If the old version of myself was to meet me today, he’d be confused for one simple reason: he’d be talking to someone who possesses self-confidence.
I didn’t start feeling confident until I was around the age of 17. It’s no coincidence that this was the time I started doing things I’d previously been afraid of.
That’s when things started to change for me. But what happened in between and after that is why I’ve been able to carry my confidence to this day and become the person I am.
Here are four things to keep in mind so you can do the same:
1. Time is a Key Factor
The longer it takes you to make a decision, the less confident you become. This is why time is a factor in how confident you are in different areas of your life.
When I was 16-17, I started to push myself to do things I had no confidence with – for me, one of those things was talking to girls in big groups.
The normal thing most of us do in these situations is think too much about the decision we want to make. The longer you ponder, the harder it gets, because you start to make excuses.
I made snap decisions to talk to girls and befriend them in public. Before I knew it, it became normal and I wasn’t concerned about it anymore.
The lesson here is to make quick decisions and then follow them up with actions. If you don’t, you’ll talk yourself out of it when too much time passes.
Make quicker decisions with smaller problems, and relatively slower decisions with bigger problems – you’ll see your confidence grow with the quick decisions you make, which will eventually help you to solve those bigger issues.
Related: How To Build Self Confidence In 7 Simple Steps (The RIGHT Way)
2. Building Self-Confidence is a Process
In the instant gratification-led society we live in, we want everything right now. But as cliché as it sounds, the best things take time – especially self-confidence.
Using website software and tools is a breeze for me – I’m so confident with them that I don’t even have to guess when it comes to what I’m doing, or how to do it. But just a few years ago, I was clueless, and didn’t see myself as being a technical person, let alone had the confidence to even attempt to be.
That’s the point here – confidence is a process.
The same thing happened when I first started selling items on eBay 10 years ago. But the more I learned and practised, the better and more confident I became.
Confidence isn’t an overnight thing. It’s a process and it’s always ongoing.
3. Don’t Overthink It
This goes back to my first point about time being a factor in self-confidence. If you overthink your decisions, they get harder to the point where you’re unable to take action.
You’ll start to make up scenarios in your mind of what could go wrong, or why you shouldn’t do something, or why you’re not good enough, and so on.
That’s why you’ve got to push yourself to do things – the moment you do, you’ll realise hours or days later that it wasn’t really a big deal.
The fear disappears once you’ve done the thing you’re afraid of, because you’ll realise it’s all in your mind and none of those dreaded scenarios were real.
4. Knowledge and Confidence Go Hand-in-Hand
I can’t drive because I’m not interested in driving – I don’t know the first thing about how to drive a car. So, if I was put into a position where I’m forced to drive a car, you can only imagine how worried I’d be – that’s because I have no knowledge about driving.
I don’t know how to, so it’d be natural to be worried.
The only reason to be afraid of doing something is because you don’t know how it’ll turn out, or what the result will be. In other words, the unknown is what scares us.
What you’ve got to do is take a step into the unknown, and learn as much as you can.
Confident people are usually the ones who know how to do something, which means they don’t spend too long pondering their decisions.
So, if you want the confidence to travel Europe, spend time familiarising yourself with the languages you might need along the way; if you want to become a successful YouTube creator, take a video editing course.
Knowledge is the bridge; once you cross it, it stays with you forever, and that will add to your confidence overall.