Secrets of Confident People

50 Techniques to Shine

Richard Nugent

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781473600065
• eBook ISBN:
  9781473600089
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Skills
• Index: Business

What do confident people know that the rest of us don't?
Do they have a secret recipe for success and visibly high self-esteem?
Is there a special alchemy at work?
'The Secrets of Confident People' reveals the 50 things you need to know to develop innate confidence and improved self-esteem, maintaining your poise and control whatever the circumstances. Some will surprise you, and all will inspire you. Put these 50 simple strategies together and you have a recipe for success, a proven formula that will unlock the secrets and uncover your potential.

The fundamental secret of confidence

Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.

Vince Lombardi

With confidence you have won before you started.

Marcus Garvey

Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honourable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

The only power that exists is inside ourselves.

Anne Rice

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

Samuel Johnson

If you have bought this book, the chances are that you want more confidence in certain areas of your life. In my work over the last decade I have encountered tens of thousands of people, and confidence is one of the most common development areas. I have been fortunate enough to work with professional footballers and athletes, CEOs and executives from some of the biggest and best-known brands in the world, and many, despite their apparent success, still feel they lack confidence.

By applying the tools, techniques and principles you will read on the following pages, you will have all the confidence you could ever need in any situation. You will be able to share these strategies with colleagues and clients, friends and family and, best of all, be able to trigger instant confidence whenever you need it.

You can choose to use the book in two ways: you can read it from cover to cover, applying the frameworks that are most appropriate for you; or you can use the index to guide you and use it as a toolkit to develop the areas that you feel are most important.

Whichever approach you take, the most important thing is to experiment and practise the concepts that you read. Any change comes from habit and learning it occurs through action.

Each of the secrets in this book are valuable in their own right, but all are built on the foundation of a fundamental understanding of what confidence is. Most people are brought up believing that confidence is something that they have or don’t have. This is not the case; we all have it and can trigger it in an instant.

Confidence is not something you have or don’t have; it’s something that you do or don’t do.

REALIZE THAT IT’S NOT OUTSIDE, IT’S INSIDE

Somewhere back in time someone created some particularly unhelpful language about confidence. We talk about confidence as if it is something that sits outside of us and that we get. We don’t say, ‘If only I could get more happy’, yet we use that language about confidence. This leads to the misperception that we can only have confidence when a specific set of circumstances occur or when we have achieved certain things. We think that we will be confident when we are an expert in something or when we have lost a certain amount of weight, when we have achieved a promotion or gained a qualification. None of this is true.

Confidence is an emotional state. It is something that we feel sometimes and don’t feel at other times. The various chapters outline the numerous ways in which we can feel this state more often, but it is really important to understand these strategies are triggers for the physical, mental and emotional state that we recognize as confidence.

UNDERSTANDING STATES

How long do you think states last? You might think that feelings take time to change. In fact, most emotional states last somewhere between 20 seconds and two minutes. All states are a result of an electrochemical reaction in the brain. These reactions are triggered by a combination of what you are thinking about, what you are doing with your body and your perception of the world around you.

States can be triggered in an instant and changed again in another and the great news is that you are completely in charge of your state at any time. We do, however, have certain states that we hang around in more of the time. I am sure that you can picture someone now who has a default state of miserable. They only seem to notice the negative in their world, they will always focus on what is bad or what could go wrong. They will answer a simple ‘How are you?’ with a low-energy, ‘Oh surviving … just’. These masters of misery will even have a specific posture and way of walking that radiates gloom. It is a state that they can access easily and do so regularly.

Now think of someone who seems to be in a consistently confident state. Think about how they see the world, what do they notice most in situations and who do they surround themselves with? What kind of language do you hear them using most? Now picture them walking across a room or sitting in a meeting. I bet that their physiology is significantly different from our melancholy friend from the first example.

When you remember that confidence is a feeling we get as a result of what we think, do and say, it is easy to see how people who understand this can be confident in any situation and find it easier and easier to get into that state.

FINDING YOUR STATE OF CONFIDENCE

Everyone is confident in some area of his or her life. If you have a job, can drive, have a family, play sport, are part of a club, or if you have ever done anything well – you know how to ‘do’ confidence. The secret is to know what your confidence looks, sounds and feels like and then replicate it in areas where you don’t do confidence as easily.

Try this experiment. Think back to a time when you felt at your most confident best. It can be in any situation. Recall it as if you were there again now. See what you saw at that time, notice what is happening around you. It is important to be in the memory rather than watching it from outside. Keep focusing on the memory and notice the kinds of things you were thinking; if you were speaking remember the words that you were using and how you were saying them. Now, as you remember this time from the past when you were at your most confident best, focus on how you were standing or moving and, most importantly, how you were feeling. Notice where the confident feelings were in your body and how those feelings moved.

Now notice that, even though you were just accessing a memory, you are feeling some of that feelin...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title
• Dedication
• Contents 
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• 1. The fundamental secret of confidence
• 2. The myth of fear
• 3. Understand the power of your thoughts
• 4. What confidence is and what it isn't
• 5. The official psychology of confidence
• 6. Who are you?
• 7. You and your values
• 8. It's not all about you
• 9. Escape the prison of your beliefs
• 10. Perfect you
• 11. The detail of your confidence
• 12. Confidence comes from calm
• 13. Innate confidence
• 14. Get more of what you focus on
• 15. Create a confident future
• 16. Make personal development a must
• 17. You won’t get what you want if you don’t know what you want
• 18. Focus on what you can change
• 19. Focus on solutions
• 20. Positivity creates confidence
• 21. Luck and confidence
• 22. Confidence before success
• 23. The physiology of confidence
• 24. The language of confidence
• 25. Creating a confident image
• 26. Confidence from others
• 27. Make confident decisions
• 28. Make more decisions
• 29. Take action
• 30. Financial confidence
• 31. Become the world's leading expert
• 32. Confidence in confrontation
• 33. Building a confident team
• 34. Building a confident organization
• 35. The confident job candidate
• 36. The confident executive (1)
• 37. The confident executive (2)
• 38. The confident entrepreneur
• 39. The confident introvert
• 40. The confident influencer
• 41. The confident public speaker
• 42. The confident sportsman
• 43. The confident comedian
• 44. The confident teacher
• 45. The confident learner
• 46. The confident body
• 47. The confident courter
• 48. The confident relationship
• 49. The confident parent
• 50. Sharing your confidence
• Further reading
• Copyright