With this month (Feb 21) being Boost your Self Esteem Month, which is closely related to confidence, you might have decided to take some steps to find ways to have more confidence in yourself. There’s loads of stuff out there you can Google and give a go, but often you end up bogged down in conflicting ideas or suggestions and consumed by the noise!
Self-esteem is closely related to confidence, in fact I like to think of it as a Confidence Cousin that influence each other. In many situations where you don’t have confidence – if you don’t believe you are able to do something – you may also feel bad about yourself, you’ll have low self-esteem.
When your esteem is low you’ll view yourself in a negative or critical light and most likely look for evidence to confirm this.
On the other hand, building your confidence helps you to feel good about yourself. And if you feel good about yourself, you feel more confident about your abilities and life in general.
You might know that I spent 12 years in the corporate Learning & Development world working with managers & leaders at all levels all with different development needs. Sometimes this was around managing stakeholders, or communication skills or finding the best ways of working together as a team, and coaching conversations were a big part of this because they helped to dig a little bit deeper to understand needs. More often than not we came back around to sentences like ‘I just wish I was more confident’ ‘I just don’t feel confident’, ‘I want to be more confident at work’.
When I launched Enrichment Coaching I knew confidence was going to be a big part of my business, because I truly believe confidence is at the heart of everything we do and that everyone can be confident in a way that feels authentic for them without having to wing it or fake it. I’m not confident all the time in every situation, I’ve worked on this over the years with different tips and techniques that help to keep my confidence levels in check.
When I work 1:1 with a client to build their confidence we start at the very beginning by understanding what confidence means to them;
- What it looks like now
- What it feels like now
- What emotions are attached to it
- Where do they feel their most confident & then we explore why.
We then discuss what the client wants it to feel like when we’ve finished working together, I want the client to feel their life have been enriched by us working together. All of this works side by side with self-esteem because you will be building a positive attitude about yourself and what you are capable of.
I know that 1:1 coaching isn’t for everyone, for whatever reason, and also if you’re battling your confidence demons it might take everything and more for you to get in touch and you feel that you want to deal with it on your own. Either way that’s fine, it’s important that you do what feel right for you. If you are doing this on your own, make a promise to yourself that you WILL DO IT.
One of my values is ‘Making a Difference’, believing that everything I do has a positive impact to cause a change. Confidence plays such an important part in most people’s everyday lives that I wanted to reach out to all, offering a way that you can boost your own confidence.
Before the Coronavirus pandemic hit us and changed the way we do things, I ran a workshop called ‘Be More You’ it was a face to face workshop in an actual room with real people! The content of this course focused around confidence and I knew I had to find a way to make it accessible in the new virtual world without it being another Zoom session.
I took my learning & development tool kit combined with my coaching skills and knowledge of confidence and pulled the existing course into an online version, that you can do at your own pace, in your own time. Of course this is a little plug for that course but primarily I wanted to talk about how it came about and what the intention behind it is.
If any of the following statements resonate with you, Be More You is a great way to learn about your own confidence levels and how you can boost your self-esteem to build your confidence in yourself.
- You feel you are stuck in a rut (comfort zone) doing the same old things
- You worry all the time about ‘what if’ – it goes wrong, I make a fool of myself, I can’t do it
- You battle with your inner voice / inner critic
- You want to build your confidence but you don’t really know what that looks like or where to start. You say to yourself things like:
- I just need to be more confident to do that.
- I’m not confident enough to do that.
- I can’t or shouldn’t do that.
- You question your ability or capabilities but you know deep down that you can do it.
Maybe you’ve reached a turning point in your career, this has knocked your confidence and you’re not clear about your next steps. You want to Be More You – whether that’s the old confident you or the new confident you.
Most importantly you are ready to take action.
Confidence is only built through taking action and repeating that action. I call it mastery, once you’ve done something that scared you a bit,– you’ve mastered it – you feel more confident to do it again.
Let’s be honest we’ve all signed up for things with the best of intentions of taking action add then we’ve never followed through – well the fact is that if you don’t take action in relation to building confidence you will stay exactly where you are!
‘Be More You – The online course to Build Confidence’ is full of tops tips and small practical actions that will make a big difference if you give them a go. The reality is that not everything you try will work as you want it to first time, but you will have learnt something along the way.
The main content in the course covers:
- Identifying & exploring your own confidence
- Fear vs Comparison
- 4 Top tips to “Take Action” for building confidence
- Stepping out of your comfort zone
- Taking a Step by Step approach
- Don’t overthink it
- Act As If
- 5 ways to manage your Inner Critic
My coaching style is very practical and this is reflected in this online course – you will only move forward if you take action so all the top tips and activities are designed with this in mind.
It’s hosted on a great platform that was developed by a great business called Nimble e-learning. It’s intuitive to use and covers all different ways of learning from reading to listening & watching, and the ability to download documents.
I understand and recognise that different people want a different level of support, so there are 3 options for you choose. You can buy the basic course with all the content – Bronze. Silver includes a downloadable e-book that follows the content so that you can print off, make notes to refer back to. And finally the Gold option includes the workbook and a 60 minute 1:1 coaching session with me to help you to work towards your confidence goals, keeping you accountable.
Whichever option you choose, you’ll have access to the platform for 1 year to go in & out as many times as you like, it works wherever you have internet access.
So if you’re ready to take action to build your confidence so you can ‘Be More You’ then this could be the course you are looking for!
Check out the options on enrichmentcoaching.co.uk/courses
Want to know more about what’s inside the course, view my short video here – Video
If you don’t like learning online or on your own, then I will be hosting a LIVE version of Be More You – Ways to Build Your Confidence on Zoom on 23rd February. It will be 2 hours for just £40 (inc. VAT) – book your place here – Be More You Live
Or if you’d prefer to work on 1:1, then you can find out more by visiting calendly.com/gayletong/curiositychat where you can book a free Curiosity Chat, so you can ask all of your burning questions
