Fake It Til You Make It

Welcome to day 26 of my 30 day Blogging Challenge – A series called From Zero Confidence To Feeling More Fabulous in 30 Days. If you missed Day One’s post you can read it here and can follow the series through from there. I’m going to be writing about confidence and each day sharing some tips for building your confidence slowly. The tools and hints/tips I’m sharing can be used for you or your coaching clients but for now I want you to focus on you. Building your confidence can have a great impact on your business and life. You will be amazed at what you can do when you feel more confident.

Yesterday we talked about the importance of being prepared in terms of feeling more confident.  Let’s talk about you can fake it til you make it.

Are you faking it?

Now, if you know me well then you’ll know that one of my top values is authenticity.  What you see is what you get with me.  So, if authenticity is one of my top values why am I talking about faking something?

A great way to boost your confidence is to ‘act as if’ you already have a particular attribute/behaviour.

So often we compare ourselves to other people and how successful they are in life and/or business. Now often this can be a bad thing because we’re not comparing like for like, we’re comparing bananas to socks!

Saying all this though you can use comparison as a great way to boost your confidence. It’s called ‘acting as if’, aka modelling. So if there is a particular behaviour that you like then you act as if you have that behaviour. What you do is model the person that already has it. So let me explain more using a case study example;

Let’s say you find it really awkward talking to people at a networking meeting.  Let’s work through each of the different steps;

1.Who do you know that is confident, someone that exudes the confidence you would love to have?

• Well, there’s this girl that goes along that seems really nice. I’d love the level of confidence that she has. She makes networking seem easy

2.What is it about them that makes them come across as confident?

• She always seems to be chatting with people and going around the room, one conversation after another

3.What qualities do they possess?

• She smiles at people when she greets them, she listens attentively – it’s almost as if there is nobody else in the room, but the person she is talking to, she’s approachable

4.What do they do?

• She stands quite tall, uses open body language, has good eye contact and nods throughout the conversation. Not like a nodding dog but in the right places!

5.What do they say?

• She asks people quite simple questions like, ‘What business are you in?, ‘How long have you been coming to these meetings?’, ‘Have you come from far?’

Now by deconstructing the different areas you should now understand how there are certain things that confident people do. Through modelling and working on one little area at a time you too can build your confidence.

Today’s task

Choose one quality that you’ve identified in someone else that you’d like & ‘Act As If’ you have it.  Share in the comments below the attribute/behaviour you’d like to try.