Confidence

Our Leadership Community’s topic for this month is Confidence.

Here’s three thought-provoking angles on this topic:

• The myth of confidence

• Confidence with others

• Super-charged confidence.

The Myth of Confidence

One of the audios for this month is to remind you that confidence doesn't actually exist. It's not a real thing. The picture on the wall is a real thing and the clock on the wall is a real thing. The chair, the car, the person is a real thing. But confidence isn't a real thing. It only becomes real when we talk about it. So if you remember back to the original teaching and the Quality of Mind programme, you may remember us talking about pot one, two and three. Pot one is things that are real, like the clock on the wall. Pot two is thinking that we have about things that are real. So the thinking that I have about the clock on the wall.

Pot three is thinking that I have about things that are not real. And this is where confidence fits in. Confidence is not a real thing, it's constructed through our thinking. And we talk it into existence. We create it into existence as we say:

• “I don't have confidence”,

• “I don't have confidence to present to the senior exec”,

• “I don't have confidence to call that person”.

• “I'm not a very confident person”.

• “I'm not confident at networking with new groups of people”.

In all of those examples, what we're doing is we're creating it to be something. And the danger is that we live ‘forever’ in that story.

When I say I don't have confidence, chemically I'm sending messages to the brain & to all of my body. I’m creating chemicals that are going to have me be uptight. I'm programming myslf to act and to speak in an undermined way.

So the invite to you is to notice where you are in a conversation around not having confidence. Just observe & release that, release that story, release that narrative, and just to be you naturally buoyant, self expressed you.

Being Confident with Others

A quick recording whilst I'm walking. I realise that curiosity can help us be confident with other people. I had a situation recently in a group that I was coaching, and one of the team was very reserved, not engaged, not involved. And I realised that what happened was it was very easy for me to be picking that up and feeling it and feeling like something was wrong. And that could impact my confidence or my boldness.

So when we pick up things from other people, it's easy for us to live in a story “they don’t like me, there’s something wrong” and then I shut down and be a fraction of who I really am - appearing to lack confidence.

There’s two strategies, actually, in this situation.

One is to notice the situation, notice what's going on in my thinking, and I let go of any thinking I might have and just be my true self anyway.

And the other strategy is to engage with them, “I notice that you're not saying that much. Or I notice you seem a bit reserved, are you okay? Is there anything you want to share? It’d be useful to get some feedback from you…”

From doing this, I get curious and I find out what’s really going on for the person, rather than exist in the story that I’m making about them.

In both strategies the key is that I can relax back into being my natural self - bold, confident, self expressed again.

I invite you to look around - where you might be doing this, draining your own power in your interactions with other people?

Super-charged confidence

I've been reflecting further on confidence. In summary, what we've said so far is that we might have thinking about ourselves or about how we look or about what another might be thinking. When we drop out of that thinking, we access our natural self. And the natural self can be whatever it needs to be, but it can be self-expressed & free. It is naturally relaxed and confident.

And as I reflect further, it strikes me that there's also what I might call a supercharged version of confidence.

And the supercharged version of confidence is when I am deeply passionate about the topic that I'm talking about, I'm deeply grounded. I'm deeply connected to what I'm sharing. It's my truth. It's like, get me on a topic, for me, let's say yoga or my trip to Columbia. Get me on that topic and there will be a deep connection to the subject. There will be a passion that exudes from that.

And in a way, that's a confidence that in some ways feels like a supercharged version of confidence.

I could passionately share with you why you might want to do yoga five times a week. And that exudes from my essence as I share about it. And it looks like confidence. I remember when I was learning the Three Principles, the Quality of Mind principles, and a lot of my training was with Ken Manning, who wrote Invisible Power. And as we were learning, there were topics that I was comfortable on, and then there were topics that I wasn't. And I remember him saying, just speak on any topic where you feel grounded, where you feel deeply connected to the topic.

And that's the key on any topic, really. If you've got an important presentation, if you've got someone that you need to inspire or influence, or you've got a message you need to give to a lot of people, root yourself in the groundedness of what you know to be true and communicate from that place.

And when you do that, not only is it confidence, it's like it's a supercharged confidence, as I'm saying. It's like the passion exudes and the energy exudes from you on that topic.

So I invite you to look at what you've got coming up - where this would be helpful to you and to make sure that you can speak from this grounded place, from this knowing, from this authentic place where a form of super confidence arises?

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