Gaining Confidence For The Conscious Leader

It all begins with clarity.

In our previous blog post, we talked about how becoming clear on what type of leader you are and the type of leader you want to be is the first step to improving as a self-aware leader. Having that clear vision of where you are now and where you want to be, and then creating that compelling future around that is the bottom pillar of being a self-aware leader.

The next pillar to becoming a self-aware leader is confidence. Confidence is the feeling of belief that you can have faith or rely on someone or something. This is the feeling of self assurance arising from an appreciation of your own abilities and qualities.

It’s easy to say that you need to be confident to show up as your best self for your team. But how do you actually gain confidence?

Where does confidence come from and how do you get it?

A lot of us have experienced imposter syndrome in leadership or in our business. This is common for most of us. However, there are steps we can take in order to gain more confidence and get over imposter syndrome.

When it comes to success and confidence, the conscious mind is never the right place to start. It's only when we first conquer the self-sabotage of our subconscious mind that we can truly begin to enjoy life. The subconscious mind accounts for 90 percent of our behavior, which makes it clear why tapping into the subconscious instead of the conscious is a more effective way to achieve more confidence and success. This is the insight from The Secret Code of Success by Noah St. John.

Noah shares his tools and techniques to gain more confidence and achieve success.

• The power of afFORmations

To be more confident, you need to have confidence to begin with and one interesting tool that Noah shares in his book is the power of using afFORmations.

We’re all aware of affirmation statements - “I am worthy, I am enough, I am capable.”

Whereas, afformation statements are tools that we can use to leverage the power of our subconscious mind to start doing the work for us. The way that afformations works is asking better questions to get better actions. It is planting a question that you don’t know the answer to yet and having your subconscious mind come up with the answers that translate to your thoughts, actions, and habits.

Try this exercise: ask yourself questions that lead to goals that you want to achieve. Some examples are: “Why is it so easy for me to deliver my message with confidence? Why is it so easy for me to be able to accomplish x,y,z?

By asking these questions, your subconscious mind then starts coming up with answers to these questions which are picked up by your conscious mind.

• Loving mirrors and safe havens

When you have low self-confidence and someone genuinely compliments you, your inner critic starts to get the best of you. You have thoughts that tend to overpower the compliments that are genuinely given to you.

Instead of listening to your inner voice, start taking other people’s genuine compliments and hold on to that as truth until your own confidence improves. When you find people who are your loving mirrors and safe havens, you tend to trust them more, and therefore believe the compliments or constructive criticism they give.

• Feeling your feelings

There are times when we get our defenses up because we are not sure how to show up in a particular way. But it is essential that we know and recognize what it is we are feeling.

• Listening to feedback from others

Getting feedback from your team is another important part of building your confidence. When we find our loving mirrors and safe havens who are able to give us feedback, we are able to improve in ways we did not see for ourselves, and this helps us gain more confidence as leaders and as individuals.

• Gratitude and mindfulness

Gratitude and mindfulness have a huge impact on your mindset.

Try this daily practice and see how your mindset shifts: Write down 3 things you are grateful for each day. Read them out loud or post them somewhere you can easily see them. This way, your brain notices these little things in your life and becomes more mindful of each blessing that you are grateful for.

Practice it daily in order to shift the way you are able to show up with confidence. Happy and confident people are those who are grateful for the big and small things in life.

Conclusion

Self-awareness is an essential trait for great leaders and one of the pillars to reach this is through confidence. When you do have that confidence as a leader, you are able to make faster and better decisions, and are able to show up as the best version of yourself.