happens.
2. Identify and understand why these thoughts are distorted.  This means checking your thinking by looking to where you generalize your thoughts or downplay your successes.
3. Practice talking back to your thoughts so that you develop a more realistic self-evaluation system.

With this technique, you retrain your brain to act as a coach versus a critic.  For an effective technique for talking back to your internal critic, see How To: Use the Three Column Technique.

Technique 2- Use Mental Biofeedback
According to Burns, technique #2 is using mental feedback.  This technique is about tracking your negative thoughts.   By tracking your negative thoughts, you reduce the negative thoughts over time.
Burns writes:

“A second method which can be very useful involves monitoring your negative thoughts with a wrist counter. You can buy one at a sporting-goods store or a golf shop; it looks like a wristwatch , is inexpensive, and every time you push the button, the number changes on the dial. Click the button each time a negative thought about yourself crosses your mind; be on the constant alert for such thoughts. At the end of each day, not your daily total score and write it down in a log book.  At first you will notice the number increase ; this will continue for several days as you get better and better at identifying your critical thoughts. Soon you will begin to notice that the daily total reaches a plateau for a week to ten days, and then it will begin to go down. This indicates that your harmful thoughts are diminishing and that you are getting better. This approach usually requires three weeks.”

Technique 3 – Cope Don’t Mope
According to Burns, technique #3 is cope don’t mope.  Rather than mope or use self-destructive labels, attack the problem. To attack the problem:

1. Define the problem.
2. Break it down into specific parts.
3. Apply appropriate solutions.

The key with this technique is taking action, producing results, evaluating your results objectively. You continue to change your approach if you’re not getting the results you need.

My Related Posts

• How To: Use the Three Column Technique
• 10 Distorted Thinking Patterns
• Your Thoughts Create Your Feelings
• 13 Negative Motivation Patterns