Most of us spend our entire lives hearing that confidence is key to success. Everybody from parents to school teachers spewed the confidence = winning cliché.
Despite this, most people have exceedingly low confidence.
While the numbers are difficult to capture, some estimates suggest as many as 85% of adults worldwide struggle with low confidence.
Business professionals are not immune from low confidence, and this is troubling to say the least.
Unfortunately for business pros like you, low confidence impacts every aspect of your life. Trust me that it is not positively impacting you!
That said, I am sharing a straightforward method to build bulletproof confidence for business and life success.
The strength of your network, strategies, and techniques are worthless if you have low confidence. Business and life success depend on you building bulletproof confidence.
What Is Confidence?
Having confidence means having trust in yourself.
You will build confidence if you build trust with yourself.
Trust = sticking to your word + consistency.
You will trust yourself if you consistently stick to your word by doing what you say you will do. Overtime as a result, you will become confident.
On the other hand, you will not trust yourself if you consistently fail to live up to your words.
Having confidence has nothing to do with other people or the outside world. It is 100% dependent on internal forces.
Therefore, anybody who is anybody can build confidence!
Confidence Is a Matter of Trust
Take a moment to think about a close friend or family member in whom you have confidence.
For example, think of a person you are confident would come and help you during a difficult situation.
Then, ask yourself why you have confidence in that person.
You probably have confidence in them because you trust in them. You trust in them because you have probably known them for years.
Over the years, you have seen from actions that they are willing to stand up for you when you need it.
Therefore, you are confident in them!
That said, having confidence in yourself is about trusting yourself.
Confident people are confident because they trust in themselves.
Confident people trust themselves because they have a history of doing what they say they will do.
On the other hand, unconfident people do not trust themselves.
They do not trust themselves because they have a history of not doing what they set out to accomplish.
Why Do You Trust Others but not Yourself?
I bet you have at least one close friend or family member who you trust.
Whether they be a partner, child, or friend, you trust that they will be there for you when you need them.
Why are you willing to trust other people but not yourself?
Have there been many occasions where you said you are going to do something, do not do it, and resultantly do not trust yourself?
Here is the thing: It does not matter that you trust other people if you do not trust yourself.
I hate to break it to you, but nobody is going to save you!
While you can and should trust a few close people, do not think they are a substitute for the lack of confidence you have in yourself.
Also, how do you expect other people to be confident in you when you are not confident in yourself?
Why Is Confidence so Important?
Confidence affects everything you do in business and life.
You probably already know this, so I will not waste much time covering it.
Saying that confidence is of the utmost importance is a cliché.
I typically do not like clichés.
However, in this case, it is a cliché for a good reason!
Confidence Impacts Every Move You Make
Confident people decide what they want to do and then do it with little to no hesitation.
On the other hand, unconfident people decide what they want to do and then hesitate.
Instead of taking off, they stop in their tracks. It is as if a road back stands directly in front of the path they want and know they need to take.
You know you are unconfident when you set your intentions, prepare to start, but then feel an extreme pit in your stomach.
Ultimately, the pit in your stomach stops you completely in your tracks.
Here is the thing: Confident people do sometimes experience bouts of low confidence.
There is not one confident person who has never felt moments of doubt!
However, confident people do not let moments of low confidence stop them in their tracks.
Instead, they push forward! As a result, they build more trust in themselves and confidence increases.
Furthermore, having or not having confidence impacts every move you make.
Low Confidence Is Highly Infectious
Having confidence or low confidence does not only affect you.
Confidence is a feeling, and feelings are energy.
Whether you know it or not, people around you sense your energy levels!
That said, the people surrounding you can sense whether or not you are confident through the energy you emit.
You do not have to say it out loud for them to know!
Do you want the people surrounding you to know you are unconfident, particularly customers and team members?
Hopefully not, because having your customers, potential customers, and team members know you are unconfident is a recipe for disaster.
How will prospects, customers, and team members be confident in you if you are not confident in yourself?
Confidence can make or break sales deals and destroy trust with team members.
The Impacts of Having Low Confidence in Business
As I said, confidence affects every move you make and the people around you.
Your confidence level determines whether or not you take action. It also impacts how customers and team members perceive you.
Fortunately for confident business professionals, having high confidence involves countless benefits.
Unfortunately for unconfident business pros, low confidence negatively impacts them in ways they probably do not even realize.
Here are a few of the ways having low confidence negatively impacts you and your business:
Prospects & Customers Will Walk All Over You
First, prospects and customers will walk all over you.
Prospects will sense your low confidence and:
Moreover, having low confidence is a set-up for being walked all over and increases the odds of the deal failing.
Additionally, existing customers who see you have low confidence will likely:
- Resist changing according to your expertise
- Pushback on your ideas
- Question their decision to work with you
Customers will also walk all over you if you have low confidence. Even though they hired you to come in and implement changes, they will resist them.
Worst of all, customers will question if working with you is worth it.
The odds of them renewing the partnership or recommending you to others sink.
Do you want customers to walk on you when you are the true expert?
You Will Never Grow Your Business
You will never grow your business if prospects walk all over you.
First, new prospects will never agree to work with you.
Second, existing customers will not renew contracts or refer you to other prospects.
As a result, sales growth will stagnate. In worse cases, sales growth will go downhill.
If you do not already know, sales growth stagnation = overall business plateau.
Anybody who has experienced the dreaded business plateau knows how painful it is!
Pounding the pavement only not to grow is one of the worst feelings a business pro can experience.
Ultimately, low confidence sabotages you and your business from growing to their full potential.
You Will Question Why You Are Doing This
Even though you are working harder than ever, your business is not growing.
As a result, you question why you are doing this.
Why put in all the blood, sweat, and tears of being a business owner if you feel like s*** and are not making any progress?
Sound familiar?
Before you know it, low confidence has you questioning everything!
You did not understand how detrimental it was until it took over your business and personal life.
Your best bet is to uproot low confidence before it uproots you.
Here Is How to Build Confidence for Business and Life Success
Remember, having confidence in yourself is a matter of trusting yourself. The more you trust yourself, the more confident you are.
Therefore, building confidence is a matter of building trust with yourself!
That said, I am sharing how to build confidence for business and life success through building self trust.
While building confidence is not always easy, it is simple.
The key to success is not to overthink things: The method I designed is a no-nonsense, straightforward solution to building confidence.
However, it will not work if you overcomplicate it!
Therefore, keep things as simple as possible. The method will do you and your business well if you keep it simple.
Set Small, Daily Goals
The key to building self trust is consistently sticking to your word.
Moreover, trust is about being accountable for what you say you will do.
That said, start being accountable for yourself by setting small, daily goals and sticking to them.
I suggest setting three to five daily goals and doing them every day for two to three weeks.
For example, set three goals such as:
- Making ten high-quality cold calls every day
- Following up with each new prospect every 24 hours
- Sticking to your black dot every day
Accomplish these goals Monday through Friday until they become automatic habits.
Accomplishing new goals every day will initially make you uncomfortable. However, they will eventually become second nature as they ingrain into your brain as habits.
Also, be sure to pick goals that stretch you!
Set the goals higher if they do not feel the least bit challenging to accomplish.
Practice Extreme Accountability
Goals are meaningless unless you are accountable for them.
Therefore, you must practice extreme accountability.
Stop making excuses for yourself and start holding yourself accountable.
You can make an excuse today to feel good in the moment. Or, you can be accountable and secure long-term success for the future.
Think of it like this: If a friend says you can count on them but never lives up to their words, will you trust them?
Of course not.
Therefore, do not kid yourself! Either be accountable and build self-trust or do not and suffer the consequences.
It is your decision.
I suggest doing these three things to help you stay accountable:
- Tracking your progress in a journal
- Setting aside daily downtime to reflect on your progress and re-fuel
- Stop surrounding yourself with unaccountable people
Most importantly, ensure that the people around you are not the unaccountable, excuse-prone type.
Not only do these people have a bad influence, but they also encourage you to make excuses for yourself.
Furthermore, practice extreme accountability with your goals. It will be challenging at first but will ease up over time as you get used to the practice.
Set a New Set of Higher Goals
After two to three weeks of accomplishing the first set of goals, create a second set of new ones.
The new goals should set the bar higher.
For example, make twenty high-quality cold calls every day instead of ten.
Again, these goals should stretch you.
You should set the bar higher if the new goals do not feel challenging enough.
Goals that do not challenge you are worthless!
Once again, go ham on the new goals for two to three weeks.
Practice Extreme Accountability (Again)
You know the drill!
Practice more extreme accountability with your new set of goals.
At this point, accountability will feel less like a chore and more like an automatic button.
You will be used to the feeling of holding yourself to a high standard.
If practiced consistently, accountability will become a total no-brainer.
Keep Setting Higher Goals Until You Max Yourself Out
You probably saw this coming…
Keep repeating the cycle of setting new, higher goals every two to three weeks while keeping yourself accountable.
Do not stop setting higher goals until you feel maxed out.
Being maxed out is the feeling you get when you sit back at the end of a long day and say, ‘Yep, I did everything I possibly could to succeed today’.
Moreover, feeling maxed out is the feeling you experience when you have done everything in your power to succeed.
Contrary to popular belief, feeling maxed out should not make you feel utterly exhausted.
On the contrary, maxing yourself out should only fuel you to come back and do more the next day.
Will you be sore? Sure, but feeling sore is different than feeling pain.
From now on, think of your goals like hitting PRs in the gym: You are always shooting for higher weights until you cannot lift another ounce.
Reflect on Your Progress
So many people these days are constantly in grind mode.
Everybody knows what grind mode is: The act of putting your head down and working like crazy while ignoring the world around you. Grinding supposedly helps you accomplish more in less time.
I am the biggest fan of hard work- you will never get where you want to be without hard work.
However, ignoring the world signals that you are avoiding problems.
For example, many people with high credit card debt will set budgets every month but ignore looking at their credit reports.
Even though they do not follow the budget, they convince themselves they are being financially responsible by setting one.
However, they are simply using budgets as a strategy to ignore how wild they are going with the CC.
That said, work hard and reflect on your progress instead of grinding.
I suggest setting aside at least 30 minutes of serious downtime each day- no phone, TV, or laptop allowed!
During that time, allow your brain to digest just how far you have come.
Allow yourself time to recognize that you are worthy of your own trust.
Do the work and then bask in the glory of it!
Final Thoughts on Building Bulletproof Confidence for Success
Remember, you can have the best network, strategies, and techniques in the world and still fail because of low confidence.
How much longer will you allow low confidence to usurp itself between you and your desired outcomes?
Low confidence will continue to rain (or hail, or even tornado) on your parade until you take control.
