Getting started

We don’t go to the dentist to hear how the enamel and dentine has been eroded and the inner living pulp of the affected tooth is being irritated by bacterial toxins, thus delivering an up-close and very personal toothache – we just want it fixed and our pain to go away. Consequently the ‘how’ we arrived at our current level of self-confidence is not as important as the ‘what’ we can do about it.

You might view yourself as a victim of your past (genetics, parents, upbringing or unfortunate significant emotional events). Here we have to think and act as a person who has decided to work on and develop themselves in certain areas of their choosing. You have no choice, you have to go with what you’ve got and who you are. The best advice is to be like Popeye whose mantra was:

‘I yam what I yam and I do what I can because I yam Popeye the Sailor Man.’

By working through this chapter you might begin to think that your particular situation is worse than you first imagined – let me assure you it isn’t. So now let’s turn to examine self-confidence with particular emphasis on what has the potential to reduce and damage it.

The critical voices from childhood

Regrettably, sometimes, the voices were ‘planted’ in our heads by significant others when we were very young. Parents tell their children they ‘are lazy’, they ‘are disorganised’ or, even worse, they ‘will not amount to much’ or they ‘are stupid’. Close family members such as older siblings or grandparents, even friends of the family, through their negative comments can also be guilty. Planting negative thoughts will breed negative voices. By the time you reach adulthood the voices are firmly anchored into your subconscious; you believe they are true and act accordingly.

Way back in 600 BC the Book of Proverbs states:

‘As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.’ (23:7)

Personally, as I’m dyslexic, I was instructed, at the age of eight, by my teacher, to stand in front of the class and say three times in a loud voice, ‘I am stupid, stupid, stupid.’ Although I managed it through my tears, in a way it was great because being stupid encouraged me to put all my efforts into sport. It was a great relief to hear my father say on production of my school report gleaming with academic failures, ‘Never mind, son, it takes a good brain to resist education.’ However, this ‘you are stupid’ voice was very persistent, bubbling up at regular intervals. Thinking of myself as stupid was still ringing in my ears during my late teens and early twenties. It was not until I was 45 with three degrees, several postgrad diplomas and, at that time, 44 letters after my name parading my credentials, that I realised that I was stupid in collecting qualifications and even more stupid to have had that voice embedded in my brain for 37 years. It was a huge relief to say, ‘Stuff night school, I want to play the guitar; stuff all this academic study, I want to ride horses.’

Typical voices

Inappropriate critical voices that are dumped upon us, sometimes with extremely adverse effects on our self-confidence, might include:

Yours not here ? Then please add it to the list to recognise the enemy.

These are just some of the inappropriate ‘I am’ voices and statements that abound in our heads and affect our lives and development adversely.

Many children of the last century were brought up with the nursery rhyme:

‘What are little boys made of?
Slugs and snails, and puppy-dogs’ tails,
That’s what little boys are made of.
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice, and everything nice,
That’s what little girls are made of.’

Robert Southey (who became Poet Laureate in England in 1813)

So it’s not surprising that some people are victims of ‘cultural voices’ such as:

• ‘Girls are not supposed to be clever.’
• ‘Girls are not good at maths.’
• ‘Men are not supposed to show their emotions.’
• ‘Men don’t cry.’

All of us have voices in our heads. Ask anyone the question, ‘Do you have voices in your head?’ and unless they say ‘Yes’ immediately, you can then say to them, ‘I bet you are saying to yourself, “Do I have voices in my head?”’. They will laugh because we all have those voices.

And here we can see, hear and feel the danger of our self-confidence just dribbling away if we allow such negative statements to rattle around in our subconscious, imbue us with self-doubt and attempt to scuttle our self-belief.

We will look at how to banish these confidence terrorists but, for me, Henry Ford stated it perfectly with:

‘If you think you are or if you think you are not; you are right.’

What he actually said was ‘If you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right’, but I don’t think he would mind the adaption!

The negative voices we develop for ourselves

Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. To the detriment of our self-confidence we frequently donate and bequeath these pernicious voices to ourselves through our own faulty thinking. The sequence of events leading up to the birth of these troubling inner demons is usually that we have tried to do something different or experiment with a new behaviour only to find ourselves in a situation where it all goes pear-shaped. As we venture to rationalise or understand this unwanted fruit of failure we become victims of our own faulty thinking. It comes in at least six different and inappropriate thought disguises.

Here are some examples of what we can do to ourselves:

Either ... or

Here you polarise your reasoning about your performance or behaviour so that you were either absolutely fantastic or a total failure. For you there is no middle ground of success. You either give your self an ‘A plus’ or an ‘F minus’, because your actions are judged by yourself to be either black or white. There are no shades of grey in your self-evaluation pallet.

‘I stumbled over the pronunciation of Alkylphenol Polyethoxylate when talking in front of my peers, so I must be totally useless at giving presentations!’

When you employ this faulty thinking about yourself the internal critic claims yet another victory, your confidence oozes down into your black hole of self-doubt and you excuse yourself from facing similar situations where you ‘failed’. Low self-confidence goes hand in hand with self-restriction.

Here are a dirty dozen ways we limit ourselves, but I’m sure there are some more from those negative voices in your own head as well as mine:

1. I will never be popular.
2. I will never be any good.
3. I will never get married.
4. I will never amount to much.
5. I will never be a success.
6. I will never get another job.
7. I will never pass an exam.
8. I will never be happy.
9. I will never be able to dance or act or sing.
10. I will never be good at sport or social things.
11. I will never be able to please my partner.
12. I will never achieve the respect of my peers.

How self-confident are you?

Here is a very quick little questionnaire. There are no right or wrong answers, but remember if your answers are not the truth you will not get a true score, so be honest with yourself!

1. Do you feel that most people are better than you at most things?
   
2. Do you drink, eat or smoke more than you should?
   
3. Do you take all criticism to heart?
   
4. Do you have doubts about the way you look?
   
5. Do you frequently feel socially inept?
   
6. Do you hold yourself back from trying new things?
   
7. Do you worry about making new relationships?
   
8. Do you think that people talk or laugh about you?
   
9. Do you get concerned about whether people like you or not?
   
10. Do you apologise a lot?
    
11. Do you worry about upsetting people?
    
12. Do you frequently doubt your ability?
    

Scoring:

Give yourself 1 for never, 2 for sometimes and 3 for usually.

Now add up your scores:

30–36: You are quite low on self-confidence and self-promotion activities are likely to be difficult for you.

24–29: On occasions you lack self-confidence.

20–23: You are about the same as most people in the self-confidence stakes.

17–20: You are a self-confident person.

12–16: You may be suffering from motivated distortion (psych jargon for fibbing on the questionnaire!) or, worse, possibly hubris – do the questionnaire again – no one is that confident!

If you genuinely scored less than 17 you might like to skip this section of the book rather than spending valuable time on what you cannot do!

The tyranny of ‘must’s’, ‘ought’s’ and ‘should’s’

One more trick of the internal voice critic is the tyranny of ‘must’s’, ‘ought’s’ and ‘should’s’ that we get given by our family upbringing, education and culture. How many of these are familiar?

There are also some ‘don’ts’ which are just as tyrannical:

Not that all such imperatives are inappropriate, especially those that come mainly from our culture and experience. So you would be wise, for example:

• not to put yourself or others in danger of harm
• to drive on the left-hand side of the road in Britain, Malta, Hong Kong and Australia
• to only gamble with what you can afford to lose
• to not drink and drive
• to only ever negotiate from power
• to trust everyone but always lock your car
• to remember that if you screw someone they will screw you – eventually
• to always be polite to the police and parking attendants
• not to argue with a person with a loaded submachine gun.

Frivolous, but you know what I mean. None of these axioms will endanger your self-confidence, in fact, some of them might be very helpful.

Be careful not to ‘should’ all over yourself, and it’s not helpful to let others ‘should’ all over you either.

Why do we take notice of the critical voices?

It’s surprising that we listen to these inner voices, especially when they do our self-confidence so much harm. But there are two compelling reasons:

We listen because it’s better to be safe than sorry

We don’t want to take the untried risk of changing – although inadequate, we feel safe in the thick shells of our inadequacies: ‘If it ain’t broke why improve it?’

We can excuse our behaviour because the inner voice confirms who we are; it alleviates our responsibility for not trying:

• ‘Great, if I’m stupid why should I even attempt to understand anything?’
• ‘Hooray, I’m off the hook again, where is my Xbox?’

The outcomes are predictable. If you believe that, ‘Because I’m socially inept they will not invite me’, when you don’t get the invite you are not surprised because you predicted your omission on the social list and this confirms your inner voice.

Not only is this difficult but the prize for persistence goes to this inner critic in that it never leaves us alone and we, for the most part, can’t but stop and listen.

An aside

Sometimes this self-protection from not doing something requested of you takes an interesting and amusing turn. On being requested to assist in the post-dinner washing-up, my daughter, who is also challenged in the spelling and writing department, came up with this:

Marisian:	‘But, Dad, I don’t do washing up.’
Me:	‘Why is that, Marisian?’
Marisian:	‘Oh, Dad, you know why! It’s because I’m dyslexic’.

Now, just as much as this is amusing, it’s not much different from an internal voice:

Statement:	‘I will never get married.’
Inner question:	‘Why won’t you ever get married?’
Answer:	‘Because I’m shy.’

And this would be amusing if it wasn’t true. One claimed incompetence leads to a totally false assumption which has no rational connection, with usually unfortunate outcomes. Remember the Henry Ford quote:

‘If you think you can or you think you can’t. You are right.’

When does the negative voice strike?

It strikes in certain situations when we are faced with something we have not attempted, for example:

• meeting someone for the first time: ‘They won’t like me.’
• coming into contact with someone who knows about a recent failure: ‘They know how useless I am.’
• wanting to respond when someone has criticised you: ‘Be quiet, they’re right, I always screw up, better to say nothing.’
• wanting to take a relationship to the next stage (e.g. to invite a person to an event or a date: ‘They will never go out with me.’)
• having to negotiate with someone: ‘I know that they are going to take me to the cleaners.’
• being invited to make a speech: ‘This is where I screw up big time.’

In a social situation, if you tell yourself that you will be excluded, guess what? You will be. If you think you are a bad presenter, guess what? You will be. If you think that no one will go on a date with you, guess what? You’re going to miss out on a lot of dates.

People whose inner critic tells them that they are unattractive sometimes do nothing to improve their attractiveness and gradually, by letting themselves go and not caring about themselves, they really do become unattractive. In life we are very much our own prophets fulfilling our own expectations.

‘Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.’ William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Purging the negative voice

Well, that is all the bad news so, before we imitate the hermit crab and scurry back into our protective shell and hide from the world, let’s see what is possible to change.

Strategy 1: naming the critics

I had a friend once who was able to get all her voices out of her head and onto her shoulder as if they were parrots. On reflection she could recognise many of them. There was her mother: ‘You are lazy’, ‘You will never be a success.’ There was her jealous elder sister: ‘You are ugly.’ There was her teacher: ‘You will never come to anything.’ There was her first boyfriend: ‘You will never be any good at relationships.’ So many parrots, but who the voice belonged to was recognised.

Now my friend could say to herself when the parrot spoke, ‘I hear you, Mother, but you are wrong’, or she could just choose to knock the parrot (aka the person) off its perch on her shoulder, or she could choose to listen.

I have worked with captains of industry, top civil servants and even generals and, guess what, as successful as they are, they all had negative inner voices concerning their abilities. Here is an actual quote from a brigadier with whom I worked whose inner voice was ‘I am not good at strategy.’

You will remember that the conversation went like this: ‘If I was as good at strategy as Sir Peter over there, I would have made general.’ Where did that come from? Perhaps, when the brigadier was just a junior subaltern, his then captain, who he admired greatly, had told him during a review that his strategic ability was poor.

So we have the nine-stage process shown in the diagram.

One wonders how much further up the hierarchy the brigadier would have risen if he had said to himself when he had the opportunity to be strategic, ‘I hear you, Captain, but I choose to ignore you because I have worked on my abilities, taken advice from my mentors and read extensively.’

List all the negative voices that you have and then work hard on discovering who the significant person behind them is. Your negative voices can come from all sorts of people including, but not limited to:

Once you recognise the owner of the voice it’s much easier to deal with and eradicate it.

If you cannot recognise where the voice is coming from, no matter, just give it a name and use it when necessary: ‘Oh here comes “Big Mouth” trying to put me down again.’

Strategy 2: the past does not equal the past

Just because you have failed before does not necessarily mean that you will fail again. In life you quickly learn what you can and can’t do. But one failure doesn’t mean continual failure. It gives you experience of how to tackle the opportunity again in terms of learning preparation and practice (see below).

Just as when we grow physically we can reach further, so as we journey through life with all its lessons we are better equipped to try again. If you concentrate and worry about what happened in the past then you become closed and shut to new opportunities that life presents. It’s always easier to say ‘No’ to opportunity, but you miss a lot and dive into the pit of self-justification.

Strategy 3: doing reversals

Has there ever been a time when a disappointment has turned out to be a blessing? Think of the boyfriend or girlfriend who dumped you, or the job you didn’t get – have you now moved onto bigger and better things because of those setbacks?

On many occasions, in retrospect a difficulty has turned out to be a blessing in disguise. A reversal is discovering the silver lining of the dark cloud. It’s a way of putting a stop sign in front of your inner critic and instead getting your mind to look at the benefits you will have gained. Should you be criticised or should something happen to you which initially disappoints you, makes you feel inadequate or knocks your self-confidence, then this reversal strategy works very well.

Here are some examples of reversals:

	‘I was not invited to the party.’
	‘Good, it means I can spend time with my special friend, which will be much better.’
	‘I don’t know much about literature.’
	‘That is true, but I prefer to spend my time listening to music, about which I’m exceptionally knowledgeable.’
	‘Jenny doesn’t like me.’
	‘That’s unfortunate, but I can’t expect everyone to like me. I have lots of personal friends so Jenny is not that important and it is her loss anyway.’
	‘Bridge is too complicated and intellectual for me.’
	‘It might be, but I play a mean game of chess and five-card stud poker.’
	‘I don’t have a boyfriend/girlfriend.’
	‘That is true currently because I have very high standards and there are still lots more “fish” in the sea.’

Strategy 4: being specific

Here you take apart the content of the critical voice, being very specific about what is true but then balancing it within the total context, which is also true. Remembering what was covered in dealing with ‘fat’ words, here are some examples:

‘I’m socially inept’

Fact: I am anxious about meeting new people for the first time, but once the ice is broken and I have got to know them, then my contribution to the discussion is as good as anyone’s, my views are accepted and my company is enjoyed. So, I am socially competent.

‘I’m not attractive’

Fact: I am shorter than average and I’m not as fit as I could be but I have lovely skin and hair and many people have complimented me on my dress sense. So, I am attractive.

‘I’m scatterbrained’

Fact: I do find it difficult to understand complicated new systems but, once I have mastered the process, I’ve no difficulty at all. In fact I have trained new staff in many of the systems that I initially found difficult. So I am organised.

‘I’m lazy’

Fact: I am lazy but only in doing those things that I am not interested in. In topics or things I find interesting or I think are important, I’m highly motivated.

‘I’m moody’

Fact:Yes, sometimes I can be if I’m tired or have too much on my plate, but at all other times I’m on an even keel and people seek my company and invite me to their social gatherings. So, in general I’m calm and even-tempered.

Notice in all the above examples that the conclusion (fact) is always written in the positive. For example, ‘I am attractive’ is written in preference to ‘I am not unattractive’, so you avoid thinking about the negative before you can get to the positive implication.

Strategy 5: getting a counter voice

If you are fortunate you can be given, by somebody who is close to you, a positive voice which will wipe out and reverse the negative voice. Here is an example, a self-disclosure about my spelling ability:

Strategy 6: focus on your strengths

Make a list of all the things you are proud of, together with a list of your achievements. (These should already be in your log book from a previous activity.) What are the common threads in your list? What does it say about what you are good at? Give yourself credit for what you have done and, when doubts strike, revisit your list.

Strategy 7: self-evaluation

You are not the sum of other people’s views of you. Evaluate yourself and your behaviour independently of others. Do not give credence to the criticism of others but evaluate it and take on board what you find useful.

Strategy 8: preparation

If you lack confidence in doing certain things such as giving a speech, wanting to persuade someone, leading a project, and so on, then you would do well to prepare far more diligently than most other people. Do your research, develop contingency plans, practise talking out loud to yourself and ask yourself lots of ‘what if’ questions so that you can be really on top of what you are going to do.

Strategy 9: take risks

Of course, doing new things and being successful is a great boost to self-confidence. Should you fail, then rejoice, because life has just given you another learning opportunity. It’s not always possible to learn from others. In failing, you give yourself a unique learning opportunity. As we have said before, ‘you get things right by getting them wrong.’ Just think, when you were a baby, you fell on your bottom hundreds of times but persistence paid off and it was not long before you were walking.

Also, when you fail you realise that it’s not the end of the world – the sky did not fall. Not only do people who are important to you still love and like you despite your failure, but when you try again they will admire you.

‘Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong.’ Peter T. McIntyre, lithographic artist

Strategy 10: make a commitment to yourself

Make an unequivocal promise to yourself that you are totally dedicated to acting confidently. This may sound like ‘fake it till you make it’ but just as belief turns into behaviour so, in a similar way, behaviour turns into beliefs.

Slowly begin to stretch yourself in your personal goals. Increase your motivation and keep up your self-talk to succeed and you will be surprised at what you can achieve. Be realistic in what you want to achieve, set your mind to it and, in the words of the Nike slogan: ‘Just do it.’

Smile. Self-confident people are self-assured and positive. We smile when we are happy so smile appropriately when with others – nobody grins all the time. Smiling will make you appear confident and people will treat you as such, and this feedback will help you become more confident.

Building self-confidence¹

This activity is useful in identifying your various capabilities and positive attributes. After you have completed the following statements you might like to share your answers with a friend or someone who knows you well and who could probably suggest some additions. Complete the sentences that follow:

Something I do well is _____________________

Something I’m complimented on is ______________________

At work I am good at ___________________________

I am proud that at work I ______________________

My greatest strength at work is ____________________

At work I can help others to ___________________

My greatest strength outside work is __________________

What I like best about myself is __________________

I have the power to _________________________

I was able to decide to ______________________

People can’t make me _____________________

I am strong enough to ______________________

I’m not afraid to ________________________

Something that I can do now that I couldn’t do last year is ____________

I used to have difficulty dealing with ____________________

but this is no longer a problem.
I have accomplished _________________________

If I want to I can ___________________________

People like me because _______________________

My greatest achievement is _________________________

I have the courage to ______________________

Note: this activity highlights some of the many talents you possess. Concentrate on developing this list further.

Reviewing your achievements

Go back to the life line activity that you completed earlier and, in your log book or on paper, make a detailed list of all your achievements above the line under three headings:

• Personal
• Relational
• Career.

The next stage is to expand each achievement in a special way called ‘FABing’, which stands for:

• Feature: what did you actually do? Describe your achievement as factually as you can.
• Analysis: an achievement is not real if it cannot be measured in some way in terms of number, amount, percentage or value. This is not always easy but if it cannot be measured then either it is not a real achievement or you have used ‘fat words’ to describe it.
• Benefit: what was the actual advantage or benefit to yourself and what was the personal development that was gained from what you did?

For example:

Personal

• Feature: Made sports captain at school.
• Analysis: There were 53 boys in my year at school so I was first out of 53.
• Benefit: Developed my leadership, team and motivational skills.

Relational

• Feature: Developed my network.
• Analysis: Currently 176 people that I know and they know me. Joined Facebook and LinkedIn.
• Benefit: I can always find someone to give me good advice on almost any subject. In the past, through my network, I was able to find my current job.

Career

• Feature: Streamlined the reconciliation process in the accounts unit at work.
• Analysis: Reduced 32% of the outstanding items and saved three days of labour hours.
• Benefit: Developed a reputation for improving processes which helped me gain the assistant manager position.

When failure strikes, as it always does when we are pushing the boundaries in life and work, we feel disappointed with ourselves, and thump self-confidence. Should this occur, then just take out and read your achievement list to yourself out loud. This will remind you of your successes in the three important areas of your life. When you do push the boundaries and you are successful then add that achievement to your list.

A wonderful psychological power of your achievement list is the sure and certain knowledge that you achieved those elements and no one can ever diminish or take them away from you.

	‘Whatever we expect with confidence will be our own self-fulfilling prophecy.’ Brian Tracy, life coach
	‘The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear.’ William Jennings Bryan, American politician
	‘You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.”You must do the thing you think you cannot do.’ Eleanor Roosevelt

• We have examined what self-confidence is and why it’s important – including the benefits of behaving with aplomb, assuredness and self-trust.
• Voices from our childhood and faulty thinking about our behaviour can dilute our self-confidence.
• We need to recognise and deal with the tyranny of ‘must’s’, ‘ought’s’ and ‘should’s’.
• We take notice of negative voices because they come from those who were emotionally significant to us when we were young.
• You can master the negative voice in such ways as naming the critics, reversing your thinking, getting a counter voice and focusing on your strengths.