Boost of Confidence

Have you ever felt badly about your ability to reach a certain goal or outcome when you didn’t achieve something you thought you should? If so, you may have even felt badly about yourself, assuming you should have been able to follow through, go the extra mile or will yourself to just do it. This happens even to the best of us.

What is interesting is the more you judge yourself (or feel judged) for not succeeding, the harder it becomes to ever fully achieve the goal. Can you think of a time when this was true?

You can push yourself harder, try to get others to force you, or admonish yourself more, but most likely the end result is you will have greater resistance and probably give up altogether. When this happens, you will also lose some of your self-confidence. I’ve watched this with clients over the years and seen it in myself.

When I go to an aerobic class that has a lot of choreography, it isn’t long before I am struggling with where to put my feet and feeling frustrated with my inability to keep up. I feel incompetent in comparison to those around me, and I feel vulnerable and judged for messing up the steps. I know I am particularly challenged in learning dance routines, yet I used to go to these exercise classes anyway thinking they would be fun and I should be able to do them. Others could. It is so easy to think you should be able to do something just because others seem to be able to do it or you’ve been told it isn’t an unreasonable expectation. Yet what is true for others isn’t necessarily true for you.

The best way for me to learn dance or aerobic routines is to be shown a few steps at a time and then be given a chance to practice them before learning any more steps. I need to take it slow, get some one-on-one help and practice them on my own. The same was true when I learned kick-boxing. Fortunately I had a great instructor who taught me just a few new moves each week and gave me time to perfect them. I never felt badly the progress in learning all the moves was slow, because my instructor never suggested I should do anything differently. It took many months, yet I enjoyed the drills and became very confident and proficient in all the movements. Even better, I loved how I felt about myself as I kick-boxed around the room.

What boosts your confidence is seeing yourself succeed, even if that success is learning two aerobic steps a week, setting a fitness goal of being active for 15-20 minutes three days next week, or setting time aside to relax for 5 minutes. It isn’t how much or hard you do something that determines if you are successful. It is being certain of your ability to achieve what you set out to do and having experienced success in having done it. The more success you have, the more willing you become to try a bit more but again only as much as you know you can handle and succeed at.

If you can’t say with certainty you have full confidence in your ability to achieve what you plan to do, then scale it back. A great way to check this is by asking yourself on a scale of 1-10, how confident you are that you can absolutely succeed. If your confidence level is at a 7 or 8, why is that? Is there something you are unsure of or something that may keep you from succeeding? If so, can that be easily addressed or do you need to lower your goals so you can be at a 10?

As I have learned, it is totally acceptable to start off small or easy when you are getting started with a new activity, setting goals for yourself, or changing your habits. Each small success boosts your confidence and instead of feeling resistance to doing more, you will feel eager to see what more you can do. As I am fond of saying,the more you can do, the more you want to do, and I watch as clients who started off walking just a mile or so when they started end up doing long charity walks, runs or triathlons a year or more later. They would never have reached those levels if they had pushed themselves to do more at the beginning. Instead they allowed each success to boost their confidence, and with each boost they did a bit more until they surpassed their wildest expectations and confidence levels.

Alice Greene is president of Feel Your Personal Best, a healthy lifestyle coaching company located in Newburyport, MA. Contact her at agreene@feelyourpersonalbest.com or 978-465-3555×5.