If Positive Affirmations Only Help People with High Self-Esteem - What Is a Better Way of Dealing with Low Confidence?

Do you ever feel bad for having ‘negative’ thoughts? Do you repeat positive affirmations about yourself in an attempt to lift your confidence? At least 50% of us do this regularly and sometimes it does seem to help. However, recent research is suggesting we need to be careful about using this strategy. A group of Canadian researchers found that:

‘When people with low self-esteem repeated the statement, ‘‘I’m a lovable person’’ (Study 2), or focused on ways in which this statement was true of them (Study 3), neither their feelings about themselves nor their moods improved—they got worse. Positive self-statements seemed to provide a boost only to people with high self-esteem—those who ordinarily feel good about themselves already—and that boost was small.’

What seems to happen is that when we repeat a positive self-statement, we tend to assess whether we think it is true or not. If we have a positive view of ourselves, we are likely to accept the statement and perhaps feel slightly reassured. However, if the statement is very different to our view of ourselves then our minds tend to respond with ‘Yeh right! If I am so lovable then why did Jane dump me?’ We are reminded of our failings and hey presto we feel worse.

So, relying on positive self-statements to get us through challenges is a risky strategy.

Some better options when you are about to do something that involves the risk of failure, rejection or disapproval are:

• Put effort in to give yourself the best chance of getting it right. Prepare, practice, get the necessary skills. When it doesn’t go well, reflect on your performance and seek feedback so you can learn how to do better next time. Nothing builds confidence like repeated experiences of success.
• Adopt a mindful stance to all of your thoughts and emotions. Notice with curiosity, compassion and openness what your mind comes up with. For example, as your anxiety rises say ‘Ah, there is anxiety, I am not surprised anxiety showed up, this is important to me,
•  Instead of repeating ‘I am confident’, remind yourself of the values that are motivating you to take this action, for example: ‘I am giving this presentation because I want to help people do well in their work’. (Reaffirming values increases performance)
• Ground yourself. Notice this moment with your five senses. Connect with what you are doing. Bring your attention to the task at hand and the people with you. Your mind will repeatedly try to pull you away, each time you notice that this has happened, thank your mind (it is trying to help!) and reconnect with this moment.

For more on this topic I recommend The Confidence Gap by Russ Harris

Science and 'The Secret'

Rob Archer just wrote a post on 'The Secret'.  He described it as 'Bollocks' and part of me went 'Yey!' because there is so much in 'The Secret' that is damaging (more on that in another post!) , but it got me thinking. So many people love 'The Secret' and persist with it, are there aspects of it that are useful? Is it possible to tease out the positive parts of the approach without the detrimental 'I have to send positive energy out to the universe by controlling my thoughts and feelings' part (which, is not only impossible but actually counter-productive). 
  
So 'Is there any science to support any of the idea's in 'The Secret'?'

'The Secret' seems to be based on a core belief that picturing what you want and having a positive expectation that it will happen, will actually make what you want to happen, really happen.  Now I can't find any science to support that core hypothesis and there are some huge flaws in the idea. However, this idea does relate to a couple of other important idea's that are worth exploring.

1. That it is possible to control how lucky you are
2. That believing you will succeed increases your chance of succeeding.

So let's look at those idea's.

1. Seeing yourself as 'lucky'. 

 Richard Wisemann has found that people who see themselves as lucky, live 'amazingly charmed lives, full of good fortune.' He found that lucky people actually generate their own good fortune via four principles.

'They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.'

Wiseman found that teaching people these strategies increases their 'luck'.  The beauty of these strategies is that they are much easier to follow than trying to think happy thoughts all the time (which, as I have mentioned, is not only impossible but actually counter-productive!).

 2. Believing that you will be successful


The belief that you will be able to do what is necessary, so that you will achieve your goals is called Self- Efficacy. A lot of research has been done on how self-efficacy interacts with success.  The ideal level of self-efficacy (i.e.confidence that we will succeed) is to have slightly more confidence in ourselves than our actual ability.  This optimism encourages us to stretch ourselves, tackle challenges and persist in the face of difficulty. Which, of course, means we learn new skills, our life expands and we are more likely to be successful.  


However, if our self-efficacy outstrips our ability by too much, we can end up biting off more than we can chew and  fail.  This is a risk of 'The Secret'.  Followers of 'The Secret' seem to believe that thinking the right thoughts will help them to succeed. They don't seem to judge their likelihood of success based on past experiences of success or failure. This means that occasionally they will succeed at something surprising but they also risk repeated and sometimes disastrous failure.  Further, because they attribute success or failure to how well they managed to control their thoughts and feelings (which, I may have mentioned, is not only impossible but actually counter-productive!) they can fail to learn from their mistakes.


So if I was to write a best selling book on the secrets to a successful life (based on research on luck, self-efficacy and a little bit of ACT (of course!)) this is what it would say:

My Cat

• Have a clear picture of what 'success' looks like to you - be aware that we are constantly being told that success looks a certain way (usually involving money and status). Create your own picture. Mine involves a garden; some chickens; a cat, and the people I love.
• Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine  - if your usual approach isn't getting you the outcomes you want, try doing one thing different
• Set yourself written goals that stretch you a little - record your successes and remind yourself of those successes when you have to do something similar but more challenging
• Measure your success in two ways
• Did you achieve the outcome you wanted?
• Did you live your values?  Were you the person you want to be in the world?
• Repeatedly connect to the present moment through your five senses - so you get accurate information about what is happening and don't miss opportunities
• Use your intuition as a source of information - don't treat it as truth. But intuition can sometimes signal to us that we need to notice some aspect of a situation we haven't paid sufficient attention to
• When you want to do something challenging, prepare well and make a plan
• When your mind starts freaking you out, telling you how you will fail - accept that this is what minds do. Don't feel you have to either control or buy the thoughts. Check in with what is really happening in the world rather than what your mind is telling you is happening.  If what you want to do is important to you, 'Feel the fear and do it anyway!'

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