How do you build confidence when starting something new?

- 🎯 Set realistic and achievable goals to build confidence and focus on your objectives. - 📊 Use SMART criteria: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound to define your goals clearly. - ✅ Track your progress and celebrate small successes to boost motivation and self-esteem. - 🔄 Avoid comparing yourself to others; focus on your personal growth and achievements. - 📝 Break down large tasks into manageable steps to make them less daunting and more achievable.

Think about what your end goal is or end state is and when you would like to be there and based on that and break it down to what you need to achieve on a weekly or monthly basis. This will give you lots of little things to celebrate and give you additional confidence rather than having a big task such as learn to drive.

🖐️Set specific goals that are clear and well-defined. This will help focus on what want to achieve and avoid confusion 🖐️Make sure goals are measurable so that can track progress and celebrate achievements 🖐️Set goals that are achievable and actionable. This means that should set goals that are challenging but not impossible to achieve. It is important to take action towards goals to build momentum and confidence 🖐️Set goals that are relevant to overall objectives and realistic given current situation. This will help stay motivated and focused on what is important Finally, setting realistic goals that are specific, measurable, attainable/actionable, and relevant/realistic can help build confidence when starting something new.

Let's take a moment to understand why and how SMART goals work in our brains. - Specific: When your goal is crystal clear, your brain can focus better, enhance your productivity, and reduce your mental fatigue. - Measurable: Measurable goals create a feedback loop in your brain, helping you improve over time by providing the brain the data on your progress. - Attainable: Specific and Achievable goals help reduce anxiety and overwhelm. - Relevant: Personally relevant goals can trigger the release of Dopamine, thereby giving you a motivational boost in your brain. - Time-bound: Deadlines create a sense of urgency, activating the brain's prefrontal cortex responsible for planning and decision-making. Taking action builds confidence.

The number one predictor of confidence: having successfully performed a task before. The second predictor: you've witnessed someone else successfully perform a task. The third predictor; confidence that experience from other domains will lead to success in the current one. The fourth predictor: someone else has confidence that you can do it.

Feedback can provide valuable insights into your strengths and areas for improvement, and can help identify areas where need to focus efforts. Below are the useful tips: ✅Be willing to listen to feedback, even if it is critical. Remember that feedback is an opportunity to learn and grow. ✅Ask for feedback on specific areas where you want to improve. This will help focus efforts and make the feedback more actionable. ✅Seek feedback from a variety of sources, including peers, mentors, and supervisors. This will give a more well-rounded perspective on performance. ✅Use the feedback receive to set goals. This will help focus efforts and track progress. By seeking feedback gain valuable insights and improve performance.

I agree and when seeking feedback, one should not take it to their heart and really put objectives against feedback. Most of them are personal, seek feedback from those who you want to or willing to work with.

Feedback can act as a signpost for when we are moving towards our goals. Framed positively lets us know that we are either on track or off track, and when off it gives us a redirection. When giving feedback always be aware to be positive about it.

Surround yourself with supportive people. The right people will let you know when you need to improve. They will also let you know when you achieve levels of mastery.

Take feedback in stride - it's key to be PROactive and not REactive to feedback. Use it constructively to improve and add value to what you already know.

From my experience in the last years, after embarking in my own company's project, I am investing in 2 priorities. Being always open minded & trying new stuff. I love to explore the discomfort. If it scares you, do it! Take a change or improvise if you have too. It will set you free and help you lead with uncertainty, while it develops your growth mindset. The idea of living by design and not by the book, meaning that we should diverge to explore a lot of possibilities, before we actually choose what to do or where to focus.

Challenge yourself and go the extra mile in preparedness: gather information about what you are starting, seek for courses that can provide you with useful knowledge.

I completely agree with this. Sometimes breakthrough begins with challanges. Challanges are reason for innovation and it make us to think in different way to mitigate it and challenging our self will always pull out best potential of our self.

Certainly! During my first event hosting experience, I faced a mix of excitement and nervousness. I contemplated what could go wrong, like stumbling on stage or making mistakes. However, I also focused on the positives, such as the chance to discover new abilities, overcome fears, and grow personally. Despite the uncertainties, I chose to embrace the challenge. Starting with small steps, I gradually increased the complexity of my hosting tasks. This approach not only built my confidence but also made me more adaptable, resilient, and creative in the process.

Challenging ourselves is a common way of leaving our comfort zone. And when we do so - we learn. Moreover - we get a different point of view, a new prospective for our capabilities, reactions and the environment around us. We can try small everyday challenges that will nurture our mindset to be braver and open towards greater ones. And that's the way to excel and be better than yesterday. Be reasonable though, and know your limit. Don't push yourself to extreme limits. This may affect your judgement. One step at a time.

Self-compassion is one of the most powerful and important success principles. Everybody gets things wrong, and everybody fails at times, but it's how we deal with these moments that are important. Self-love and compassion allow us to be kind to ourselves and to have an inner dialogue that is positive and constructive, even in negative situations.

This is the toughest for many of us. As a former CEO who had to close a company in 2016. I faced massive disruptions and interpersonal conflicts, I hesitated to fire people when I had others screaming they should be fired, and I was forced to use my super-human capacities as a leader, except that they were simply not there. Sure, plenty of lessons that have made me see things so differently today. But the hardest part was to learn to forgive myself. And that makes a lot of a difference.

I don't think confidence is a feeling. I think it's a process. I don't feel what we commonly associate with confidence (empowerment, strength, feeling assured) at the beginning. I almost always feel it at the end and sometimes this is even true when my attempt failed. Thus, at the outset of a new or challenging project, self-compassion is essential to allow myself to be afraid. When I can do that, I can just acknowledge and care for the fear but then move on with my plan. Self-compassion is what lets me be human as part of the process of confidence.

🚀The "Voice of Courage" exercise🚀 Find a mirror and talk to yourself like you're giving a pep talk to your best friend. List your strengths, your potential, and the exciting journey ahead. Do it for a full minute, and you'll feel like you could conquer the world! And then look yourself in the eye and say - "I love you."

Paul, this is a wise statement that only originates from experience! Sharing this with the less experienced people enhances behavioural wisdom and leadership best practices.

Progress. It is important to see the progress. Sometimes you might not achieve certain goal but by working on it you would probably learn something new. What you learn, what you do helps to keep you motivated to the task or ultimate goal

Start off with small goals and objectives you can accomplish --- this will help build confidence and momentum to tackle the larger goals.

One of the things I discovered people were doing routinely when achieving a goal, is getting "on to the next" right away, without pause. My work includes a Completion module where we walk through what we did to achieve our goal, the ups, the downs, the surprises, the challenges, and gratitude for team support. Complete one goal. Close the door. And open a new one.

The image of experiencing future pride is not only cognitive; thoughts can instantaneously access our internal warehouse of emotional memories where joyful pleasure associated with our efforts was previously felt. These emotional memories can involve anything, from the long-forgotten joy mirrored in the face of caregivers celebrating our first steps to recently felt enjoyment about an accomplishment. Thus, in response to imagery, emotional memories activate present feeling reminders that can fuel our motivation to accomplish something. As such, people may experience an “addiction” to the positive feeling stimulated by accomplishment, and present efforts are motivated by positive emotional memories around success.

It occurs that this might be a challenge as well. With the constant thrive for improvement and development, we sometimes forget to mark our achievements. We should avoid comparing ourselves with other people. We all move with different pace so our focus must be our own progress. And celebration doesn't mean special reward. It's a point where we embrace and understand that we have completed a process, a step, a road. We evaluate the whole journey and realize that we are better. Then we move on!

All the above points are essential to build your confidence levels. However, we must be clear on who we must become to achieve our goal. Keeping the same attitude and repeating the same actions with doubt won't help increase our confidence to take the necessary steps toward our goal. The question: who do I need to become to make my goal possible shifts the mind from the challenge to the possibility and encourages it to start thinking differently. And this is how confidence will increase, because with every new step, there's going to be a new result. Learning and keep taking the steps, will increase our confidence levels.

Opportunities are attracted by great capabilities. The presence of an opportunity is evidence of our potential; so we must believe in ourselves. Even when we do believe in ourselves, we often question whether we have the tools, methods, or mechanisms to apply our abilities to in a successful way. However, we can build confidence in our ability to succeed by harnessing curiosity. The uncertainty of something new can be a confidence killer, but uncertainty fuels curiosity. Curiosity removes uncertainty, focuses us on learning, and stimulates a growth mindset that allows us to be confident as explore new ways to maximize our potential.

I agree with the points above. These are some additional perspectives: 1) Challenging oneself is important. Having said that, we build confidence by playing to our strengths. Aspire towards a goal that is ambitious/challenging, break it into steps, and play to your strengths. 2) Celebrating achievements means that you know what you want to achieve. That also means you need to know what to measure and how to measure them. Only then will you know if you are on track. 3) Be flexible. Not everything works out as planned. If we have a mentality to be adaptable, it is easier to figure out solutions or alternatives when plans are thrown off and you can do it with confidence. 4) Take it slow if needed. Sometimes clarity comes when we take a breath

Research. Knowledge is a powerful tool and it helps to have some data on how others did it and where they went wrong. It mught not give a step-by-step tutorial on how to go about it, but it helps guide your first steps, which often tend to be the hardest. Another secret I have started using lately is asking myself, "what's the worst that could happen?" The more I did this, the more I realised that our own fears hold us back a lot more than we imagine.

Unpopular opinion here... Fake it 'til you make it is a building block of confidence. Fake it 'til you make it = Training your mindset Intentionally act like the person you aspire to become until one day you become that person. You won't know when that shift actually happens, but it WILL happen! If you wait until you're 100% confident in your ability to do a task, you'll find a million reasons why you're not and that's a confidence killer. Instead, do that thing that scares you! Prepare as much as possible and when the time comes, whisper to yourself "I got this" and then go get it!