Real Confidence
REAL CONFIDENCE
Stop feeling small and start being brave
This edition first published 2016
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FOREWORD
by Suzy Greaves, Editor, Psychologies
When I'm out and about meeting and hanging out with our Psychologies readers at our events and festivals, we often talk about no-limits, ‘magic wand’ thinking. If you could wave a wand and could change something about yourself – what would you change? ‘Confidence’ is the word I hear over and over again. Deep down we believe that if we could only be a little bit more confident and comfortable in our own skin, the world would be our oyster … we could do anything … the sky would be the limit. But because we're not confident, we can't. So we sit quietly and leave it to those confident people over there to conquer the world and reach for the sky.
So if that is your belief, this book may very well change your life – as well as challenge you quite a bit. Because this book is going to invite you to be brave. You will be relieved (I was!) to discover that it's normal – and healthy – to feel scared when you're about to do something new – be it a new role at work, a first date or learning a new skill. And you will learn that the only way to overcome your fears is by being brave. This book will show you how – from overcoming your initial fears to just ‘having a go’ until you become more skilled – as you slowly take baby steps out of your comfort zone. Then, over time, you can build your confidence on a foundation of real skill and faith in your ability versus that dreadful ‘I feel a fraud’ dread that haunts your every move. Courage and striving for accomplishment is the secret to real confidence – and I'm delighted that even though you're scared, you've been brave enough to pick up this book and come on this journey with us. No more sitting quietly over there, it's time to conquer the world and reach for the sky.
Ready?
INTRODUCTION
You might be surprised to know this, but buying a book about confidence is in fact a sign of confidence. At Psychologies magazine we believe that confidence begins with self-awareness, knowing exactly who you are and how you are in different life situations.
Right now you’ve identified that finding real confidence is what you need. Perhaps you might be aware that chronic low confidence is at the root of all your problems. Or perhaps you lack confidence in one particular area in your life – maybe you shine at work but want to disappear behind the curtains at social events. There might be just one particular fear like public speaking that you’d like to find the confidence for.
Whatever your reasons are for buying this book, one thing is for sure: you’re not alone. Although there aren’t any official statistics on people suffering from lack of confidence we know that it’s a huge preoccupation for people. We know this from our readership research, from what psychologists, psychotherapists, life coaches and all the experts we talk to tell us. We know that people are Googling confidence, self-confidence, how to be confident and every variation. That’s why we decided to create this book for you, providing all the latest research and the best expert knowledge in one handy book. We’ve done the research for you and formulated our philosophy so that you have a clear understanding of what to do next.
What we hope this book will do for you is help you understand what confidence really is while showing you how to develop confidence for real. Understanding why you lack confidence is of course important, but we’re not going to dwell on that too much. We believe it’s good to understand why we are the way we are, but we know that you’ve bought this book because you want to leave the past behind and become the best you. If you didn’t believe this was possible, you wouldn’t be reading this – and that in itself is a sign of confidence.
You’ve probably read or been told that you should fake it until you make it, that you should act confident. But think of your favourite actors and why you love them and one of the main reasons is that whichever character they play they are totally believable. They don’t appear to be ‘acting’.
Our approach to confidence is based on not acting. We want you to feel relaxed in absolutely any situation and accept who you are. We want to show you that confidence has nothing to do with any type of personality and that what you may think of as confidence is often a fake front, arrogance or narcissism. And that’s not the person you want to be. Having a go at what you find difficult, slowly trying and going step by baby step, staying on track, being patient and focused on developing different skills is what real confidence is.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
We’ve divided this book into three parts (How Confident Are You? Why Do You Lack Confidence? How Can You Learn to be Confident?). In Part 1 you’ll gain a sense of how low your confidence really is by understanding the true meaning of confidence. You may indeed discover you’re not so bad after all. In Part 2 you’ll explore why you are the way you are, which will help you move on. Finally, in Part 3 we have lots of practical advice. To help you take immediate action we also have confidence boosters throughout the book so that you can work on your confidence immediately.
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