Confidence and self-confidence
When I advanced from being a supervisor to a manager and then from a manager to a director, with each promotion my confidence would dip. This is completely normal, but when I learned the difference between self-confidence and confidence, my drops in confidence made complete sense. I was relying on confidence when I needed to remind myself of my self-confidence.
Confidence comes from knowing you can do something and are awesome at it. It comes from evidence of something you have done in the past. Even though other people are confident in your abilities, you may not feel the same way. This was true for me.
The problem is that when you take a new job or try something new, your brain is looking to the past for evidence to feel confident. But that evidence doesn’t exist when you are wanting to do something you have never done before. Looking to the past won’t help.
When I considered any advancement, I wasn’t confident. I had never done the new role before. I thought maybe I shouldn’t take the risk, I might fail. I don’t know what I’m doing.
Self-confidence is different than confidence because it is internal. It is believing you can do something you have never done before. It is being secure in yourself and your abilities. It’s believing without evidence, proof, or other people telling you that you can do it.
We’ve been doing it in the wrong order. We think we need confidence first before we can do something, but what we actually need is belief in ourselves. The belief that you can do something you’ve never done before.
Here are some thoughts from my life that increase my self-confidence.
I’m confident in my ability…
to learn
to figure it out
to trust myself
to get help when I need it
to find a way
to have my own back
to fail until I figure it out
to remember my worth isn’t tied to my career
