To Be Confident Start by Acting Confident

  • 0 min read
Meaning

i-741507_640Sometimes people take offense about “acting the part,” as if doing so means that they are fakes. Anyone who has children knows parenting is a fake-it-till-you-make-it experience. Surely confidence deserves the same pass. Comparable fake-it-till-you-make-it action is also what most enterprises are built on. (By the way, a good time to start your acting is first thing in the morning before your brain figures out what you’re doing. Be determined to go through your day feeling undaunted. If at the beginning, the middle, or at the end of the day, you appear scared and timid, you will decrease others’ confidence in you at home and in the office.)

One CEO told me, “I still doubt myself every single day. I’ve had painful situations, times when it was really tough. What people believe is my self-confidence is actually my acting in reaction to fear.”

When you decide to be determined, then turn up the juice. Go further, and get into your uncomfort zone. Every success story starts with someone going against popular practice or thinking. Plant a stake in the ground on some position even if it’s not the most popular. If it turns out well, great. If it doesn’t, you’ve still have shown conviction. Do the scary. Face fears. Bad things that might possibly happen are worse in your head than in actuality. Failure will not kill you. It may make you sick for a while, but that is often your own doing in your head too.

 

Picture of Debra Benton

Debra Benton

D.A. (Debra) Benton has been helping great individuals and organizations get even better for over 20 years. Just as exceptional athletes rely on excellent coaching to hone their skills, Debra's clients rely on her advice to advance their careers. She focuses on what is truly important to convert what you and your organization want to be from a vision into a reality. TopCEOCoaches.com ranks her in the World's Top 10 CEO Coaches noting she is the top female. And as conference keynote speaker she is routinely rated in the top 2%. Her client list reads like a “Who's Who” of executives in companies ranging from Microsoft, McDonald's, Kraft, American Express, Merrill Lynch, United Airlines, and PricewaterhouseCoopers to the Washington Beltway and U.S.Border Patrol. *She is the author of ten award-winning and best-selling business books including The Virtual Executive and CEO Material. She has written for the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Fast Company. She has been featured in USA Today, Fortune, The New York Times, and Time; she has appeared on Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, and CBS with Diane Sawyer. To learn more Debra advising leaders, coaching, facilitating a workshop, or speaking: www.debrabenton.com

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

There’s a specific kind of man who seems completely at peace with uncertainty, who speaks calmly about impermanence and acceptance, and almost every one of them spent years in their twenties feeling so lost and unsteady that learning to appear unbothered felt less like wisdom and more like survival

There’s a specific kind of man who seems completely at peace with uncertainty, who speaks calmly about impermanence and acceptance, and almost every one of them spent years in their twenties feeling so lost and unsteady that learning to appear unbothered felt less like wisdom and more like survival

The Vessel
8 things that happen to people who spent decades equating needing others with failure — and what letting that belief go actually looks like in a life

8 things that happen to people who spent decades equating needing others with failure — and what letting that belief go actually looks like in a life

The Vessel
Behavioral scientists found that people who write about their thoughts before a difficult conversation don’t just feel more confident — they’re measurably less likely to say things they later regret, because the writing settles the self before the self has to perform

Behavioral scientists found that people who write about their thoughts before a difficult conversation don’t just feel more confident — they’re measurably less likely to say things they later regret, because the writing settles the self before the self has to perform

The Blog Herald
People who look genuinely younger than their age tend to share these 8 daily habits and most of them have nothing to do with what they put on their face

People who look genuinely younger than their age tend to share these 8 daily habits and most of them have nothing to do with what they put on their face

The Vessel
7 quiet practices that helped me stop using nature as an escape and start letting it actually reshape me

7 quiet practices that helped me stop using nature as an escape and start letting it actually reshape me

The Vessel
There’s a specific kind of woman who keeps apologising for taking up space in rooms she was invited into, and almost every one of them was once a child who learned that her needs were an inconvenience to the adults who were supposed to want her there

There’s a specific kind of woman who keeps apologising for taking up space in rooms she was invited into, and almost every one of them was once a child who learned that her needs were an inconvenience to the adults who were supposed to want her there

The Vessel
Load more
CATEGORIES
Explore