Building Confidence

When we lack confidence, opportunities slip away from us: fulfilling friendships, work opportunities, challenges, choices. Our lack of confidence seems to mask who we really are, hiding our best aspects from other people, and even from ourselves. We may feel shame and embarrassment about who we are. We may even feel ashamed of our lack of confidence itself.

In our approach, we build up a clear and calm sense of self. We learn to welcome whatever is within us, accepting even the most difficult places inside, understanding our needs, and finding new ways in which to meet them.

Lack of confidence is often a sign that we have valuable qualities, which have ‘gone underground’. They may be blocked by critical ideas and judgements. By tapping into our innate, latent wisdom, and unravelling the tangled parts of us which hold doubt and insecurity, our true nature comes to light — a way of being which is naturally bright, positive, at ease and confident.

Our confidence increases if we know we can apply it when needed. Sometimes lack of confidence affects us as a nameless background feeling — as if we are continually burdened with disheartened feelings of self-doubt, misery or anxiety. Here, we learn how to create a shift in the background feeling by building confidence in situations which are important to us, for example:

• Handling workload
• Giving presentations
• Presenting your opinion in meetings
• Managing pressures of task and time
• Building positive relationships with others
• Handling challenging conversations
• Enjoying social occasions
• Performing in public

• To find, build and develop authentic confidence
• To understand the causes of doubt, insecurity and lack of self-worth
• To learn practices for remaining grounded and in control under pressure

• Understanding the role of emotions
• Regaining a positive sense of self
• Increasing our positive presence
• Standing firmly on our own ground
• Knowing the difference between authentic and false confidence
• Understanding our inner critic
• Identifying and meeting our needs
• Distinguishing our efforts from our outcomes
• Relating to inner parts of ourselves
• Holding contradictions and paradoxes
• Making the ‘revolutionary pause’
• Learning body awareness practices for remaining rooted
• Learning breathing exercises for generating calm
• Contributing where it matters with value and purpose

How can we ever be sure we do the right thing? Sometimes we simply follow other people’s ideas. Sometimes we feel clogged by doubt or trapped by a fear of doing the wrong thing.

If we look within ourselves, at what lies below the surface, we discover a true resource for confident action. Our feelings and needs hold crucial information and help us to respond to what’s happening. As we tap into their innate understanding, we find a deeper sense of rightness flowing from inside us. This allow us to act naturally, with clarity, ease, and a growing sense of self-worth.

Confidence needs to be genuine and authentic. Feeling real confidence is effortless, and allows us to be friendly and approachable to others, while feeling firm and grounded in ourselves. It allows us to manage objectively difficult or upsetting situations without feeling bad. False confidence is tiring and brittle. It relies on superficial positivity which is easily lost or dented.

Lack of confidence is usually rooted in not knowing how to handle natural obstacles — such as blocks to being who we are or understanding what we need. We follow three routes to building confidence:

• What to do when in the grip of an unconfident state
• Remedial measures ‘in the moment’
• Remaining calm, rooted and in the body
• Breathing through difficulties

• Understanding the role of our inner critic
• Facing criticism or undermining language from others
• Dealing with strong and entangling emotions in ourselves (for example: doubt, self-hatred, anger, resentment, envy)
• Finding the useful messages of fear and insecurity

• Being valued and valuing ourselves
• Understanding self-respect and self-worth
• Living with meaning and purpose
• Expressing ourselves with confidence