5 Ways to Get a Confidence Boost
Whatever you're about to do, it's
incredibly important--and you're incredibly nervous. Here's how to get a quick
shot of confidence.
A key pitch meeting. A critical presentation. A new product roll-out.
Whatever you're about to do, it's incredibly important--and you're incredibly
nervous. What you need is a quick dose of confidence.
While
true confidence takes time to develop (because true confidence is based on
incremental, steady success), fortunately there are ways you can quickly overcome
your anxiety and nerves and perform well:
1. Burn off some chemical stress.
When you feel anxious or stressed
your adrenal glands secrete cortisol, one of the chemical triggers of the
instinctive fight-or-flight reflex. High levels of cortisol heighten your
emotions, limit your creativity, and reduce your ability to process complex
information. When you're "high" on cortisol you get tunnel vision
just like you do when you're startled or scared.
So: Burn off excess cortisol with
exercise. Take a walk at lunch. Work out before you leave for work. Hit the
hotel gym before your meeting.
Don't think it will help? Remember a
time when you were totally stressed and decided to work out. I'm sure you felt
a lot less anxious and a lot more grounded when you were finished exercising.
The perspective you gained came at least in part from lowering your cortisol
levels.
2. Eat the right "last"
meal.
Dopamine and epinephrine are two
chemicals that help regulate mental alertness. Both are found in tyrosine,
which is an amino acid found in proteins.
So: Simply make sure you include
some type of protein in your pre-game meal. And don't wait until the last minute to fuel up--the last thing most of us
want to do when we're nervous is eat a healthy meal.
3. Prepare for a few "What
if?" possibilities.
If you're like me, the "What
if?" stuff is your biggest worry: What if my PowerPoint presentation
crashes? What if someone constantly interrupts and screws up my flow?
What if my time gets cut short?
Fear of the unknown is a confidence
killer--and can quickly spiral out of control.
So: Think about a few of the worst
things that can happen and create a plan to deal with those things. You'll feel
more confident because you will have transformed, "What if?" into the
much more positive, "Okay, then I will..."
Plus simply going through the
exercise of planning for different scenarios will make you better prepared to
think on your feet and adapt if the unexpected does occur.
4. Think past your lucky socks.
Superstitions are a vain attempt to
control uncertainty or fear. Wearing lucky socks doesn't really make anyone
perform better.
So: Instead of creating a
superstition, create a pattern that helps you prepare and emotionally center
yourself.
For example, I like to walk the hall
before a presentation to check audience sight lines. Maybe you will decide to
always do a run-through of your presentation an hour before you go on, even
though you're sure you can do it in your sleep. Or maybe you will decide to run
your demo one last time before every client meeting, even though you've run the
same demo dozens of times.
Pick certain actions you will
perform--actions that are actually beneficial and not just based on
superstition--and do them every time. Comfort lies in the familiar, and so does
confidence.
5. Establish a secondary goal.
Say you're speaking to an industry
group and your goal is to convince members to donate time to a worthy cause.
Pretty quickly you realize almost no one is listening, much less cares.
What do you do? You flounder. Maybe
you try too hard. Maybe you give up and go through the motions. Whatever you
do, you walk away feeling like you failed.
So: If you know what you really
want may be hard to get, always have a secondary goal in mind. Plan for success
but also plan to turn total failure into partial success. If you can tell you
won't succeed with your primary goal, be prepared to plant seeds for another
attempt down the road.
Say you're pitching a VC firm and
can tell they won't say yes right away (after all, they almost never will.) Be
prepared to shift to laying the groundwork for future meetings. Explain what
you've done and what you're doing. Lay the foundation for potential investors
to see a consistent story and consistent growth over time. Lay the foundation
for investors to develop a level of trust with you and your team.
Sure, you may want them to say,
"Yes, we'll fund you today!" Shoot, you may need them to
say, "Yes, we'll fund you today!" But you should still be ready to
turn a one-time meeting into a series of meetings.
Whatever your primary goal,
establish a secondary goal and instead of losing all faith in yourself and your
mission, be ready to transition to that goal. If things aren't turning out the
way you hope you'll still be able to stay confident--and keep moving forward.
BY Jeff Haden http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/5-ways-to-instantly-boost-your-confidence.html?cid=em01014week49a
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