When I was in school and college, I was shy, quiet, and not confident. No wonder, I often keep quiet in group discussions. Even though I had to make a presentation, my body trembled, sweat poured out even though the room was air conditioned, my voice stuttered, my face tense, and my mind often blank.
The same thing happened in other aspects. I am embarrassed to meet the woman I am appraising. I was nervous about people I just met.
I feel inferior among rich and honorable people. I feel inferior to other people's education, experience and achievements.
Fortunately, I did not give up. I continued to grow my confidence even though I had to fall up. As a result, I have worked in a foreign company with a salary of tens of millions of rupiah per month.
Not only that, in the last 3 years I did 6 presentations related to online business in the presence of students and entrepreneurs. Interestingly, now I am better at living and facing the problems that confront me.
In this post, I share the ways I do to make me confident in my personal life and career. You can try these ways to increase your confidence.
The following is the explanation of the twelve ways, complete with examples.
Remember God Almighty
It cannot be denied, problems after problems come insistent in our lives. These problems often make us lose confidence in living life. To restore self-confidence, the easy way is to remember God Almighty (YME).
By remembering God, you will be confident and optimistic that you can live the hard life. In addition, you have a powerful backing that will help you in every difficulty so that your heart will be calm.
So, if you feel confident in facing something, remember God. Be assured of His greatness.
Improve appearance
Sometimes, lack of self is caused by appearance. Therefore, to build your confidence, improve your appearance.
For example, if you are a man who wants to meet a woman, arrange your hair neatly, for example using jelly. If needed, go to the salon to shave or tidy up your hair.
It doesn't just stop at the hair. You can also lighten your body using deodorant or perfume. In addition, also use neat clothes and wear a belt so that your pants are not oversized.
Stop negative thoughts
Lack of confidence can be caused by negative thoughts. Some of the things you might have are:
Feeling yourself is worthless
Afraid of being rejected
Afraid of being wrong about what will be done
Fear of being belittled or belittled by others
Feeling inferior to others
Feeling to be laughed at by someone else
You must stop negative thoughts because they will imprison you in a crisis of self-confidence. The easy way is to affirm, that is changing negative thoughts into positive thoughts or something you want.
Examples of affirmations for negative thoughts above are:
I am a valuable person because both are God's creatures
Rejection is normal so I have to try it
Mistakes are a sign that people are learning
Other people will respect me because I respect them too
Making other people laugh is better than making others sad
Identify your ONE key excess
Competition is important to improve your quality. In order for you to be confident in facing this competition, you should know what your strengths are compared to your competitors.
Therefore, from now on identify your ONE key excess so that you focus and become an expert in the field. By becoming an expert in your field, you will be confident and not be afraid of your competitors anymore.
For example, if you are now struggling in the world of social media marketing, determine your strengths. Just one is enough. It can be Facebook marketing, Twitter marketing, or Instagram marketing.
Read books
Book is a repository of knowledge. Even though nowadays a lot of free information is scattered on the internet, books have a number of benefits that are not in the free information. By reading quality books, your insights and knowledge will increase so that your confidence will increase.
For example, I want to master copywriting, a technique for writing scripts to promote products, services, or ideas. I bought a number of books on copywriting on Amazon.
I then read the principles of copywriting and applied it to my blog post, my ebook sales page, and the ebook I was writing.
Not arrogant or arrogant. By reading the copywriting book, I dare to compete with the Indonesian copywriting champion.
Greet new people
Being in new people is known to be very uncomfortable. The trick is to greet them first so that it melts the atmosphere.
For example, you attend a student parent meeting at your child's school. You can greet some parents of students or teachers by saying greetings, hi, or hello how are you.
By greeting first, you melt the atmosphere and try to give a positive first impression. You also will not feel alone or ostracized. What's more, you have new friends.
Make the best preparations
Are you often nervous during presentations? Stress facing a job interview? Believe it or not, the key is in preparation.
I am not lying to you. As I wrote in the introduction, I am not good at presentation. The main cause of my disbelief when making a presentation was the lack of preparation.
Why? Because I often make presentations one night before the presentation is done.
However, I have changed to prepare myself and the material as well as possible. As a result, I bring better presentation material from time to time.
What are the preparations like? Let's say I will present material about content marketing next week. The preparation that I will do is:
Research online references about content marketing. This includes statistics, principles, techniques, and content marketing case studies
Brainstorm for the material that I will present using Mind Map techniques
Make a presentation slide and complete it two days before the implementation
Presentation exercises at least 3 times
Watch Youtube videos from some of my favorite speakers, for example Amit Singhal's video about 15-year-old Google
Visualize when I make the presentation. I also imagined how I delivered the participants' presentation and response
Apply the "If-Then" technique
This "If-So" technique is simple, but the results are very effective. Why? Because you prepare something if the situation and conditions are not what you expect, no matter how well you prepare.
For example, if you will meet your date for the first time, applying the "If-Then" technique includes:
If I'm nervous when I meet him, then I'll go to the toilet for a while to calm myself down
If he is busy with his cellphone, then I will provoke him with light talk
If he talks about a topic that I don't know, then I will be a good listener
By applying the "If-Then" technique, you will know what actions should be taken if something happens that does not meet your expectations. In other words, you will not be blank.
Set small goals to reach big goals
Do you set big goals? It's not wrong.
It may be different from you, I prefer to set small targets first before reaching big goals. After I reached a small goal, I was confident of reaching a big goal.
For example, I rarely exercise. If I set a target of running 30 minutes 3 times a week, I will be "paralyzed" before acting. Many reasons will prevent me from reaching that goal.
The solution is that I set a push up goal once every day and reach it. After I managed to do push ups every day, I increased it by walking 5,000 steps a week.
These small successes motivate and increase my confidence in achieving goals running 30 minutes 3 times a week.
Compare you with yourself
Another way to generate confidence is not to compare yourself with others. Why? Because other people will continue to have advantages over you so you can eliminate your confidence.
The solution? Compare you with yourself for who you are.
For example, if you did not exercise the previous year and now do one push up every day, then you are on your way to success.
Remember, success will roll out other successes so you are more confident in living a life that you feel is hard on.
Thank you
Being grateful for what you have and how you are now will build your confidence. Why? Because with gratitude, you will avoid stress and other negative feelings.
For example, you are grateful that you can still eat today, breathe air, have a job, and so on.
Pray before starting something
Praying before starting something can also help you boost your confidence. This is because prayer will make you remember God and hope for His protection in your every step.
For example, if you are a Muslim, say a prayer out of the house before traveling. What if you don't know prayers? Study daily prayers, and if you still can't, say bismillah only.
Self-confidence is not genetic, but a skill that can be learned and improved. If you are now lacking in confidence, the trick is to find the root cause of why you are not confident and try your best to overcome that cause.
Try one or more of the methods I described above to eliminate the cause so you can be confident.
By greeting!