Be all that you can be

Retraining or returning to education to learn new skills is a positive step if you have lost your job. You may have been made redundant and the market place for your skills is limited, in which case you could see this as an opportunity to retrain. Maybe you know redundancy or dismissal is imminent and you want to proactively look for a way to get out of the industry you have been in.

Maybe you want to change the direction of your career and/or expand on your current skill base. Whatever the case, if change is in the air and you feel you want to move elsewhere professionally, perhaps you could start by asking yourself some basic questions:

1. What skills do you have?
2. What would you like to do every day?
3. How important is financial security?

Whatever your answers to these questions, they will help to prepare you to make important decisions when applying for retraining or education.

Once you have a better picture of what you might like from your future career you can embark on some in-depth research. A good place to start would be websites like DirectGov Education & Learning, which have pages dedicated to adult learning, how to find the right courses, as well as gratis advice on matching together courses with whatever your skills and interests may be.

If you have trouble visualising your current or future successes consider keeping a Success diary.

Simply put, if you keep a diary or journal of things that you feel are your achievements and things that you are happy about you will begin to visualise yourself in more successful and pleasing terms than you might otherwise.

Get yourself a notebook and once a week or month remind yourself of your achievements and anything that you are thankful for and/or pleased about in your life at that moment. Take the time to do it. It won’t take long and in time it really will make a difference to you.

Just take a few minutes once in a while (make it regular but not unrealistic like every evening) to jot down your thoughts on these sorts of topics:

What have I accomplished this week/month?

What am I looking forward to next week/month?

What is there in my life to feel grateful about right now?

What am I happy about in my life right now and why am I happy about them?

Who are my friends and who loves and appreciates for who I am ?

What am stimulated by right now and what excites me?

If you do keep this sort of diary then not only will you start to see the good things in your life more readily, which in turn will fight back depression and worry, it will also form the basis of making positive plans to improve your circumstances. Once you know where you are and what assets you hold it will become easier to plane where and how to move elsewhere in your life.

1. 70% of communication is through body language and a great deal of how we feel comes down to how we act. Your posture and the openness of you gestures have a massive effect on your confidence. Walk purposefully and with your shoulders back. Look people in the eye when you speak with them and smile frequently. It will make all the difference

2. At the end of each day think about your achievements that day. Also reflect on the things in your life that you are thankful for, including family and loved ones, a job, kind or friendly people that you have met, whatever. The point is that the more things you find to be happy about the more you are likely to be happy, and the happier you are the easier it is to build your confidence. It’s a no brainer really.

3. Move. It is an absolute fact that motion and physical exercise not only relieve tension in the body but also releases chemicals into our brains that make us feel happy and content. Feeling depressed? Go for a brisk walk. Stretch. Get the blood pumping around you body and you \will probably find that whatever was bothering you beforehand seems a little bit more manageable.

4. No one likes a bore who brags about himself all the time. That said, learn to speak about your achievements to others and take a little pride in them. It will boost your confidence.

5. Life is short, youth is shorter and you only get one shot on this planet. If you are feelings worried or a bit down, ask yourself if the problem you are facing or the feelings you are experiencing will really \matter to you in 10 or 20 years. If not, will worrying about them now really make all that much difference…? Probably not, other than to pull you down and hold you back of course.

In the last article we looked at how the words of others can affect our confidence and shape how we see ourselves. However, the words we use for ourselves to express what we are feeling and thinking also have a profound affect on how we perceive and cope with the world.

Our choice of words are rarely arbitrary, if ever. The words we use feed back into how we feel. For instance, think about the language you use when you feel let down or frustrated with someone or their actions. If you say things like “I’m utterly furious” or “you ALWAYS let me down and you NEVER listen”.

In fact these choices of words may not have literal truth to them. You may not be “utterly furious” and the person in question may not “always” let you down and “never” listen, but just by using those words frequently when you are upset gives gravity to your distress, perhaps even more than the circumstance deserves. Also, if you use powerful language like this quite frequently, even when the circumstance might not deserve it, people around you might not take what you have to say so seriously.

If every time you are upset you are “utterly furious” and “betrayed”, whether someone you trusted stole your car or just forgot to buy the margarine brand you asked him or her to, sooner or later the qualitative difference between your feelings about these two extremes will lessen, both in terms of how you feel and how others see you.

Pick your words carefully. If a loved one or colleague does something frustrating tell them that, but reduce your language. Instead of saying you are “furious” tell them instead that you are “a bit annoyed”. This is in affect a form of control over your emotions. You aren’t bottling them up because you are communicating your feelings, but on the other you aren’t allowing yourself to be a victim of your feelings either and therefore losing an element of control.

Lower the intensity of your language and not only will you begin to feel more in control you will also exude a sense of self control, patience and even self-awareness..

Words have power. Indeed some might say that words ARE power. They communicate ideas and feelings and they form the structure of almost every thought we think in the silence of our own minds. Can you think of many times when you have thought without words?

I thought not.

Words have the power to shape how we see ourselves and others. How many times has someone’s rash or hurtful words brought you down, especially when you care about what the speaker thinks of you.

Bear in mind, however, that nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent at some level. It isn’t just that their words have upset you or damaged your confidence, it’s also the things that you think to yourself after their words have been spoken that causes problems for you. If you genuinely thought that they were wrong and their comments were unfounded or that they were not in a position to judge accurately, then why care about the negative things they have said to you? It’s just noise in the air.

Of course, if you write off every criticism the chances are that you are deluding yourself and falling into the trap of arrogance. The point is to filter genuine and constructive criticism out from the disheartening dross that we are so often subjected to in our daily lives.

If we aim to be self aware and self reflexive we will be able to find something positive within a genuine criticism without falling foul to damage to our confidence, and we will also be able to see the difference between criticisms and ‘nasty remarks’. From this point we can learn to better dismiss the latter while accept and help improve ourselves from the former.

In the previous article we have already established the importance of approaching life with a ‘can do’ attitude, but negativity is ever present in our lives. I’ve not met or heard of a functional human being who does not experience moments of self doubt or worry. It’s normal and not something to fear.

That said, sometimes our doubts and negative thoughts can consume us, holding us back and sapping our confidence. Don’t let them. Endeavour to be in charge of your thoughts, because remember, they aren’t things that can harm you or your confidence unless you let them.

Self-doubt is not the destructive certainty that a psychopath holding a gun at your head it. You can alter and even stop self doubt by thinking differently. If you find you are coming up with negative answers when you question yourself, ask different questions. If you answer “will I succeed at this” with a worrying and confidence sapping “no” change your internal question to “how can I assure that I WILL succeed at this?”

If you feel yourself slipping into a spiral of self-doubt or worry before an interview or presentation, stop and think for a moment. You are worrying about the bad things that might happen if you are not ‘impressive’ enough, so you are picturing failure. Instead focus on the good things that will happen if and when you ARE impressive enough. It’s just the same thing in reverse.

This isn’t a panacea for all your worries and doubts, but it will certainly help you let go of those irrational fears brought about by the shot of adrenaline that the fight-or-flight reflex gives you prior to the sorts of events we are discussing here.

When it comes to work most employers and/or customers look for people who have a ‘can do’ attitude. Try to view new tasks and hurdles as positive challenges to overcome. If you feel you have been asked to move a mountain don’t just sink into misery at the enormity of the task, just start moving stones.

If the task truly IS impossible then you will soon see, but at least you will be able to tell your employer or your customer (if you are self employed) that the task cannot be completed in the way they want from a standpoint of knowledge. You can discuss what went wrong and where, speaking from the high-ground of the first-hand experience you gained trying to achieve it.

From this point it is more likely that the task or service can be adapted to something more reasonable and achievable based around your own recommendations, rather than just passed onto someone else.

However, although it is important to be positive and enthusiastic, you most also be self-reflexive and able to say ‘no’ when appropriate. There is nothing wrong with saying no to people, even customers and employers, just so long as you know why you are saying no and can justify it reasonably if asked. Also, there is a difference between saying no and being combative. If you are in the right, if the task really cannot be done by you for various reasons or if the expectation upon you is simply unrealistic, you can refuse and explain why to most people without it turning into a confrontation.

Don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself, especially as it will be your neck on the line if you DO agree to do something which you know you cannot, simply because you were too nervous to say ‘no’ and explain why from the outset.

If you are applying for a course or a new job that requires that you have an interview beforehand, or if you have a presentation or meeting coming up much of your confidence and ultimately your success in that circumstance will be dependent upon how prepared you are for it.

If two people of the same level and type of education and professional experience are applying for the same job and if both of these parties are generally confident people, the deciding factor may well come down to which of these people know most about the specific job they are applying for. Read up all you can about the company, business or course you are applying for, then if any opportunity comes up where you can demonstrate that knowledge – such as to explain why you think the job/course is right for you and vice-versa – take advantage of it!

Always play to your strengths and always try to deepen and diversify those strengths. In terms of just building your self-confidence, if you practise and expose yourself to the things that you already know you are good at you will likely enjoy doing so and experience a boost to your confidence with every little success or improvement. The confidence you get from doing the things you are good at will help to counter-balance any disappointments or little failures you may experience while applying for jobs, embarking on new manager training schemes or just trying out new things in general.

Indeed, always seek to improve on, or even eradicate, your weaknesses, while accepting that no-one can be perfect or successful at everything. The idea is to minimise the areas where you are lacking in confidence so that you feel at least competent or neutral in those areas. You don’t have to be the expert at everything and if you think you are you are in fact cultivating a far more dangerous weakness – arrogance and/or hubris.

Besides, no-one likes an outspoken know-it-all…!

Don’t allow yourself to wallow in past failures but DO reflect on them. In other words, learn you’re your mistakes – see where you went wrong and why and think of ways to avoid making those same mistakes again. But then move on.

Visualise yourself as being successful in a particular situation and you are much more likely to be. This might seem to be so airy-fairy as to be a joke, but numerous psychological studies have shown that people who imagine themselves being confident and successful in a particular situation and who run images through their mind’s eye about how relaxed they are going to be and how confidently they are going to speak during an interview (say) ARE more confident and successful and confident during that meeting. Try it for yourself. Seriously. Sometimes it can make all the difference

Imagination cannot give you qualifications, skills or experience you don’t have and so you may still be turned down for a particular job if you do not fulfil the requirements they are looking for. That said, if you have all the practical skills and qualifications your potential employer is looking for, a relaxed, warm and confident presentation will often tip the balance in your favour away from similarly qualified applicants.

Confidence tips the balance when it comes to generating the momentum to change your life. If you want to get additional training by starting a new course or whether you just want to shine in a job interview, confidence is key.

Over the next few articles we will look at different ways to improve confidence and performance during interviews, meetings and presentations of various sorts, whatever your goals and ambitions.

In many ways, being confident is what you DO even moiré than it is what you ARE. If you truly feel that you are lacking in confidence in a particular setting it can help to think of someone you know who IS confident in that setting and then emulate their body language, how they talk and walk.

This doesn’t mean you should mimic all of their peculiarities and copy their accent or whatever, but if you seek to emulate their confident speech patterns and general body language you will be behaving in a confident manner. Once people start to see you as confident they will react to you in a different way which will further enforce your confident behaviour. Try it and see for yourself.

Smile more and chat with new people more readily. This doesn’t mean you should go\ around with a constant grin on your face, dragging people into conversation even if they don’t want to be. It’s just that if you behave in a more friendly and engaging way people will generally react in a more positive way towards you, reaffirming your own self confidence.