Confidence

 You have it or you don't.

Really?

Or you can gain confidence with practice and experience?

My take on confidence in my immediate world right now is to have the belief in myself that I can do the task at hand. The extension I offer to the people around me is that I believe in them to get the job done to the best of their ability and they need to believe in themselves enough to complete the job as well.

It's funny how confidence or lack thereof never goes away. Professional athletes experience this problem, children playing grassroots sports come across a lack of confidence, the Grade 3 student at the local elementary school doesn't believe in themselves, and the adult going into the meeting around the corner is not feeling it. Why? Why does the inability to believe in your ability fall short of the mark?

As we are wired, we remember the cutting remarks someone once told us and for some reason, it always holds merit in our minds. Or we recall the way we were treated and feel that our shortcomings will bring out the mal-treatment from another in the same way.

As the saying goes, life's not fair. 

It's fair to note that our primitive brains take over as well. From hunter/gather days we were bread to fight for our lives, like there is always an attack against us. So, when we are in the middle of something we experience in our everyday lives or a high stakes, gotta win-it-all kind of moment our brain automatically runs through worst-case scenarios, leaving us with a low belief in get-er-done.

Your brain's natural response does not need to be center-stage in your life. A simple series of positive affirmations can set you on the right track to exude confidence and complete the task.

This past December I decided to take control of the pattern playing on repeat whispering between my ears and make a goal with myself to have 365 days of positivity. To be clear, I am not a negative person on the outside, the message was to clean the thoughts up going on inside my head. And to really send this goal home, I asked a peer at work to hold me accountable. 

WOW! What a difference the past few months have been.  I show up to work in a positive mindset which has allowed me to show up in my personal life with the same positive outgoingness. Naturally one spilled into the other. I highly recommend this.

This is one example of creating a new outlook to build confidence up and be there for yourself. Once you can be there for yourself, and believe in yourself, your confidence will increase in other aspects of your daily outings.

In short, you need to tell yourself an amazing story; sell yourself to yourself. What would your greatest cheerleader say to you at this moment? In this moment you are amazing, capable, strong, determined, and disciplined, now go and get it done the way you know how, the way you were meant to do it!