Confidence is all about having confidence in yourself, which means being confident in the decisions you make, the choices you make, and the things you choose to do.
People are quick to give you advice on how to become more confident, but if you haven’t found a job that you’re interested in doing, which you have the potential to do well, then those are not the words you want to hear.
If you feel like you have lost your confidence, and have fallen into a lack of confidence, the first thing you need to do is find out why that’s happening.
If you’re an average guy or woman, then your confidence could take a major hit when you lose a job because you have no work to show for it.
This means you haven’t been applying for jobs, and you’re working for somebody else, or you’re just completely broke.
Either way, if you’re completely broke you don’t need to read another article that tells you what to do.
You need to take care of the situation first
I’ve seen way too many guys in their early 20s who spend way too much money they don’t have on cars, houses, and new clothes that they just can’t afford, and I’ve seen way too many guys in their late 20s go out partying until 5 am the night before they’re supposed to go job hunting, because they’re that in debt.
You need to get it together, and you need to learn to take care of yourself before you can get anything else.
Once you’re not in debt and you can afford to do things, you can then work on improving your confidence.
How do you gain confidence?
When you apply for jobs, you need to have at least two things going for you.
One is that you’re confident, and two is that you’re well-qualified for the job you’re applying for.
I’m not saying that you need to have your resume look great, you don’t need to have specific experience, you don’t need a specific degree, and you don’t need a job title that’s a bit too lofty for your abilities.
Just put a resume together that’s the best representation of yourself that you can. If that makes you a little nervous because it’s not your best work, then don’t worry, you can fix that, too.
I always advise the students in my classes to just take the first resume they come across, or go through your inbox and pull out every resume you can find, and stick it in a hat.
I teach you to do this for many reasons, but one is that when you’re applying for a job, they can’t see the areas where you need work, so there’s no way they can see if you’re qualified.
Another reason I teach this is that you can literally go into any job interview and make yourself look incredible, but when they look at your resume they’ll still be unable to see all the amazing things about you.
This is why I encourage you to create your resume as if you were selling it because you are!
How do you do things well?
The second thing you need to be confident about if you really have lost your confidence is that you know how to do things well.
There are many ways to do things, and most people will tell you that there are two things you need to be confident in
- You need to be good at something, and
- You need to be really confident in what you’re doing.
Unfortunately, when you’re broke and unemployed, and you’re under 30, people are less likely to respect the second because that’s just what you do when you’re poor, but if you’re really good at something, people will be more inclined to take a chance on you.
A teacher I had at the start of the year was totally burnt out, but he knew he had a unique talent for teaching, so he applied for jobs at schools around the area, and when he got them he came up with a plan for what he was going to do.
He would teach kids who were bored to learn. This meant that he had to let them draw a map on the board of where they were on a sheet of paper, and then read them the names of the states on the map.
The whole class would get excited because he was the coolest person ever.
During this process, he would show them images of other books they could learn from.
If it worked once, he would do it again. It wasn’t just the kids who liked him, but the school administration too, and eventually he became the most sought-after teacher in the area.
Even though he worked for peanuts, he was also the best at his job because he wasn’t afraid to try things. That’s how you gain confidence.
By not only practicing your skills but also applying them and letting them go. In other words, a good teacher builds his/her confidence by learning from mistakes, not making them.
How do you deal with negative comments and rejection?
People can be very mean when it comes to making comments, but they’re also willing to help.
If you go around posting things online, people will read what you write and then respond, telling you that it sucked, or they liked it, or that you can do better, but then they’ll also tell you the perfect thing you could say back to prove them wrong.
One of the best ways to deal with negativity is to be gracious. By this, I don’t mean that you have to run to their door and apologize, or pretend it didn’t happen.
What I mean is that you need to accept that these comments will happen, and then accept the positive feedback, even more, when it comes to your work, because if you’re not willing to embrace the good feedback, who will?
