Mental well-being at home - Confidence

Confidence is a key to building personal resilience and the good news is that courage is cultivatable. This is all about if you can deal with setbacks and tackle obstacles then you are more likely to interact with challenges in a positive way, with a view towards purposeful growth. Confidence has three different principles associated with it: Self-belief, Strengths and Control of the Mind. Let’s explore these below:

Principle 1 - Self-belief. This is about knowing you can. It’s not necessarily about your expertise. It’s a lot more to do with your attitude, your willingness to learn and your willingness to ask questions.

Principle 2 - Your Natural Strengths. This is about what has helped you pull through tough times in the past. We are going to loop back to this with an exercise that will help identify your natural strengths.

Principle 3 - Control of the Mind. This is a sense of control that you have over the outcome of things.

So, what I want you to do is think about how you can focus on your actionable areas. This will help you overcome fear and help you get out of your own way. In this exercise I would like you to list your five natural strengths, take a little internal audit. Write down on a bit of paper, or just think about what your five Natural Strengths are. This might well be your diligent work ethic or your commitment to planning. These are the different types of strengths that might help you pull through those tough times. So, make a note of your five Natural Strengths. If you’re not sure, why not ask someone you trust? Ask a friend, family member or a trusted colleague.

So, to re-cap the three principles of confidence are Self-belief, your Strengths and Control of your Mind.

Now, before I let you go, I’d like to give you a little book recommendation you can take away with you. This is written by Viktor Frankl and it is called Man’s Search for Meaning. You can use this book to help build on the principles we’ve outlined today. Viktor Frankl talks about his experience as a prisoner in the concentration camps during world war two, but he also describes his method, which involves him finding and connecting to a purpose, conjuring a positive feeling about the future and connecting with that to make a clear outcome.

So, we have spoken a little bit today about our confidence. We discussed self-belief, natural strengths and control of mind and I have given you a little exercise to take away.

This blog is part of a series about Mental well-being at home. You can view the entire playlist on YouTube, listen via Soundcloud or read the other entries by navigating below.

Working from home - Confidence - Mindset - Positivity - Versatility - Endurance - Mastery