Why Traditional Confidence-Building Techniques Don’t Work — and What You CAN do to Build Confidence

Implement the key element missing in most techniques to build consistent, sustainable confidence.

Photo by Liane Metzler on Unsplash

Traditional confidence-building techniques leave us relying on our minds and our selves — the very things that keep us from feeling confident in the first place.

Shadow work, mantra mumbling, mirror (self) talk — oh my.

Utilize them for what they’re worth. Like any medicine, they’re a temporary antidote for your lack of confidence symptoms.

To develop consistent confidence will take a more powerful antidote — the ONE missing in most confidence-building techniques.

Temporary Fixes Only Work Temporarily

Temporary relief from lack of confidence isn’t necessarily a bad thing — temporarily.

Sometimes you need the temporary antidote to combat the symptoms. So go ahead:

· Face your fear and just dive in and do “it” anyway. You’ll be so proud of yourself. Your confidence will soar — temporarily (situational confidence)

· Recall a time when you succeeded at “it” and that recall will give you the confidence to do “it” once again. (experiential confidence)

· Do shadow work — it does help you understand why you have no confidence. But it doesn’t help you develop it.

· Mumble the mantra to get through the moment (situational confidence)

Temporary confidence-building techniques are temporarily helpful — but exhausting. You have to put them into action every time your confidence wanes. And for most of us, that’s often.

They’ll get you through the moment and offer pseudo relief.

Who’s Kidding Who

Mumbling mantras and chanting affirmations are wonderful tools to have. I’m not here to beat up on them. I use them myself. And they are a big part of my Clearly Confident Workshop.

Used properly, they work.