How To Strengthen Your Confidence
We each have two voices in our head – one says you’re great, you’re having a good day. The other says you’re going through a weak patch, you’re not at your best. Which is the stronger?
The one you feed.
Your ability to strengthen your inspirational voice on demand is essential to performing at the top of your game.
So how can you boost your confidence quickly?
Use mental imagery. Positive or negative, the mind completes whatever picture you put into it – so learn to use positive pictures. This is the power of mental rehearsal or visualisation to build confidence. You can use it for any kind of performance preparation. Visualisation is routine training in the sports world, but it works just as well in business.
Here’s how you win those larger sales
Andrea Nierenberg knew the sale was a long shot. Her training and communications company usually worked with small and mid-size firms. This was a huge company that she was trying to land as a client. What if they thought she was out of her league?
The week before the presentation, she started priming herself. Each day, on waking and when she went to bed, she closed her eyes and relaxed. She pictured a movie screen. There on the screen, larger than life, she watched herself confidently reaching an agreement with the client.
When the critical day came, that’s exactly what happened. It was as if her mind knew what to do – she’d been here before.
The mind completes the picture
Imagine that you are one minute after the successful completion of whatever it is you want to achieve. How do you feel? What do you see?
Do this before you give a business presentation, before you pick up the phone, before you meet a customer, before you attend a social event, before you write a proposal, before you chair a meeting, before an interview or counselling session. Learn to lock your mind on the desired outcome.
The more powerful the mental rehearsal, the greater the confidence you will experience.
See it first
It’s fascinating how our language reveals the visual nature of our thoughts. We talk about foresight, hindsight, insight, future scenarios, perspective, points of view, supervision. The mind programs itself through pictures.
French psychologist Emile Coue discovered that when the words and the pictures we use pull in opposite directions, the pictures always dominate. This led him to his famous law: when the will and the imagination are in conflict, the imagination always wins.
The point is, if you’ve been telling yourself ‘I’m a great sales person’, ‘I’m a good manager’, ‘I’m a great communicator’, ‘I’m a winner’, but seeing the opposite – the opposite is what you get.
LDL leadership and sales training includes both skill and will methodologies.
