A masterclass in self-confidence with Michelle Elman

Be bold: home-in on how to level-up your self-confidence, and learn to believe in yourself more

Confidence is one of those lofty words that is hard to summarise, and yet we instinctively seem to know when others have it – and we most certainly notice when we don’t.

It might be seen as a bit controversial, but I believe confidence is overrated. In reality, if you are perceived as being confident, it actually doesn’t matter what’s going on inside your head, as long as you have the desired outcome. In real world terms, if you feel the butterflies in your stomach, nerves ramping up as you get on stage to give a talk, but you deliver your message in a way that you can be proud of, and the audience leaves feeling satisfied, does it matter that how you felt in your head didn’t line up with what you were projecting?

This is where one of my top tips comes in. A large portion of confidence comes from competency, and the prior awareness of knowing you can do something while scared. When you have lived experience of being self-assured, even in the face of fear, it gives you greater confidence to say ‘yes’ next time. All this to say: confidence is not the absence of fear, but, instead, allowing the fear to exist, and doing it anyway. Author Elizabeth Gilbert has an interesting metaphor for this, as shared in her book Big Magic, that says fear is allowed to be in the car, but just not in the driver’s seat.

But what about if you are about to go into a high pressure situation where you aren’t sure whether you can project the level of confidence that is needed? This is where your self-belief comes in. Repeating to yourself that you are going to fail can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, so be cautious of the narrative you tell yourself. The first step is in noticing this behaviour, so pay attention to when these self-doubt inducing stories arise – and then remember that you don’t have to ‘believe’ your brain. Just because you ‘think’ it’s going to go badly, doesn’t mean it will.

To counteract these limiting thoughts, try collecting plenty of evidence to challenge them. Create a list of every time you thought you couldn’t do something, but you did it anyway, it was a success, or, in hindsight, you were glad you said yes. This list gives you a practical way to counteract self-doubt with evidence, and by spending time on it, you are taking control of your attention and focus, retraining your brain to think differently. It also doesn’t matter if the examples you come up with might be in a completely different context, because the confidence you are building isn’t in the specific skill, but rather in yourself as a whole.

To take things further, you might want to set yourself the challenge of creating a list of 100 reasons why you are good at the thing you’re trying to achieve. Through forcing yourself to come up with such an extensive list, it means you know what you bring to the table. However, as a word of warning, a list like this should take a few hours to curate, so you may find you get stumped. This action is about making the conscious decision that you’re worth spending time on, though, so, by refusing to quit the exercise, you will likely get a second wave of inspiration.

Since confidence is largely communication, another way you can project it is by slowing down your speech. A lot of people think that talking quickly allows us to squeeze in more information, but by slowing down, your speech becomes more deliberate – whether that’s on a stage or in a job interview, or even on a date. You allow yourself to pause, think, and reflect, and are therefore less likely to use filler words like ‘um’ or ‘basically’. The best orators in the world, such as Barack Obama, tend to capture audiences because they believe they deserve the time to communicate their thoughts, and moments of silences and extended pauses actually mean they hold the attention of everyone better. It communicates certainty and self-assuredness.

My final tip might sound counterintuitive, but it’s actually building your confidence to survive, no matter what happens – and that includes if it all does go wrong. Confidence isn’t the avoidance of failure, but, instead maintaining your self-compassion when things don’t go to plan. I don’t know a single public speaker who has never had at least one talk go wrong; it’s the ability to bounce back and still turn up the next day that matters.

Ultimately, when we speak about confidence, we aren’t talking about the individual confidence in daily tasks, and much more so your belief in yourself, so that, whatever life throws at you, you are capable of handling it. The truth is that sometimes we build that confidence through our successes, and, sometimes, we build that confidence by letting things go wrong, and being able to be flexible, adapt, and figure out a solution!