How To Build A Supportive Structure Of Confidence

Hello there and welcome to this talk which is all about the structure of confidence.

There will be opportunities to learn new strategies and to move forward with some useful actions,

So you may find it useful to have a pen and paper to hand and make notes if you wish.

Now confidence is often seen as a crucial route to success.

I see it as a building block for personal and spiritual growth,

Which means it's so much more than just about success.

You may sometimes look at people and think,

How is it that they're so confident?

What makes them different to me?

Why don't I have the same level of confidence?

And the answer is,

It's because of the way they think about themselves,

The way that they structure their world around them,

And how that feeds their self image.

It's a confident structure.

They have a strategy and there's a structure to being confident,

So that's what I'm going to be talking to you about on this track.

You may recognise that there are parts of you that aren't as confident as you would like them to be.

So during this talk what I'm going to do is lay out exactly what a structure of confidence looks like and how it's possible to make changes in the way that you think,

Behave and feel so that you too can have the confidence that you want when you want it,

Because it is a structure.

So hello again,

I'm Jackie Wright,

The Cockney coach,

A very proud Londoner from the East End.

My wisdom comes from being an NLP Master Practitioner and Trainer,

As well as being a mother of two and married since 1978.

So I'll let you do the maths.

So let's get into it.

The structure of confidence.

Now I'd like to start with a question.

How do you know when you've done a good job?

What do you use as your measure?

And where do you get that information from?

Because this is what your confidence structure currently looks like.

It needs information and it has a set of criteria,

And it uses this to tell you what kind of job you have done and to what level of success.

Your confidence structure is either designed to support you or to hinder you,

And it's all up for redesign.

So let's have a look at some of the components of that structure and where the information is coming from.

Now we have two main sources of information to understand what kind of job we've done.

And one of those is our external validation source,

Which is everything that's coming from the outside of ourselves.

That is everything that you're getting from other people and other situations.

These broadly fall under five headings.

It can be things that go all the way back to your past,

In your childhood,

Right up to now.

So the first source of external validation that has a great impact on our lives is parental approval and their standards.

Quite often,

Parental approval strikes very highly in our ability to feel confident about what we're doing and how we're doing it.

Parental approval can be so eagerly sought that it dominates how we view ourselves,

Both good and bad.

Our next source is things like school grades and reports.

That's an external validation.

You'll know from the grade that you got off the school report that you got whether you did a good job or not.

And you would also have been graded on a scale.

Sometimes there would be some positives about what you've done and sometimes there will be things that didn't meet the grade.

What you may have focused on was the grade,

Not the comments,

Especially if they were negative.

Another source of external validation that we have is our peer approval.

Those that are around us,

From our schoolmates to our workmates to our friends.

Do you fit in?

Are you receiving positive vibes back from them or not?

We can easily rely on what they have to say about us and not spend any time building a view of ourselves that is anything more than,

I must fit.

We also pay close attention to if we fit our societal standards and norms in a similar way.

Are we meeting those societal standards?

Do we fit?

And the final source of external validation is our workplace measures.

Our workplace measures tend to be focused on what we've achieved against a particular set of standards that are designed to create success for the business.

And quite often they focus on our weaknesses.

Sometimes they can be supportive.

Most often they're not.

And even more often,

There's no visible standard and you only know what the measure is when you're told you haven't met that standard,

Which can be a total knock to your confidence.

So these are our major external validation sources and you can already see the quality of those can very much affect how we structure our confidence.

So we'll look at how to balance these soon.

Now there are also the second of our validation measures,

Which is our internal validation.

And these can have a powerful impact on us.

The first is our inner critic.

It's that internal version of ourselves that tells us whether we're doing a good job or not and is often called the inner critic.

For many,

It becomes very focused on what is wrong and not necessarily on what is right.

A change here can have an enormous effect on our confidence structure,

Turning it away from being highly focused on what is wrong and more on what is going well,

Which in turn creates a very supportive confidence structure.

Another internal validation source is our own self-imposed standards.

Now quite often,

Our self-imposed internal standards are much higher than those being presented to us by our external validation,

Creating impossible goals where we set ourselves up to fail.

And the final one is,

How does it make you feel?

If we have poor feelings about what we're doing,

Then that's not going to support us.

That's not going to help our confidence.

Whereas if we have good feelings,

It will.

So again,

The quality of our internal validation can either support or hinder our confidence.

Now that I've laid out the sources of information that create your confidence structure,

I'm sure that you've been noticing how your own validation sources have either been helping or hindering your own confidence.

So here are the main downsides of each of those sources when they're not useful.

The first one is if we over-rely on our external validation on making sure that we get the green light.

We rely on others to tell us whether we're doing a good job and if that's always positive,

That's great.

But is it a true reflection?

Even more importantly,

What happens if we don't have any external validation?

Because quite often we don't get any.

A good example of this is how we're measured at work,

Which is most often focused solely on our weaknesses.

And if we have a job where we don't get good quality feedback on a regular basis and that actually the only time somebody tells you about the work you're doing is to say you're doing it wrong,

Or even worse,

What if you have none whatsoever?

Then the only thing that you can rely on is your internal validation.

And if that's not good,

Then,

Oh,

Boy,

Your confidence takes a big,

Big knock.

If you rely too much on your inner critic and it's hyper-inner critic and it's only feeding you negative messages and thoughts,

Then that's going to knock your confidence even if your external validation is really good.

I've certainly experienced this pattern and this may be a situation that you're in where lots of people tell you how good you are at what you do,

But actually your inner critic is only giving you negative thoughts and that overrides the positives completely.

It overrides all of that positive validation that you're getting from other places.

So that,

Again,

Is a big downside.

Another thing to recognise is if you also have impossibly high standards set for yourself,

Where you will only accept 100% is good enough.

If only 100% is good enough,

Then everything else is rubbish and that then sometimes gets bolstered by your internal language.

If your internal language is always about saying things to you like,

I'm rubbish or I'm an idiot or I'm bad,

Then this feels horrible.

That internal language is not going to help at all and,

In fact,

Our internal language from our inner critic is usually so much harsher than anything we would accept from anybody else.

Do you recognise that?

We are the worst to ourselves and I can tell you now that's something that can be changed.

So you may recognise some of these things and there really has to be a balance between your external validation and your internal validation and you also have to have it give you useful information,

Useful feedback that you can then work on to change.

As I said earlier,

You may find it useful to take notes as I'm now going to talk about how you can do some things differently to create a supportive and positive confidence structure.

So let's get into what you can change and how you can do it.

How you can create a different and useful confidence and feedback strategy.

When I'm coaching clients on this topic,

I always start with this first action,

Which is to make an I am great at this inventory.

There'll be so many things in your life that you do really well that you don't actually recognise for yourself and that you give yourself no credit for.

We all do this.

There are many,

Many things we do that we don't recognise.

No matter how good you are at some things or how not so great you may be at some things,

There will be many,

Many things that you are absolutely superb at,

That you are great at,

That you are good at,

That you are not recognising and you're not really taking much notice of and you're certainly not giving yourself any credit for.

It's surprising how many things you do well that you don't recognise and you don't congratulate yourself for.

So your first action,

The first thing you can do,

And this is one I advocate to everybody,

No matter what your level of confidence is,

And certainly those that are very confident do this naturally every day,

And that is to create that I am great at this inventory.

Make a list.

Now,

If you're not used to thinking about what you do well,

This will seem like a strange exercise at first,

But stay with it.

Stay with it and go back to it.

You will start to recognise all of the things that you do well that you take for granted.

There may be some very simple things.

It may be that you are really good at getting the right groceries for the meal.

It may be that you are really good at actually budgeting your money.

It may be that you are really good at playing a particular computer game.

It may be that you're really good at keeping your room tidy.

It may be that you're really good at just being kind to others.

Whatever it is,

Start to create that list.

That I'm great at this inventory.

And as you're doing that,

What you'll notice is that you'll start to recognise how you think and how you feel when you're doing those things.

Now,

I personally love baking.

I'm really good at baking.

I make some amazing cakes,

Yet there are some things that I'm not really good at baking.

Ginger cake is the one that I've not really cracked at this point in time.

But my daughter's amazing at it.

So what I do is I work continuously on that.

And that's the next change you can make.

Make realistic expectations of yourself.

If you always think that 100% is the only thing that's good enough,

Then how are you ever going to achieve confidence around what you're doing when it's new?

How are you going to approach something new or different if you only ever accept 100% as being OK?

So when it comes to actually baking a cake for me,

And when it comes to baking a ginger cake,

Which I haven't quite cracked yet,

I'm really doing quite well.

What I do is I take a reality check.

Does it taste good?

Does it taste OK?

Did I cook it in the right amount of time?

Did I manage to put all the right ingredients in in the right way?

Tickle these things off.

Yes,

Yes.

Those will be all the things that were good.

So actually,

My cake was edible and everybody liked it.

So in fact,

80% was good enough.

80% was good enough.

But then I can go back and look and see what I could have done differently.

And notice what my daughter does that I could then incorporate into the next time that I make a ginger cake.

And this is how you make small improvements.

Focusing on improving a little bit at a time,

Building your confidence as you go.

Remember,

80% is always good enough.

Now,

Another way of supporting your confidence and feedback structure is to put your inner critic to work differently.

Your inner critic is a really important part of your feedback sources.

And if your inner critic only ever gives you negative language and negative thoughts,

Then you can give it another job.

You can start to turn your inner critic into your inner cheerleader.

It has a place,

So give it a job to provide feedback.

Only when you ask.

If an inner critic is left to run riot,

They just invade your thoughts.

So what you can do is mentally put your critic in another room and give it a job.

Their job is to not just focus on what you don't do well,

But to also focus on what you do well.

And then when you go and ask it,

It can give you a mixture of both.

Always allow your inner critic to give you some positive self-talk.

Some real self-talk.

It can criticize you,

But it's only allowed to on your terms.

And you can practice that and see how it works.

Over time,

You'll find that your inner critic lights its new job of focusing on all change,

So that it can give you a really balanced view on how you're actually doing.

So let's move on to a third way of supporting your confidence structure.

Now,

This one is very much used by athletes all around the world.

And as I'm creating this track,

The Paris Olympics are on.

And every single one of those athletes will be using this particular way of being as part of their confidence structure.

And it's called positive visualization.

This is about making movies in your head that show yourself doing what you want to do or doing the thing that you want to improve on absolutely superbly.

What this does is it gives your unconscious mind all the tools that it needs to help support you achieve what you visualize.

How you make that movie in your mind.

Now,

Your movie can be as fabulous as you want it.

You are,

After all,

The editor,

The producer.

You are the actor.

You are everything in that film.

So you can be absolutely amazing.

Create a movie where you see great things,

Where you see yourself doing great things,

Where you hear your self-talk and other people talking about you saying great things and feel great about it.

And build an amazing movie of you being fabulous at that particular thing.

All athletes do this.

All elite athletes do this superbly.

They have been trained to do it by their coaches.

So get yourself in a position where instead of creating negative movies about yourself failing,

Create a positive instead because that's going to work even better.

We're now on to our final way of supporting a useful confidence structure which is to have daily positive affirmations.

Now,

You can go online and you can find all kinds of positive affirmations that you can tell yourself each day.

Find something that feels right for you.

Even if it's just looking in the mirror every day and saying,

You are absolutely fine,

Everything's good.

You're setting yourself up a positive outcome and you and your inner cheerleader are having really positive conversations with each other.

And you're also balancing your external validation.

So,

That's the structure of confidence.

Notice what you do well.

Make realistic expectations.

80% is good enough.

Give your inner critic a job and make it an inner cheerleader.

Mentally put it in another room so it's not always in your ear.

Moderate your self-talk.

You wouldn't accept that kind of criticism from anybody else.

So,

Why accept it from yourself?

And spin it for some positive self-talk.

Then have that positive visualisation and those good supportive affirmations.

So,

That's the end of this talk and I hope you've enjoyed it.

That's the structure of confidence and this is how you're going to know when you've done a good job.

It'll be really interesting to know how you fare with this one and how you've managed to incorporate it into your everyday practice to bring confidence to yourself when you want it.

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So,

I'll leave you now with much love and to be well,

Be relaxed and be happy.