Confidence 101: Ten Steps Toward Self-Empowerment
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The Link Between Confidence & Self-Empowerment
Confidence helps people move hearts, minds, and mountains.
What is confidence?
Confidence in ourselves is about well-founded trust in our own abilities and judgement.
Confidence affects the way we think about ourselves, carry ourselves, and the paths we construct for ourselves. Where does confidence begin? Confidence begins with self-empowerment.
Confidence is tied to self-empowerment in that self-empowered people are comfortable making decisions that move them toward their aspirations and future. Steady movement toward our goals and toward the vision we set for ourselves creates confidence.
Confidence and self-empowerment play off one another. That is, self-empowerment generates confidence, and confidence helps sustain self-empowerment.
The What & How of Self-Empowerment
Self-empowerment requires a decision - the decision to take responsibility for yourself, your mindset, words, and life. Self-empowerment means taking a stand, and taking charge of where you’re going, when, why, and with whom. It involves possibility-thinking, positive choices, and taking action to advance those choices. Finally, self-empowerment is about developing confidence in your ability to make decisions and act on them. Self-empowered people understand their strengths and understand where there is room for improvement. They are motivated to learn, grow, serve, and achieve.
Ten Steps To a More Empowered YOU
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The steps listed below represent ten terrific strategies for moving toward increased personal empowerment:
Take top to bottom responsibility for yourself. Acknowledging that our choices and behavior are up to us has a positive effect on our sense of agency, self-respect, relationships, and well-being.
Develop positive attitude and mindset. Easier said than done? Not really. Where focus goes, energy flows so what might one do? Focus on what’s good, what’s working, what you have and what you CAN do. Be grateful, take steps to lighten the moods and loads of others, surround yourself with positive people, and mind your thoughts and your words.
Get clear on priorities and values. Our priorities are not defined by what we say but by what we do, and by the things in which we invest time and money. Do you say family is most important, yet rarely make time for family? Leading ourselves and steering our lives is far easier once we’re clear on our values and priorities.
Be deliberate with time and commitments. Time is everyone’s most precious resource - it is finite and can’t be replenished. Decide what you do and do not do, commit with care, and when you do commit, be disciplined regarding follow-through.
Speak up. People who seek greater personal empowerment must become comfortable with expressing their thoughts and needs when it’s time to do so. Affirm boundaries as needed, and politely decline invitations and busyness if the time or circumstances aren’t right, or if you simply don’t care to accept.
Commit to growth and learning. Empowered people look around and take things in. They appreciate and notice. Every person, place, and thing you encounter contains lessons and wisdom. To increase your confidence and buoyant sense of self, be a life-long, curious, grateful learner.
Get gritty and persistent. Grit is the drive that moves us bit by bit to the things that matter to us most. Grit beats talent much of the time. Why? Because grit clears a path when no path exists. Grit combines expectation, conviction, hard work, attention, focus, and ongoing deliberate practice in such a way that one almost can’t help but advance toward their most meaningful goals.
Set goals and craft habits. We are the sum of our habits - we are what we repeatedly do. If you want to be a certain way or do a particular thing, make a habit of doing the thing that will get you there. Creating never-miss habits is a process that anyone can learn. Atomic Habits is the definitive guide on building habits that will take you where you hope to go.
Make time for peace and quiet. Peace within refers to a state of assurance and calm. When we are at peace, we feel an equilibrium about ourselves, the world, and our place in it. We relax, we see opportunities rather than obstacles, and our outlook brightens. Evidence shows that operating from a disposition of peace serves us in our personal and professional relationships and pursuits, as it quietly empowers our better selves.
Operate from a can-do disposition of welcome and possibility. Possibility thinking is about the future. It’s about what can be. Possibility thinkers frame goals as achievable, and people as capable. When we navigate our days from a place of welcome, potential and possibility, we grow as people and leaders, while empowering ourselves and others.
Self-empowerment is key to developing confidence, and key to creating the lives we seek to create. Try one or more of these steps as part of an overall strategy to move toward a more-confident, self-empowered you.