Confidence At Work - How To Increase Your Confidence At Work

Your confidence in yourself is the biggest determining factor of your success in your career. Not only in terms of what level you achieve in your career or what pay grade you get to or what you can create in your own business, but I mean internal success as well. Feeling good about it, feeling happy and fulfilled with your work, all of that is determined most first and foremost by confidence, by belief in yourself, by trusting yourself, by liking yourself, by approving of who you are in the world. It all comes back confidence. And so this short video is going to teach you about how to have more confidence in your career. And if you want to learn even more, watch one of the videos on the side where we get into assertiveness and leadership and creating your own business and all the specifics. This is going to be a general discussion of how to maximize your confidence in your career. And so the first thing that you have to do is you have to escape slavery. I know that sounds dramatic and it's designed to jolt you a little bit because you might think, what are you talking about? I have a job and I get paid for it. But here's the thing. A lot of people that I know that have jobs also have a tremendous, terrifying, consistent, constraining fear of losing that job. And not only just losing it, but getting fired. And what that is, is behind that is a sense of, if I lose this job, I'm going to lose my money, I'm going to lose my livelihood, I'm going to lose my identity, I'm going to lose everything, I'm going to lose my pride, I'm going to lose my respect, and I'm gonna be this worthless hunk of flesh in the gutter. And I know that sounds extreme. And people don't, you know, when I first say that, they're like, not really, I don't really have that. But pay attention. Pay attention to the level of fear. Especially if you're dealing with shyness or social anxiety or self doubt, pay attention to the level of fear that you have at work. When you're scared, what scares you? And underneath it is often the idea of, I better not mess this up, I better not F this up. Oh, crap, that meeting or oh, no, I sent that email to the wrong person and we have this fear and anxiety. Underneath that is the sense of, if I mess this up and you follow the chain down, I do this. With guys, it's called the downward arrow. We follow the chain down and we get to the bottom of it, which is, I get fired, I lose my job. You go deeper. What happens. If that happens, well, then I. Then I'm nothing. I lose everything. And that's where slavery is. Because slavery is the idea that someone holds such power over you that they can take everything away. And as long as you, that no matter how much you get paid, no matter what your golden handcuffs are, you're still changed, you're still stuck. So the first step to get deep confidence in your career and in yourself is you have to realize that no one owns you and no one can take everything away from you. Sure, they can take your job away. Sure, they cannot give you a recommendation for your next job, but they don't own you. You are your own independent, free man, free person. And it's like you can take that away. But I know what I'm going to do with that. I know I'm going to utilize that experience. It's going to suck, but I'm going to utilize it. I'm going to grow from it. I'm going to go to the next thing, which is going to be even better. I'm going to become more empowered by my setback and my failure, my loss, and move into the next stage with more determination, relentless grit, and power and confidence for myself. Creating that belief, really fostering that belief, will build a sense of confidence that allows you to be more relaxed at work. You know, I'm not saying that you slack off and you don't, you don't care, you don't do good work. I mean, we're gonna get to that in the next point. But you see what I'm saying? When you're really hung up on, I better not lose this. I die if I lost this. Oh, my God. You see how that's gonna constrict you at work and make you less effective, make you more scared to speak up in a meeting, make you more afraid day to day, make you terrified every time you talk to your boss, make you unwilling to ask for a raise or assert yourself in any sort of. With an authority or superior person in your company. So that's the first thing that you have to shift. And the most powerful way to do that is to sit down and ask yourself, okay, what would happen if I did lose my job? Because usually it's like in our minds, we just don't go there. It's just this dark abyss, right? Like, oh, God, death. But really go into it. Like, okay, let's just face this head on, right? And if you know anything about me, I'm all about how to face your fears. Let's just face this Head on. Let's just say that happened. Oh, my God, it would be terrible. Okay, well, what would happen, really? Well, I'd be terrified. I have no money. Okay, well, how much money do I have in savings? What would I do then? Where would I go? How would that happen? And you really just go into it with a sense of, I'd work through it. What would I do next? I'm resourceful. And then once you've done that, you can really develop a deep sense of trust in yourself that you can handle it. You can handle whatever life throws your way. And if you believe that, your confidence at work and in all areas will start to grow. But the next thing is, what I alluded to before is you also want to be awesome at your work. You want to be awesome at it. I know I had a client I was working with who had that slavery fear, terrified of losing his job. And the reason he was terrified is because he was competent in some areas, but he wasn't as good in other areas. And he got that feedback consistently at work. And I was like, wow, you know, have you ever considered building up your skills in that area that you're less competent in? So everything kind of levels out. And he's like, ugh, God, I don't know. I have to go to, like, trainings and take classes and go online and Sounds like a lot of work. And I was like, okay, yeah, it takes work to develop confidence. I wish there was a magic pill. I mean, there is. You can find it on the Internet. But I wish there was a magic pill that would probably work. I can't say nothing works for sure, but in my experience, it's most effective when you build that confidence. And that takes effort. And so building up the areas because, you know, there's the competence, confidence loop. Les Brown said there's no substitute for confidence, like, competence. And I'm sure you've seen that in your own life. The better you get at something, the more you believe in yourself. And so you have to invest in. In developing yourself in the areas where you're less skilled. We all like to focus on the thing that we're really good at. It's like, yeah, I did that well. I feel good about myself. And we move towards the thing that we're bad at or less good at, and we just feel bad. And that's where you need to break down what you're saying to yourself. Maybe you're saying to yourself, I should know this already. I suck. I'm not as good as other people. And if it stirs up a lot of self criticism and shame. Then you got to learn how to handle that. Check out my book. The Solution to Social Anxiety will help you dismantle that. Or even the confidence code is actually very good for that, to help you dismantle some of that self attack and shame. And so you can just pursue it, say, yeah, I'm not as good at this. Okay, I still like myself, let's work on it. Because then you've removed that obstacle, right? You could just start developing it in anything. You can learn and develop. That's a very powerful lesson that you have to learn. If you don't know that already, you can study anything. There's so much on the Internet right now. You can just find a program. You can find a person who specialized in that for 30 years and has an audio program. You listen to it and you get 30 years of wisdom in six hours. And you apply it at work. And that's how I've always gotten to the next level of my life, is I've just studied intensely, whether it's parenting, creating a business, developing confidence, dating and relationships, how to create an outstanding marriage. You just study what's out there and apply it and you'll become awesome at it. And there's the confidence that you want. So developing that. But the third thing I want to touch on for confidence in your career. It might sound like a contradiction to what I just said, but it's not. And that is, you gotta go easy on yourself too. You gotta realize that you're not perfect and you can't be perfect and you're not expected to be perfect. Because sometimes in that pursuit of awesomeness, we feel like we have to become a superman. We have to know it all. We have to have all the answers. We have to never make a mistake. And that mindset will just kill you in your career confidence. And I don't mean just in reaching a higher level of success. I mean the internal success, right? The feeling good. Because who cares if you have a billion dollars, but you feel miserable all the time. You want to feel fulfilled, happy, good about yourself, liking who you are. And that comes from letting go of perfectionism, of saying, I got to do this perfect and pay attention to that at work, you know, that anxiety comes up, oh, my God, what if I sounded nervous in the meeting? Or oh my God, what if I made an error on that email that I sent out? Or I should have done better with this? Or oh, no, this client's upset with me because I should have done X and I didn't know it. And you get really wrapped up in needing to be perfect. And the worst part about that is it's hard to get that perspective and say, whoa, whoa, calm down, it's okay, I made a mistake. And some part of your brain is like, no, it's not okay. You better be perfect. And that's the thing you got to work with. You got to learn how to overcome that perfectionism and go easy on yourself. Give yourself a break. Develop self compassion. And that is something that I teach across all my programs and products. And I go deep in confidence coaching with is how to create self compassion. That too is a skill. I studied that for my dissertation in clinical psychology. How do we create self compassion? And there's very practical steps that you can do. So check out Solution of Social Anxiety, there's a whole section on that. Or even in Confidence Unleashed, there's a whole one hour video on self compassion. Because it's the foundation of all confidence is being able to approve of yourself, let go of your perfectionism and really love yourself for who you are. And it's a risk, right? We're so scared that, well, if I do that, if I let go of having this crazy high standard for myself, then I'm just going to be some ordinary schlub or I'm going to get fired because I'm not competitive. But it's not true. And the research on self compassion shows that's absolutely not true. In fact, the more you're able to accept yourself and your shortcomings and mistakes, the more willing you are to take higher level, healthy risks and reach the next level, the more you're able to put yourself out there and learn and be effective. So that's an incredibly important skill. Check that out if you want to go deeper with that. And the final thing that I want to touch on here is for career confidence is pursuing what inspires you. You have to find what inspires you most and pursue that with relentless determination. I mean, I think I've seen this in a lot of people now where you reach a high level in your career or maybe a medium level. But you just kind of stagnate though, because you're not pursuing what you're most passionate about. And it's like, well, I took this job because it was secure. Well, I pursued this field because there was money in it. I mean, I wanted to, you know, I was working with a, an amazing, brilliant thinker. And he studied philosophy in his spare time and he studied it when he was younger. He read hundreds of Books on it. And even now he works in IT software. He on his spare time is taking classes in philosophy. Brilliant man. And he's stagnant in his work. And it undercuts your confidence, doesn't it? Because you know you're not living your purpose. When you are on point and on purpose, confidence just like flows out of you. So I encourage you to say, what am I most passionate about, what inspires me most and am I pursuing that? And sometimes people are like, oh God, that's terrifying. I have a mortgage, I have a family. You want me to drop everything and go become a busking musician on the street? And it's like, no, we can be strategic about this. First of all, can you make a slight move in the career that you're already in? You know, my dad, who's an inspiration to me, he trained as an engineer, but that's not where his heart was. And so he started working for, I think it was Avantech or HP or one of these companies. And he was an engineer and he was like kind of grinding away, but he said, you know what, this is not what I want to do. And he didn't quit at all and go become a musician on the street. He said, wow, over there is the sales department. Those guys get to travel all over the world. That guy just got back from Germany, interacting with high level clients and taking them out to dinner and selling them. I want to do that. And so he pursued, he studied, he invested his time, he got an mba. He's like, I'm going to figure this out. And he's a self made man. I mean, he came from Pakistan and had no money when he came here. And he clawed his way up not because he was just giving it all, but because he had that relentless pursuit. He's like, I want to do that, I'm going to do that. And so it was a lateral move in the company to a different department. He clawed his way in and then he started to develop that. So maybe that's something that you can do, but maybe there's also something deeper that you've not been listening to. Maybe there's a passion for you. Like this guy that I was talking about, the person passionate about philosophy. You know what he really wants to do? He wants to be a philosophy professor, the philosophy of law. He's brilliant and he can do it. But we talk ourselves out of it, don't we? We say, oh, that's so competitive. Oh, there's no money in that. Or there's money, but you got to be at the top and I'm not that good or oh, I just couldn't do it. And so the dream dies inside of you. And that is the biggest consequence of not having that confidence in yourself. And that's what I really want to encourage you to develop is that confidence in yourself. And I don't, it doesn't have to be crazy. You don't have to free fall and lose all your possessions and money and live in the gutter. You can do a sideways maneuver. And that's what I've done in my career. And I'll get more into this in creating your own business section, if you want to learn. But I started out training in psychotherapy and I was doing that and I was working with all kinds of people and I was like, you know, my passion is confidence coaching. I am the most effective and I can transform lives with the guys that need to develop their confidence. And I want to do that. It's my passion, that's my calling. And I want to do podcasts and seminars and I don't want to do one on one therapy in a clinic somewhere. But I didn't want a free fall. I needed money to pay the bills. I needed to create a life and support my family. So let me do that. And then in my free time, I carved out an hour here, an hour there, an hour there, an hour there. Oh, in between, you know, my colleagues, I was working in a clinic and my colleagues in between sessions were just hanging out in the break room or dinking around on the Internet, watching the Daily show, reading the news. My schedule was packed. I had a client and then I had an hour break. And as soon as the client was done, I was like, alright, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to look this up, I'm going to create this thing, I'm going to study this program, I'm going to learn this, what do I need to do? And then a couple client, client and then another break and I'd be working on it. I just packed it in and eventually what you can do is you can build up this other thing while you're still pursuing your security and comfort and confidence and all those things. Build up your passion and you can make a transition. Now I know I'm getting ahead of myself. And if you want to learn more about how to have the passion and confidence to create your own business and pursue what matters most to you, then watch that video on creating your own business and following your own passion and confidence there. It's lower on this page. But to sum to create the confidence that you need in your career is you have to realize that you're going to survive if you lose your job. You have to know that you're awesome and become awesome in the areas that you're lacking in. You have to let go of perfectionism, be yourself and you have to find your passion. It might be in your company right now, it might just be a department over, it might be in a different company, might be a career change, might be creating your own business. But confidence comes from pursuing your purpose. So thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper into any of this stuff, check out my programs or if you want to learn how to tailor this to your specific life and make a radical shift, talk to me about confidence coaching, private confidence coaching or a one on one weekend. So thanks for listening and I look forward to talking to you soon.