For those of you that read my guest post over at Writer Dad on having a sense of purpose, this is part two in a three part series on the Triple Crown of Self-Development. For those of you that didn’t read my guest post at Writer Dad, on having a sense of purpose, this is part two in a three part series on the Triple Crown of Self Development and part one is here.
I’ve probably done this the wrong way round because a sense of purpose is really that final piece of the jigsaw that ensures people with confidence and belief (amazingly enough that will be part 3) rise to the very top. The people that have all these available to them are the rule changers, the paradigm shifters and the difference makers in society. You could be one of them.
Before I go any further, I am aware that belief, confidence and a sense of purpose aren’t the only things necessary for success. It doesn’t matter how much of the aforementioned you have, it’s doubtful you’re going to be a pioneering neuro-surgeon if you’re a 60-year-old color blind welder that feels nauseous at the sight of blood. It could happen, but I’m not sure I like the odds very much.
Think of anybody that you admire and aspire to be like and my guess is that they the exude confidence in whatever it is they do. Confidence is not bravado, it’s not arrogance and it’s not self-importance. Can confident people have those characteristics too? Absolutely they can and some do, but there really is no correlation between the two.
A lot of clients come to me wanting help in building their confidence. The fact is though, they’re already confident people, they just don’t know it. You’re a confident person too. You’re maybe sat there thinking, “What the hell’s he talking about now, how can he possibly think that when he doesn’t even know me?”
It’s either because I am a genius or because I know everybody in the world possesses confidence and can prove it quite easily. If you want to believe it’s the former, you can skip the next paragraph and I thank you for your vote of confidence and urge you to tell all your friends. The rest of you read on.
If I asked you what your phone number is, would you know? Unless you’re a member of a sect that thinks phones are the Devils plaything (along with rabbits the use phones of course) and don’t own a phone, or maybe you’ve recently changed your number, I think you’d be able to tell me.
If I then said are you sure that’s your number? You’d probably look at me strangely and say “Of course I’m sure you Muppet” “So you’re confident about that then?” I would smugly follow up with ramming my point home with all the tact and alacrity of a very horny dog trying to hump the leg of his owner’s boss who’s round for dinner.
Trust me you have all the confidence you’ll ever need. A more pertinent question than ‘How can I be more confident?” would be ‘How can I tap into the confidence that I already possess and be more like Stuart Anderson?’
Stuart who?
Stuart Anderson was a confident guy even after 20+ consecutive failures. He won a Superbowl ring playing for the Washington Redskins in 1982. However, prior to that he’d been a top high school basketball player. In his career he averaged 50% from the 3-point arc. Quite honestly, I know about as much about basketball as I do about Romanian Rabbit Wrestling, but I’m reliably informed that’s better than good.
In Stuart’s senior year his team made it to the Virginia State play offs and then the Championship final itself. Stuart chose that day to deliver the worst performance of his collegiate career. With 2 minutes to go he’d attempted over 20 3-point shots and missed every single one of them.
Fortunately, he had a good team round him and Virginia was still in the game with less than 30 seconds left. In fact, they were only down by 1 point and had one time out left.
They got the ball, called a time out and headed for the sidelines. The coach started to draw up a play with the final pass going to the other shooter. Stuart stops him. “Coach if you give me the ball I will make that play, I will hit that shot”. “I don’t know,” said the coach but Stuart insisted and the coach reluctantly re-drew the play.
They went back onto court and started to run the clock down. With time running out the ball was passed to Stuart and he stuck the shot to win the game.
At the resulting news conference a journalist asked ‘Stuart, how did you do that, how did you make that shot?’ Stuart looked puzzled ‘What do you mean?’ ‘How did you hit that shot after missing more than 20?’ ‘Well I’m a 50-50 shooter said Stuart, so do the math. If I’ve missed so many the odds were stacked in my favor, how could I miss?
The journalist thought for a second and said ‘Ok, so if you’d have hit every attempt then the math says no way could you hit, so would you have asked the coach to draw a different play? Are you nuts, said Stuart, if I’d not missed I’d be on fire, how could I have missed?’ ‘But you can’t have it both ways’ ‘Yes I can’ said Stuart ‘I can think any way I want to.’
That is having confidence exactly when you really need it. This is all well and good, but how does it help me, you may be thinking?
If you have confidence in one area then you have a map to follow. You’re not trying to invent the wheel here, you’re just trying to take the feelings from one event and transfer them to another. If you had a mountain bike and decided to buy a motorcycle, you wouldn’t be worrying about the balancing aspect of riding it. You already have that part cracked and you probably wouldn’t be asking your dad to fit stabilizers for you
Accepting that you have confidence means all you need to do is drag the little sucker to the surface whether it likes it or not.
One of the fastest ways to tap into confidence is to use anchoring techniques. There’s a more in depth explanation of how to set anchors and what they are here. It does require that you create the state of confidence by thinking about a situation in which you feel completely at ease and confident.
Another way is to use submodalities.
When you think of any given situation you create pictures and sounds in your mind, which for most people lead to feelings in your body. These happen very rapidly at an unconscious level, but they and they alone, are what dictate whether you feel nervous, confident, happy, sad or even
By paying attention to how you construct nervousness or timidity and then doing the same with confidence, you have the opportunity to map the positive submodalities over to the negative event. That may sound a bit vague because it is. A full explanation including the forms I use can be found in How To Be Rich and Happy.
I want to wrap up by saying this:
Like happiness, confidence is internal. Some people can feel confident doing something they’ve never encountered before, others don’t. Confidence doesn’t guarantee success it just increases its likelihood. Doing something over and over again and getting proficient at it will probably allow you to tap into confidence more easily, but it doesn’t create it and there is a subtle difference.
nice, I like it! However, you’re cheating a bit, aren’t you with that story about Stuart? It was easy for him to be confident after having succeeded on his shot. Having already achieved your goal, you can always pretend you were confident the whole way. It makes for a cool guy and for a good laugh, but does it truly help someone who feels low on himself?
@ Elli- He’d actually missed 26 consecutive shots and STILL wanted the ball because he thought he could hit it. His confidence didn’t dip because he was playing so poorly.
no, I totally get it, but he only gave the answer to the reporter AFTER he succeeded. I’m all for confidence, and I think it’s the only way you can achieve anything great. Also I don’t really understand lack of it. Generally there is so much to win by being confident and so much to lose by chickening out.
I just don’t buy it that he was really confident in this case. I’m sure it was more a case of momentary insanity. Lots of great things have sprung from such moments. Face it, what’s the worst thing that could have happened, had he missed the shot? So, people would have hated him for a while. Like this he is always remembered.
If you measure things that way, chances are you’ll end up with a big DO IT! most of the time, don’t you think?
@ Elli – Ok gotcha I understand what you mean. I guess that total confidence can seem like insanity to others and maybe it’s a fine line. He did insist to the coach on getting the ball and I doubt he’d have done that if he didn’t think he could hit it.
Under high pressure situations in front of 20,000 people I genuinely doubt anybody would have taken the approach you’re talking about unless it was because they were genuinely confident in their own ability.
Tim,
Good post. Confidence is something that must be present in order for us to act and react in an appropriate manner. Lack of confidence leads to poor performance, poor communication, and poor relations with others. But you already knew that. I know it, too, but it is still something that I need to work on and need tools to foster.
There was a time in my life when I was as confident as Stuart. I was working well, I was learning well, but I was not in a relationship. It turns out that relationships are my weak point and the weakest point in my confidence as well. Thankfully, I have met someone who compliments me and builds my confidence by allowing me to be me and letting me know when I run amok.
I bought a copy of the e-book this morning and am looking forward to digging into it starting this evening when I get home. I’m anxiously awaiting the third post of the series. Thanks for the links to Alex and Kelly. They both appear to be great resources.
Be well.
Hi Tim,
I love the story on Stuart. That is a real good story to share. If Stuart lack the confidence and think that he can’t really make the basket I believe he would miss the last shot. Thanks for sharing the story Tim.
Cheers
Vincent
Personal Development Blogger
Vincents last blog post..15 Ways To Deal With Stress
Interestingly enough, I gained confidence in my life by doing something I truly detested: trying to sell stuff-what’s even worse, I was trying to sell what I made. Artists, by definition, are usually solitary creatures. In the studio, working silently (well, maybe not so much in my case as make stupid noises and sing to my dogs on occasion), you’d think that we would welcome other creatures of the human stripe. Not so easy, though, going from monastic silence into a very social situation. In fact, when I was younger I used to shut down and withdraw.
In later years, I “discovered” the craft and the fine art show. I hated having to talk to the public at first, especially being out there fully exposed: this artwork is what I do-if you sneer and laugh at it, you can easily reduce me to a pile of dogshit. BUT, you also have the power to love my work, therefore, to love me! Some could see this as walking egde of the razor each and every time a potential critic (or, just as bad, someone who completely ignores the work)walks by. Grueling-sometimes an absolute relief when the show is over and one can return to absolute anonymity.
Anyway, with this as a background, I had the potential to go either way:to shun each and every show and to hide behind my display wall and hope that someone had something good to say or even might want to buy something.
Or, to grow in confidence (I have to say here that my sculpture, which is certainly not for everyone and has its critics, helped in these lines-being a point of reference and a conversation starter-of course, the conversations that it started were ones I was well versed in, being in close personal contact with the work day in and day out) through talking about my work-even sometimes recommending this pc or that after knowing a person all of three minutes! It absolutely stuns me now that I ENJOY these shows and actually use them as a way to verbally express what I feel about my work. Don’t forget, there are few if any words spoken in the studio. So not only have I overcome my fear of engaging (I said ENGAGING-beyond uttering the totally insincere “How are you?” or “enjoying the show?”)these people at art shows, but I actually grow and learn from the experience. Who knew?
So the lesson here is about practice-hiding away ain’t gonna help. I guess that I had financial incentive to help me here in trying to sell my work at shows, but now, much to my wife’s chagrin, I find it very easy to start talking to almost anybody now. Here’s a previously very shy,withdrawn guy who can now chat up a lampost, if need be! Hate to use a cliche, but if I can do it, anybody can.
I really like the idea of “transferring” your confidence from one area to another. That makes sense to me.
There are aspects of my life in which I am confident, and things that produce anxiety.
I am going to work on applying the same thoughts and feelings to the “nervous” areas as I possess in the confident areas.
Thanks for the inspiration.
Hi Tim – if ever there was a post that was right up my alley this is it!
You’re right, everyone is already confident (that’s actually the first principle of my 5 Principles of Self-Confidence). I make a cracking omlette and can deliver a pretty darn good rendition of “New York, New York’. I’m confident in those things, without ever thinking consciously that I’m confident in doing them.
There are always things you do where the question of whether you’re confident enough to do it never raises it’s head. That’s what confidence is – being able to choose your behaviour with implicit trust in that behaviour. You just do it.
That’s a very different experience from trusting the outcome, but if you trust the behaviour then you’ll stand a much better chance of a succesful outcome.
The trick is in trusting yourself enough to choose a behaviour that you might not have full confidence in (yet). In my book, that’s true confidence.
@ Ian – Thanks a lot and the book is in the mail! I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to harangue and ridicule me if you don’t ;-)
@ Vincent _ agree 100%. It was the confidence that allowed him to remain steady and calm.
@ Bill – Congrats for overcoming your shyness and also being the first person to mention dog shit in 2 consecutive comments ;-)
@ Mark – You’re welcome and I’m sure you can do it.
@ Or even being confident that you’ll get through come what may. It’s possible to be confident doing something totally new. Not confident that you’ll be an overnight success, just confident that you’ll give it your best shot and all will be well whatever the outcome.
Hi Tim – I like the idea of anchoring. I must admit – I feel really confident in some things, but the complete opposite when I have to do things I’m not used to doing.
Anchoring is a powerful technique. I’ve been doing it for quite some time without recognizing the technique had a name or was talked about, and it’s really changed my life for the better, I think. At its simplest, I remark to myself “I’ve done a lot of harder things than this well, so if I try to work through the learning curve, I will become good at this, too.” The rest is history…(or the future?).
Charlies last blog post..How I Overcame My Doubts About Coaching
I was digging the confidence boost from this article until I had to look up, “antipodean”. At least you saved it until the very end, by which point I was able to try anchoring my earlier confidence from not having to look up, “alacrity”; but then I realized that was just due to the fabulous horny-dog context and if you had said that Kelly was an alacritous blogger, I’d be back in the dictionary.
Dammit. Great post, can’t wait to finish the trifecta!
Annie Binnss last blog post..A Flattering of the Passions
Tim,
I could almost bring myself to try some of your suggestions above, but I just don’t have any confidence in my ability to make any of it work.
;>)
Good column, as usual.
Dougs last blog post..Regions of the Great Hourglass
I recently gave a presentation that was very important for the growth of my new business. I was extremely nervous which was silly since I have presented to adults so many times. This one was different because so much was riding on it. I decided to re-interpret the feelings I was having. Instead of seeing them as being anxious, I said to myself that these were feelings of excitement. It made a world of difference and I did a great job presenting. I even got a round of applause which doesn’t happen in this type of presentations.
Tim, I really liked this post because I actually haven’t thought of confidence in this way before. I had a conversation about a year ago with a friend when she was starting out in her new business. She was very nervous and scared about failing and couldn’t sleep at all. She asked me how I can muster the courage to take so many risks in my life, pointing to a couple of examples. On being a career change I made that resulted in me halving my income. I wasn’t sure what to tell her because the decisions she thought of as risky and adventurous, I had had the utmost confidence in. She then told me I was the most confident person she knew, which I found hysterical because I am all too aware of my insecurities. I brushed her off saying I can be full of bravado but most of the time I’m just as scared as everyone else.
But this article just made something click. I am supremely confident in some areas. Lots in fact. And I am equally insecure and neurotic in other areas. According to this, the key to having confidence in all areas is just to tap into where I have it and spread it to where i don’t. Sounds easy enough. Off to find out about anchoring now. I feel like I’m on a roll.
And thanks for the link love. I realise I’m a bit late to the party, but I’ve been busy re-doing my site this past week so haven’t been reading. I do appreciate the sharing of the love though, and glad I read this article since it could be characterised as a definite ‘lightbulb moment’ for me.
Thanks.
Kelly :)
@ Cath – So son’t just like it, do it!
@ Charlie – I know what you mean, anchoring is as old as the hills. It’s just a matter of being aware of it and harnessing all that power.
@ Annie – I almost called the series The Trifecta Of Personal Development but couldn’t get the betting connotation out of my head from my horse racing days! I don’t mean I raced horses myself btw, they’d be much too quick for me, just that I used to watch horse racing and bet in my late teens and early twenties.
@ Doug – Are you sure you’re not confident? ;-)
@ Laurie – It’s never silly to feel nervous and it sounds like you did a brilliant self-coaching job, nice one.
@ Kelly – Hey you’re very welcome. I bet your friend had other areas of her life where she was equally confident.
BTW, I almost included a story about my wife who tends to lack confidence in some situations. Put her in a nurses uniform though and give her 20 nurses to look after and she is dynamite. I’ve seen her telling doctors to get off her ward, console grieving patients and be asked by seasoned doctors to help insert a hickman line because they couldn’t find a vein.
The uniform is the anchor, once that goes on she’s in charge. I’ve treid wearing it at the weekends just in case ;-)
Tim,
Thanks a lot. Now you have me doubting my doubts!!
;>)
H should meet my brother’s sister-in-law. She’s a head nurse, too. They call her “the whip”. She has that same kind of control over others in her department, including the doctors. I’ve known her for a long, long time and she’s not that way outside of work.
Anchors. I guess sailors have an especially easy time with this confidence thing, right?
Dougs last blog post..Regions of the Great Hourglass