Tips for boosting your self-confidence before important events
Reading time 5 Minutes
Women are often told to be more confident. There are countless “Women’s Leadership Development” training programmes that focus on women’s personal and professional development, but I haven’t seen any programmes called “Men’s Leadership Development”. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that those programmes have their own place, but why there’s such a focus on the need to develop women towards attaining positions of power, I just don’t understand. Are we lacking leadership abilities, or inferior in some way compared to men? This just exacerbates the so-called ‘women’s confidence issue’.
I’d highly recommend the book ‘Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders’ by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. He argues that the main reason for the uneven management sex ratio is due to the common tendency to equate displays of confidence with indicators of competence. In a leaderless group, there is a natural tendency to elect self-centered, overconfident and narcissistic individuals as leaders. These characteristics enable men to stand out from the crowd as men tend to think that they are much smarter than women. But often what it takes to get the job is not just different from, but also the reverse of what it takes to do the job well. Confidence has also been weaponised against women. In cases where women fall short of their career aspirations, leaders often tend to attribute it to a perceived deficiency in self-confidence. Paradoxically, when women display assertiveness or extroverted behaviours as a means of showcasing their confidence, there exists a risk of being misconstrued as excessively confident or, ironically, as lacking confidence.
If you are reading this article, you are probably someone who ‘suffers’ from low self-confidence, like me. There is no shortage of self-help guides out there and I have read many of them. I think we all know what we need to tell ourselves to do, to think to be more confident. Yet it almost feels like there is a mental block somewhere. I wanted to share the following ideas that really stuck with me.
Pursuing confidence doesn’t lead to confidence
We all go through tough times in life and we dream about one day when our lives will be better. I recently came across a theory called the ‘Backwards Law’, also known as the ‘Law of Reversed Effort’. It’s a psychological concept that suggests that the harder we try to do something, the less likely we are to succeed. As Mark Manson put it “pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. The more you desperately want to be rich, the more poor and unworthy you feel, regardless of how much money you actually make.” Because with this mindset, we’re more likely to focus on what we lack, than on what we naturally have in abundance. And the more we try to control our feelings and impulses, the more powerless we feel. The more we try to make others love and accept us, the less we feel we are lovable. Therefore, we tend to create more feelings of insecurity and anxiety, the more we try to feel confident. The only way to get what we want, is to stop wanting it. The backwards law doesn't imply that we shouldn’t set goals or have ambitions, but it teaches us not to be deceived by the notion that pursuing confidence leads to confidence. It’s the exact opposite.
Love yourself as if you are your daughter
If you were your daughter, would you still be so harsh and so critical of yourself? The famous saying that ‘we are our own worst enemy we can encounter’ is so true. We all experience those moments of self-loathing that stem from our own hands. But it’s never too late. Let’s be our own parents and ‘grow up’ again. Give yourself love as if you are your own child, teach yourself the lessons that you never learnt (e.g. say no when you need to) or build some new habits (e.g. try to exercise once a week, buy yourself flowers). A good place to start is a 30-day self-love challenge, there are plenty of good ones online or on Pinterest. We only come to this world once, therefore it’s okay to live in abundance and hope that everything will work out for the best in the end.
A little trick: Anchoring the feeling
Have you ever employed the method of placing a rubber band around your wrist and giving it a snap whenever you felt tempted to engage in undesirable behaviour? This technique is called ‘anchoring’ which is based on the work of Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Ivan Pavlovwhich. It’s done by pairing physical touch with a feeling or behaviour you want to have at your disposal. Incorporate the following steps to practise anchoring. The more often you practise it, the stronger the connection becomes between the feeling and the behaviour.
Determine how you want to feel: for example, ‘more self-assured and confident’.
Remember a time when you experienced this feeling.
Choose an anchor behaviour that involves touch: for example, touch your thumb and forefinger together or make a fist. This needs to be a behaviour that you don’t do often in your day-to-day, so that when you practise it enough, a strong connection starts to form between this behaviour and the feeling.
Put yourself inside the memory as if reliving it. Remember what you saw, heard and felt. As you feel that confidence coming on, activate your anchoring behaviour from step 3.
Practice and practice to strengthen the connection.
Instead of promoting self-confidence, I’d like to promote self-regard, an understanding and acceptance of our own strengths and weaknesses, and the feeling of inner-strength that will help us weather the storm. As with everything, confidence won’t just show up on your doorstep one day and replace all the broken connections in your brain. Instead, it’s a lifelong journey - one where self-regard can help a lot, if only we’re willing to let go and trust that everything will be okay.
References:
Baker, D.T., and Bourke, J | 20/10/2022 | How Confidence is Weaponized against women | https://hbr.org/2022/10/how-confidence-is-weaponized-against-women
Chamorro-Premuzic, Tomas | 22/08/2023 | Why do so many incompetent men become leaders? | https://hbr.org/2013/08/why-do-so-many-incompetent-men
The Backwards Law by Einzelganger | 11/03/2021 | https://einzelganger.co/the-backwards-law/
