Everyone knows that confidence is built over time and not in one day, because confidence gained in a day is not sustainable and is ultimately just bravado. It is simply impossible to gain confidence with the snap of the fingers and expect it to last forever. To gain confidence, one has to take several steps. For example, I talked about in my last post about how a mirror can give you a perspective about yourself and how you can use it to compound positive thoughts about yourself. Besides using a mirror to gain confidence, one of the best ways to gain confidence is by performing small acts of confidence.
Small acts of confidence is really easy if you allow it to be
To me, a small act of confidence can literally be anything that you do not normally do on an everyday basis. If you do not talk/answer questions during a class, then raise your hand and answer one. If you have a job, then it could be offering to help someone instead of being initially asked. You can also go volunteer somewhere where you will have more human interaction. Regardless of what you do, a small act of confidence is something that puts you a little outside of your comfort zone. By putting yourself slightly outside your comfort zone every day, you will expand the size of what you are comfortable with and ultimately gain more confidence. Also, I want to stress the point that the act is whatever you want it to be; but when you decide on your act, just do it. However, make sure to not choose something super easy that you know that you would not be nervous about whatsoever. When performing a small act of confidence, you should be a little scared or nervous. If you are not, then what you are doing is not helping your confidence and you are not pushing yourself to improve.
You have to gradually ramp it up while remaining consistent
Eventually, a small act of confidence like purposefully raising your hand to answer a question in class is not going to cut it. You need to gradually ramp up your acts. How often you ramp it up is entirely up to you; however, you should be doing an act of confidence every single day. If you are consistent with your acts, then you will gain more confidence quickly. Also, if you continually increase the levels of acts of confidence you do, then you will definitely gain confidence faster than others. For your system/routine of performing small acts of confidence, you should be doing one act every single day, but sometimes you do not have the opportunity or you chose something too big which means you got scared. When setting up how often you do an act of confidence, you could set goals that you are doing one a day, a couple in a week, ten in a month, or however often you want it to be. Whatever you do, do not become complacent. Just to give you an idea of how quickly you can ramp up your acts of confidence, you can start off with talking more in class, then go out of your way to volunteer, to talking with a random stranger, and to joining a debate club. These examples are not meant to be done in a day or even a week, but they can be done whenever you choose to do it. All you need to do is consistently ramp up what you see as a challenge to push yourself. You need to keep on challenging your confidence in order for you to build it up.
Your confidence will rise you keep working on it
In the beginning, it is going to be really hard, especially if you are more timid and shy. Also, it is going to be difficult to maintain, but that is why you have to be committed to improving your confidence. If you have a strong commitment to improving yourself, then you will work harder and push yourself to achieve a better you. I guarantee that if you do at least one small act of confidence a day, your confidence will drastically improve. All you have to do is be consistent and to gradually ramp it up.
