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3 Tips to Boost Self-Confidence

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Reposted from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-instincts/202206/3-tips-boost-self-confidence

Confidence is a skill anyone can learn, new research shows.

Confidence is a highly advantageous trait, as it can be applied in all aspects of life – whether in personal, social, or business contexts.

For some people, confidence comes naturally. However, many of us feel that it is beyond our grasp. ­If you find yourself among those who lack confidence and are unsure of how to develop it, there are some proven ways you can learn to live a more confident life.

New studies in behavioral and cognitive psychology have begun to remove the roadblocks that get in the way of developing confidence. According to these studies, people who have low confidence suffer from three common underlying traits. Following is a summary of those traits and different methods to overcome them.

1. Develop a self-based focus as opposed to an other-based focus. A recent study investigating the science behind low confidence found that people with this disposition typically think of others before thinking of themselves.

Psychologist Joshua Guilfoyle termed this as an other-based focus and showed that these people tend to focus more on threats, conflict, and uncertainty than on their own goals, desires, and wants. This results in behaviors such as over-apologizing and feeling powerless in the face of transgressions.

To overcome this disposition, other-focused individuals should take time out of each day to shift their focus toward their own goals and desires, to develop a more self-focused perspective. However, beware of focusing too hard on these elements as you risk decreasing your levels of empathy for others.

2. Don’t avoid challenges, confront them. Low-confidence individuals typically avoid challenges or opportunities to display their abilities which ultimately ends up reinforcing their lack of confidence. A recent study investigating the driving factors behind imposter syndrome—the belief that you are not as good in professional endeavors as your experience, training, awards, or the opinions of others might suggest—and listed three methods to overcome self-doubt and boost confidence:

  • Fuel yourself with screw-ups. The more risks you take, the more you will learn from them and develop a higher sense of trust in your ability to overcome the challenges that you put on yourself.
  • Use self-doubt as a motivational force. Research shows that feelings of inadequacy and success often coincide. It also shows that your confidence is positively affected when you begin to view your doubts as assets instead of burdens.
  • Identify your avoidant thoughts. Low-confidence individuals tend to avoid challenges because they listen to the wrong voice in their heads. To overcome this, identify it, lower its volume, and focus instead on the voice that pushes you to find solutions.

3. Learn how to manage your emotions. Emotions can be overwhelming at times and we sometimes display dysfunctional behaviors that negatively impact our confidence because of our inability to manage them. A recent study listed five key steps for people who want to gain more control over their emotions:

  • Identify and accept emotions without judgment.
  • Notice how emotions feel in your body.
  • Give the emotion or emotions a name.
  • If the emotion is unjustified, constructively reframe your perspective of it.
  • If the emotion is justified, reflect on it and find out what it is trying to tell you.

Cultivating confidence in your life is a tricky process requiring you to look deeply into your mind and evaluate yourself objectively. It may be difficult, but you absolutely can integrate genuine confidence into your life.

How to talk about your mental health with your employer

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Adapted from the HBR article written by Kelly Greenwod: https://hbr.org/2021/07/how-to-talk-about-your-mental-health-with-your-employer

By the time I disclosed my generalized anxiety disorder at work, it was too late. It had spiraled into debilitating depression and I could no longer even craft a basic email, much less do the rigorous job I was hired for. My previously high performance had very noticeably suffered, compelling me to nervously share the truth and ultimately forcing me out on a leave of absence.

In retrospect, a simple accommodation early on likely could’ve prevented all of that, saving me tremendous personal turmoil and my organization the extra workload.

What I didn’t know then is that up to 80% of people will experience a diagnosable mental health condition over the course of their lifetime, whether they know it or not. The prevalence of symptoms is the same from the C-suite to individual contributors, but almost 60% of employees have never spoken to anyone at work about their mental health status. Many high performers, including anxious achievers like myself, have strengths that often result from these challenges. I was not nearly as alone as I thought.

Mental health is a spectrum that we all go back and forth on, just like physical health. Most of us fluctuate between stress, burnout, and diagnosable conditions like depression or anxiety depending on what’s happening in our lives. While it may feel harder to disclose bipolar disorder than burnout, everyone should be able to relate on some level.

This has never been more true than it has been over the last 18 months, between the stressors of the pandemic, racial trauma, and more. Managers, direct reports, and colleagues have been more vulnerable and authentic than ever due to shared societal challenges and the blurring of the personal and professional with remote work.

That said, the effects of stigma can still loom large. My self-stigma told me that I was weak and should be ashamed of my anxiety and depression. Societal stigma told me that I would be judged and that professional repercussions would follow if I disclosed. However, since I widely disclosed my condition in recent years, none of those things have happened. As a result of my experiences, I founded Mind Share Partners, a nonprofit that focuses on changing the culture of workplace mental health. Here’s what we recommend if you’re considering disclosing a mental health challenge at work.

Read on to learn more about:

  • Understanding: Self-reflect
  • Deciding: Consider the context and resources
  • Preparing: Explore your comfort level
  • Sharing: Start the conversation

(At Dalhousie University, contact accessible.employment@dal.ca to explore your workplace options.)

 

Creating Positive Self-Talk to Abate Anxiety and Depression

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Reposted from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/biopsychosocial-solution/202010/creating-positive-self-talk-abate-anxiety-and-depression

Positive Self-Talk - The Pathway 2 Success

With anxiety and depression rising at alarming rates, we need to create greater awareness around effective coping mechanisms to navigate the challenges that put us at risk for these conditions. Creating a more balanced perspective can be attained through ‘self-talk’, or dialogues that we have within our own minds. Forming more positive internal dialogues with ourselves helps us move through challenging situations that may otherwise lead to intense anxiety or even depression.

Is self-talk innate or learned? 

If we were fortunate, when we were infants and small children, our parents and caregivers provided us with verbally and physically expressed messages of emotional validation, kindness, and hope. These external messages provided us with emotional soothing, encouragement, and empathy as we struggled through stress and negative emotions. If we were unfortunate and had harshly critical parents or caregivers, or we overly internalized harshly critical messages, this poses a real challenge to overcoming stress and anxiety in our adult lives.

Thankfully, as adults, we can learn how to dampen the negative self-talk by building a repertoire of positive self-talk messages. As we developed into our adolescence and adulthood, we needed to learn how to internally validate ourselves to provide those same types of positive messages from within to overcome stressful situations. In this way, we could become emotionally independent adults.

When we establish a strong and varied set of positive self-talk messages, we can overcome emotionally negative situations and be able to form strategies and solutions that work. Overcoming adversity builds confidence and hope that we can survive through whatever obstacles come our way, therefore building our self-esteem. We also have the opportunity to understand and develop our personality strengths to come up with viable solutions to our problems, thus building success with a greater sense of and appreciation for ourselves.

Managing challenging situations

Negative emotions are painful and can prompt us to ignore the situation or create distractions (i.e., avoidance behaviors that prevent us from forming viable solutions). And negative emotions bias our perception towards pessimistic, self-doubting, and even despairing beliefs and attitudes about a situation, greatly impacting our ability to see a situation with a balanced perspective that is comprised of positive, negative, and neutral aspects. Positive self-talk can reduce the intensity of these negative emotions such that we can confront the problem, form a more emotionally balanced perspective, and develop an effective solution to solve the problem.

Why is negative self-talk so detrimental? 

Negative self-talk leads to enhancing and intensifying experienced negative emotions. This will oftentimes lead to avoidance or distraction behaviors, such as procrastination or even addictive behaviors. In some cases, a person who has some, but weak positive self-talk skills with predominating negative self-talk can start off doing well with adversity but eventually drift towards self-sabotaging behaviors, which will undo any progress.

Negative self-talk includes messages of criticism, shame, hopelessness, or despair. Some examples include “I am an idiot,” “I am a failure,” “no one will like me,” or “I’m never going to make it!” These messages are negative reactions to negative emotions, and therefore will cause additional emotional pain.

Creating positive internal dialogue

In order to get us over our barriers of fear, the most effective positive self-talk or internal dialogue messages are ones that provide emotional soothing, kindness, compassion, acceptance, hope, and logical grounding. Some examples include, “I am rightfully sad, but I know that this feeling will pass,” “If I don’t put myself out there, I’ll never know whether I can make it,” “It was painful to fail, but I will learn from it so that I can achieve my goals,” or “You can do it because you’ve done it before.” These messages can soothe emotional pain while providing a platform to build effective solutions.

It is also worth noting that positive self-talk messages often have more components than negative self-talk messages. For example, it is quicker and easier to say to yourself “I am an idiot” than it is to say to yourself “I may not be good now, but I have to practice and learn from each mistake I make.” At the start of the process, many people state that building positive self-talk messages is “unnatural” or “ingenuine,” which is precisely why the process works through guidance, rehearsal and practice.

Although there is no known way to completely get rid of negative self-talk, we can build a greater repertoire of positive self-talk messages through psychotherapy or self-guided worksheets. The therapist may offer guidance, rehearsal, and practice while the person relays their negative emotions associated with stressful situations. Over time, the person will adopt more positive self-talk messages that can override and dampen any negative self-talk messages.

Notes from HBR podcast – “We’re Beyond Stretched”

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Podcast – We’re Beyond Stretched, Harvard Business Review

https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/04/were-beyond-stretched

  • Feel like I can’t complain when others have it so much worse, so I swallow my pain
  • Have to be there to support others
  • Things like food prep for family and household tasks taken for granted or go wrong so end up doing it oneself
  • The idea of boundaries is just that, an idea, not the reality
  • Gender roles kick in, intensified, no escape
  • Women’s work in the home is undervalued, remains out of whack
  • Roles are often adopted early in the relationship and don’t seem to be renegotiated
  • My work comes last, what about my career, my professional self?
  • Expected to deliver at work, prove yourself over again
  • Work was or can be the only place you feel competent, in control, making accomplishments
  • Committed to a high standard, to the point of exhaustion
  • Losing sleep, mental health impacted, self-care dropped, optimism lagging, feel the need to limit my feelings
  • “Emotional labour” – uncertainty, pressure, all things to all people, patience is “whisper thin,” feel guilt for not showing up 100%, shame, overwhelmed, scattered, lack of focus, added burden of keeping track of others, inside and outside the home, literally hiding from children
  • The days aren’t punctuated as they once were – commute, work, leisure, etc. – begin to blur together

Advice for individuals:

  • Accept help when it is offered, avoid “superwoman” trap
  • Focus on what you managed to get done, not what you didn’t get to
  • Tell yourself “you are enough” – getting through the day, remembering to eat, managing to shower (Baking bread and making crafts is for the people that can manage it
  • Challenge the status quo. Find ways to re-contract. This is all new, clean the slate and rebuild it

Advice for managers:

  • Flexibility in hours of work and deadlines
  • Don’t presume what others need or what they can do – ask the question
  • Give permission to say no or not now – and ensure it’s real and won’t bite them later
  • Make allowances for children and pets, don’t judge
  • We are playing the long game; sustainability, employee engagement and loyalty are most important

So what is free time any more?

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Alissa Moffit, a 23-year-old who works at a radio station in Winnipeg, told me that even when she has leisure time she doesn’t feel like she’s using it well. “It does sometimes feel like I need to be working towards something rather than doing nothing for nothing’s sake,” she says. When she’s at home watching Netflix, she’ll often also be on her computer and her phone, doing her best, she says, to maximize her free time. “It never really feels like it’s benefitting me,” she says.

This is the frustrating irony of our obsession with busyness. Our leisure time rarely if ever feels rejuvenating and restorative, and whatever work we do during it never really feels important or productive in any meaningful way. We lose on both fronts.

If the cult of busyness is making it more difficult to enjoy guilt-free downtime, social media compounds the problem as an outlet for us to show the world just how active and interesting we are, even in our supposed free time.

Read the full article.

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