Confidence is a skill

You often envy those who have it and you wish you had some more or a lot more of confidence. This makes you wonder – Can confidence be learned? Is it an innate trait or is it a skill or ability that can be developed? Let’s find out.

You can learn confidence. Confidence is a skill that comes with practice, positivity, training, knowledge, and social interaction as these contribute to a greater sense of self-assurance. In general, confidence is a quality that most people desire.

Despite the fact that confidence can be learned, are most people confident? Surprisingly, they’re not. Some studies indicate that confidence is 50% genetics. The other 50% gives enough opportunity to boost one’s confidence. Moreover, those studies aren’t universal and we can’t surely say if genetics really has a role to play in boosting confidence.

Study Source: Business Insider

What Makes Confidence Attainable?

We can practically re-program our brains to change our ideas and behaviours at any age, according to recent studies on neural plasticity. Building self-confidence is essentially what psychologists term volitional, regardless of how timid or doubt-ridden you’ve been in the past.

Characteristics Of Confidence

  • Confidence is a choice.
  • You need to put in the time and effort, as well as have the guts to take a risk.
  • Confidence is a fluid emotion that fluctuates over the course of a person’s life. When you succeed or are praised, your self-esteem soars.

Rather than relying solely on external validation to maintain our sense of value, we should take responsibility for our own worth by performing the useful behaviours necessary to maintain it.

Confidence Is A Soft Skill

It may seem weird then to think about the idea of developing confidence. After all, confidence isn’t a talent like dancing or weaving, right? Well, not quite. Those are hard skills but boosting your confidence is deemed a soft skill.

Developing your soft skills is an important part of getting ahead in your profession, but that isn’t the only use of soft skills. It’s not just in the workplace where these traits come into play; they also play a role in your personal life as well.

Soft skills are just as vital as hard talents when it comes to your day-to-day interactions with others.

Your Brain can Be Rewired

Applied neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a psychological method that analyzes successful people’s strategies and applies them to one’s self-improvement. It establishes a link between the thoughts, words, and actions that people use and the results that they get.

NLP begins with the premise that while you may not have control over many aspects of your life, you do have influence over what happens within your head.

Rather than being something that exists, your thoughts, feelings, and emotions are actions that you perform. Your parents’ or teachers’ words or beliefs or experiences you’ve personally experienced might all play a role in developing or depleting your confidence.

By practicing NLP, you can learn to take back control of your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours which can significantly impact your confidence levels. You may alter the way you feel and think about the past, your worries, and even your phobias by using mental techniques like visualization.

How To Learn Confidence?

There are a few actionable steps towards boosting your confidence levels. You can start learning confidence with these really easy tips.

Talk to More People

This might sound like a mammoth task to you if you’re socially awkward but once you talk to one person, it will get easier. That first step is tough but once you take it, you’ll be surprised at how it will make you feel. Go to a social gathering and talk to someone new.

Talk About a Topic You Know Well

It could be football, music, marketing, physiotherapist, gardening and anything under the sun. Talking about something you’re an expert at can surprise you with instantly elevated confidence levels. Try it. Then go on to learn more skills so that you can talk about more and more topics.

Organize Your Daily Routine

While creating a schedule can seem like a daunting task, you know what’s tougher? To live a life without having one. When you’re a mess and everything is haphazard, your mind feels blocked and overwhelmed easily. You feel like you can’t do anything right and on time. However, you can learn and earn more confidence by simply organizing your everyday routine.

Once you know what you’re doing and what’s lined up for you, it will help you have a better grip on your time and your life. Certainty breeds confidence.

Resources To Learn Confidence

Can confidence be learned

If confidence can really be learned, there must be some ways to do it. Yes, there are plenty of resources available that you can take advantage of to boost your confidence levels.

Books On Confidence

There are so many amazing books available for learning, building and maintaining confidence. Here are my three favorites that can help you change the way you look at yourself.

You can find all of these books on Amazon or any other online/offline bookstore.

Videos and Courses

Not everyone is a fan of reading and that’s okay. If you learn better with watching instead of reading, here are some courses and videos that can help you with learning confidence.

Videos:

Courses:

Subscribe to Relevant Blogs and Podcasts

There are some amazing blogs that can help you stay motivated to boost your confidence on a regular basis. Here are some that you must consider subscribing to.

Blogs:

Podcasts:

Final Thoughts

Confidence can be learned, built and maintained. There are so many ways to do it! While not every day is the same and there will always be ups and downs in the way you feel about yourself, knowing that confidence is attainable is bliss. When you lose it, you can always find ways to call it back into your life.

Everything that’s lost, isn’t always gone forever.