Building Confidence Through Doing Rather Than Thinking

My 18 year old son, Patrick, just sent me this email:

Best way to combat feelings of lack of confidence/anxiety? - Get Stuff Done

He had been feeling anxious about achieving his goal of being an amazing (and commercially viable) portrait photographer and then decided to take some actions to move bit by bit towards his goal - and he noticed that as he took each action he felt a little more confident.

Many of us respond to anxiety by avoiding the anxiety provoking situation.  We can get caught into waiting until we feel confident before we take action. That is fine if the situation that scares us is bungy jumping - but what if it is the situation is actually important to us? It could be that we need to take a risk in order to develop our career; ask someone on a date; or build a new friendship.

Research on self-efficacy suggests that Patrick is right.  We build confidence through experiences of being successful (either at that task or something similar).

So if you want to build your confidence - focus less on controlling what you think and feel and more on structuring the task so that you are likely to be successful.  Breaking the task into manageable steps that are each a little harder than the last but not so hard that you are unlikely to succeed.

Now I want to stress here that even when you have done something successfully in the past, you will have times when your mind seems intent on knocking your confidence.  'It was a fluke last time, this time you will stuff it up'.   Unfortunately this is a natural human tendency - hold these thoughts lightly and:

Get Stuff Done