Are you trying to build your confidence?  Since having confidence is important to success, here are 5 more tips to help you increase your confidence.  Some of these ideas were taken from confidence building suggestions by Ellen Ostrow, PhD.  I hope you will think of this as having your own tool kit for confidence building. 

Different situations may require different tips.  Choose the ones that will work best for you.

1. Be willing to learn on the job.  Ask appropriate questions and seek input from people unlikely to evaluate you.  You may be surprised what you can learn.
2. Monitor your self-talk, especially when something is not working for you.  Remember, you are not a failure just because something does not work out.  See what you can learn that will help you improve your ideas.
3. Be open to taking some risk.  Doing what you are always sure of does not build confidence.  Trying new things and being successful does.
4. Notice if you if you have Wisdom, Courage, and Caution in your top strengths.  If you do, this is a winning combination of strengths to help you evaluate risks, and the courage needed to take action.
5. Think of risk-taking as a necessary part of your professional life. 

Action Step:  Analyze the risk involved in taking action on something important to you.  If it is appropriate to take action, do so in small steps.  The more you stretch yourself and succeed, the more confident you will feel.

To your success,

Maurine

I am often asked how to increase confidence.  My response is often to ask how  did you become confident in something you already doing well?  I get a variety of responses to my question.  Usually though the general idea is that they started to do something.  They actively took a first step, then another, and another.  Often practice played a significant role.  

Here are five basic tips that Coach Ellen Ostrow shared with me many years ago that will get you started:

1. Recognize that no one knows everything.  Regardless of how harshly a manager may criticize your errors, rest assured he has made plenty himself.  You can probably remember a few if you try to.
2. Experiment with presenting ideas about which you are less than 100% confident.  See what happens when you express seomthing about which you are only 95% confident.  Give yourself a chance to learn that you can be successful without being 100% certain.
3. Take realistic, strategic, calculated risks.  Study your surroundings for cues about the culture in which you find yourself.  Observe how others act and interact.  Assess the potential costs of being incorrect in the particular situation.  Compare these to the costs of inaction.
4. Have faith in your ability to perform.  The success you have achieved thus far is not an accident.  You would not be where you are unless you were competent and knowledgeable.
5. Be willing to tolerate discomfort.  Taking a risk means stepping outside your comfort zone.  People who take risks are not fearless; they are people who have fear under control.  If you were not fearful, you would not be taking a risk.

Action Step:  Choose several of these action steps this week to begin building your confidence in an area that is important to you.

To your success,

Maurine