If I say to you, imagine a confident person, what image comes to mind? How do they stand? How do they look? What clothes do they wear? How do others act when they walk into a room or start a conversation?
Take a moment to build up the image, close your eyes if you need to . . .
Regardless, whatever your answer, il put money on you not visualising yourself! Yet I’m also confident in saying that the previous you, of 10 years ago, would see yourself today as a much more confident person?
You have overcome so many obstacles, dealt with so many issues that prior to working through them, seemed insurmountable and impossible. The fact that you are much more confident in certain areas of life than you were 10 years ago means that right now, you are probably someone else’s version of confidence
You know that person you visualised at the start, well someone out there was probably thinking of someone just like you. Yet you were not seeing a picture of your current self. The reason for this is we evolve and we change. That business presentation which used to fill you with fear, now seems mundane and boring – having done it every Friday morning for the past two years
Coming home with a newborn baby is enough to fill anyone with fear and anxiety, unless you have already done it a couple times and know exactly what to expect
The new Netflix series “How to get rich” starring Ramit Sethi got me thinking about this – if you have not seen it then I highly recommend checking it out, regardless of if you are rich or not
I really love his way of thinking, he’s created a brilliant template to help people create “their own” personal rich life. Not a rich life that society, family or friends believe they should have
The reason it stood out to me is its very similar to what I have done with my life and its very similar to what I teach people, but with confidence. If your version of being a confident person is asking your builder to talk you through the latest invoice rather than just paying it (like you normally do), then that is right for you. If your version of being confident is taking a year out of work and life, to solo travel the world with a backpack, then it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks
I went through life in my earlier years crippled by lack of confidence in certain areas – note I say in certain areas! At the age of 21, I probably looked reasonably confident. I had my own business, I was very sociable, always out every weekend (well every night pretty much). The thing that many didn’t realise was that the outwardly sociable, confident looking person, fuelled the feelings of being lesser than, with drugs and alcohol, masking any feelings of inadequacy
I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate the story any further for you to guess how that turned out?
It was only at the age of 28, having received the massive slap around the face that comes with leaving rehab – that I realised the shocking condition of my lack of self-belief, confidence and low self worth
Again, on the outside it all looked totally fine but from the inside it was a different story. I set about systematically rebuilding the areas of my life where lack of confidence was causing me to feel crap about myself. Some happened fast, some came more slowly – some I am still working on today
Have you ever tried going dating, whilst in your 20s . . . whilst totally sober . . . to me this was a massive challenge to start with. However, with strategy, a framework to follow, people to help you along the way, you can condition yourself to a place of confidence. Even the most daunting tasks can be done without breaking a sweat
Along this journey of creating self-belief and confidence, one of the discoveries I made was that all the external validations we put in place e.g. nice car, good job, great house, amazing partner. There is no substitute for doing the internal work. Simply creating the look of confidence on the outside will not fill the void. Often the more we build up the external validations, the more we retreat from the internal feelings
So, going back to that person you visualised in the opening paragraph of this blog;
- What’s stopping you from becoming that person?
It would be great to hear your answer in the comments below?
As always if you have any thoughts on anything mentioned in this blog or confidence in general, I would love to hear from you?
Until next week
Cheers George B
P.S. the above photo was from me doing my 100th skydive with Wonder Woman, over the California desert in 2015. This was me overcoming many of obstacles that stood in between me and my confident life
I remember that jump. S.B. was a great Wonder Woman!