When you lack confidence in your career, it can affect your productivity and hamper your future. When you have confidence in your abilities and the passion for succeeding, you increase your motivation and make it easier to influence your coworkers and management.
Confidence is all about your inner dialog. It takes time to change your old habits of self sabotage when it comes to negative thoughts. While you can solve other issues in your life through practice or functional medicine therapy, fixing your confidence isn’t always an easy task. Repairing your confidence will require a change in the way that you think.
Having confidence in your skills and value is something that you need to practice mindfully. Focusing on what you are good at is one place to start your journey towards higher levels of professional confidence. Let’s look at a few ways you can boost your career confidence.
Attend Professional Training
Continued learning by honing your existing skill set and expanding your knowledge can help to boost the confidence that you have in your abilities. When you continue to learn within your industry, you increase your value to your team. When your company relies on you for your knowledge, it can boost your confidence and improve your overall performance.
Attending professional training seminars and classes can also help you to expand your network of colleagues. Talking to and sharing ideas with new people can help you to focus on your strengths and get inspired. You may find that you have an interest in some new facet of your industry that you can explore.
Follow Peer Examples
There is undoubtedly one person in your workplace that is just bursting with confidence. If you aren’t sure about how to go about building your confidence, you can try emulating a successful colleague. Watch how they interact with others, how they dress, and how they manage their time. Learn from these techniques and try to apply some of them to your own routine. You can also talk with some of the people at work that you admire about how they maintain their confidence and learn from their techniques.
Set Goals
Short-term goals can be a great source of motivation and confidence building. Make a daily to-do list at the end of each shift and add items you want to achieve the following day. List-making helps you to focus and prioritize your tasks and keep you motivated. As you complete each task, cross it off the list. The most minor achievements, like completing tasks, can help to build your confidence. Throughout your journey, start putting more significant jobs on your list and watch your confidence grow.
Focus On Your Strengths
A powerful exercise to help boost your confidence is to write down all of your professional strengths so that you can review them. Every person has something unique to offer and it’s important for your confidence to give yourself the permission to indulge in your talents.
Once you have identified your strengths, it’s time to get some outside confirmation. Talk to a few of your trusted colleagues and friends about what strengths they believe you have. While compliments can be inspiring, it’s important to listen to the feedback with an open mind and in a constructive manner. You may be surprised to learn about the things for which you are valued by your colleagues.
Banish Negative Thoughts
Paying attention to the internal soundtrack in your head can be damaging to your confidence if you are dealing with constant negative thoughts. When you catch yourself thinking negatively, it’s important to take a moment to rethink. Remember that these are only thoughts, and they aren’t a true reflection of who you are or what you have to offer in your career.
You will come across many people throughout your career that will be hard on you, there is no reason to add more stress by being hard on yourself. Try focusing on a time when you performed well, or had a great idea that was adopted by your firm to help banish the negative thoughts in your head.
Building your confidence will take time and focus. It’s important to take the time to self-reflect and reward yourself for your achievements. Follow these tips to help you boost your career confidence and move towards greater success.