“My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.”
(Indira Gandhi)
In this weeks guest post, coach and psychologist, Colin Clerkin shares some thoughts about confidence. Could these be steps you use personally or with clients?
by Colin Clerkin
When you think about confidence, what does it mean to you? It is an attitude, a belief, a sense of assuredness that permeates your being and allows you to feel that you can achieve anything. A confident you can nail that presentation, make that sale, ask for that raise.
But an un-confident you… now, that is a very different story, is it not? Self-doubt, uncertainty, anxiety; an inability to function that often makes little sense to you because you know you have the ability, but the self-belief is just not there when you need it.
There are many things that we can learn to try to address our lack of confidence. Coaches and psychologists can help with psycho-educational training that looks at assertiveness, stress management courses, social skills training, etc. All of these can make a positive difference to how you perceive a situation and your response to it, but I would like to introduce another, simple idea, one that approaches the problem at a physical level.
I would like you to consider how your body shape reflects your inner state — and then recognise how you can start to overcome problems with confidence by actively, physically, making the changes I will introduce to you in this article.
When we are NOT confident, we all know that it shows. The people around us can tell. For example, the un-confident me will tend to close in on myself: my shoulders droop; my head drops; my eye contact becomes poor. I might rub my hands, or chew my lip, or yawn even though I am not tired. All of this occurs unconsciously in response to some perceived threatening situation. This is not threatening in the sense that my physical well-being is at risk, but threatening to my self-esteem and my sense of competence as a person.
So, let’s begin to address this by looking at how adjusting the frame of the body can lead us to positive change in how we feel in certain situations, and we can learn to use body posture as a priming cue for confidence.
Body posture creates the scaffolding upon which we can hang positive imagery to help shift our perceptions of ourselves — if we can learn to project our confident shape onto our body framework, we can use this to start altering our response to challenges to our confidence.
By paying attention to and altering our body posture in line with our desired functioning, and building onto this scaffold, we can cue associated desired, confident responses.
The first place to look is in our own experience. Think back to a time when you did feel confident. Spend a minute or two recalling that experience; what it felt like and, importantly, how you held yourself at the time. Notice how your shoulders were set strongly, your head up. Felt good, didn’t it? This is the core of the confident image that I want you to project onto the body scaffold I described above.
If your life experience has not been of confidence previously, then take some time to think about someone that you admire whom you consider to be supremely and positively confident. They can be a real person or someone from fiction; it does not matter. But notice what it is about their physical presentation that causes you to perceive them as confident. Notice how they hold themselves, the way they meet the gaze of the person they are speaking to, or their voice tone when they speak. Imagine this confident posture projected onto your own frame and pay attention to where in your body you first notice the spark of that feeling as it takes hold.
Breath in deeply and focus on that part of your body where you feel that confidence once again. With each deep breathe in, allow yourself to experience that confidence growing. Physically allow your body to mirror the posture of that confident you of old or that admired role model. Feel the shape of confidence as it takes hold of your frame and inhabit it.
With a few simple deep breaths and the application of a memory from another time or an impression of another’s poise to your current body posture, you have boosted your own confidence. It may only be by a matter of degrees this first time, but imagine how, by practicing this technique regularly, you can enhance this experience and learn to apply it readily at those times in your day-to-day life where previously you have felt your confidence escape you.
Learn to do this and you will soon see how your confidence can take on this new and exciting positive shape.
Dr Colin Clerkin is a psychologist and coach based in Chester, in the North West of England. Colin has been involved in helping people tackle challenges in their lives for 20 years, initially as a clinical psychologist and, over the past three years, as both a personal and a parent coach.After his own experiences with cancer in recent years, he has also been inspired to coach cancer survivors as they look to adjust to life after cancer.
He launched Mirror Coaching in 2010, and provides face-to-face or Skype-based coaching to parents, individuals and small business owners. He is currently creating an on-line coaching programme to help people in the early stages of setting up their coaching and therapy practices.
“The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect springs.”
(Joan Didion)
“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do. It’s simple, fantasize, rehearse, then go out into the world and DO IT!.”
(Henry Ford)
“Words were originally magic, and to this day words have retained much of their ancient mystical power.”
(Sigmund Freud)
“When the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, it may be that they take better care of it there.”
(Cecil Selig)
Another post from my archieves, this time from 2008, when I sent monthly rather than weekly messages:
As I sat and wondered what to write in this month’s message I received a thank you message from a friend, who for the purposes of this email I’ll call Bob. I had chatted with Bob last week and he wanted to know if I had done something to him, as he woke up the next day feeling enthusiastic about a task that he had been busy telling me that he really wasn’t looking forward to doing.
The only explanation Bob could come up with is that I’d done some magical coach thing. My answer was to grin – you see, I knew that Bob is normally enthusiastic about the topic the task was about. I had had a hunch that it wasn’t the task itself that Bob had a problem with; I knew he had done similar yet much bigger tasks with enthusiasm. I suspected that the story Bob had told himself about what it would be like doing the task wasn’t a particularly pleasant one. A few questions confirmed my hunch, that he was telling himself it would be a hugely time consuming process which he’d have to start from scratch. The conversation that followed actually revealed that Bob had already done much more work on this task then he’d given himself credit (about a years worth!) so it really wouldn’t take as long as he had thought. As for waking up feeling enthusiastic and not shaking that feeling all week – that was all Bob, all I did was to give him a nudge from where he’d got himself stuck towards what he was naturally enthusiastic about.
As a coach, giving a gentle nudge when they are stuck, towards what they are naturally enthusiastic about and taking their life to the next level is what I do with all my clients. I can do this in many different ways but I am normally first curious about what story they are telling themselves about the situation to keep themselves stuck.
Bob’s email got me thinking about some of the common stories people tell themselves that often keep themselves stuck. As last month saw the release of my first self belief CD (see the PS of this message for more details) I thought I would share my thoughts on one story I hear from people who say they have low self belief in a particular area of their life.
When Bob had thought about this task, he had imagined the situation as if it was a year ago. One of the things that people sometimes do when they say they have low self-belief in a particular area of their lives is to be imagining themselves as they were in the past, ignoring any subsequent learning’s. This perception of how we see ourselves, and what we tell ourselves that means has a big effect on how we feel about that area. In fact it can have a big impact upon the amount in the feeling of self-belief.
For example, if there is a particular area of your life where you do not have a lot of self-belief in the skills that you have, are you basing that on an outdated image? For instance, Joan had started a new job a year ago and yet has little self-belief in the skills that she has developed since joining the company all of which seem so obvious to those around her. When chatting to her it became obvious that she was still seeing herself as new, with only very basic skills.
Self-perception, whether outdated or is one common way someone can get stuck in thinking they have low self-belief.
If there is an area of your life where you’d like to feel more self-belief, I invite you to play with the following to give yourself a gentle nudge.
You may want to read these instructions all the way through first and then play, or you may want to do each step and then refer back to what the next thing is.
Pick a time when it is safe to focus entirely on yourself – do not do this while driving! This works best when you are not going to be disturbed so choose a time to play with this when you know you have no visitors and you may want to take the phone off the hook. You will also find this easier to do when you find somewhere where you can sit comfortably – so pick somewhere where you can relax easily.
Take some deeper breaths and begin to relax, some people like to imagine that feeling of relaxation having a specific colour (the colour is different for each person). Imagine that colour spreading throughout your entire body, filling every muscle from the tips of your toes right up to the top of your head. Enjoy the feeling of bathing in relaxation.
In a moment you are going to imagine that you are going to go on a treasure hunt. You will find that you have a map that show route(s) to safely reach your treasure. On this treasure hunt you are going to take a magic companion who represents your self-perception in this area of your life. You and your companion will be able to help each other to make the treasure hunt even easier with more fun.
As you begin your treasure hunt notice what your companion looks like and what age they are. As you progress on this hunt you may find that their appearance and age alters, and that’s ok if that happens.
Follow your map until you reach your treasure.
Once you have found your treasure, make sure that you put the treasure somewhere safe, where you can access it any time that you want.
Thank your magic companion for being part of this journey with you. As they are a magic companion, who represents your self-perception, you will find that in whatever form and age they are in, they can integrate back into you now.
When you are ready, become aware of the room around you again – you may want to wiggle your fingers and toes.
Think about the area of your life you were playing with for this and notice how different it is now.
“We’re not retreating, we’re just advancing in another direction.”
(General George S Patton)