In a developed, wealthy nation like Canada, our social culture has been crafted based on an idealized economic-growth mindset. The country’s increasingly profitable real estate industry and housing market are best observed by the consistent and rapid inflation of new developments.
Canada’s wealth accumulation is linked to our import and export industries, the movement and flow of goods and services from business to business or business to consumer. Instead of growing closer as a community, we’ve become expendable. We look to see what we can get from one another, go over our network base and consider where others can get us.
Content vs. context mindset
Canada’s real estate industry is a great analogy for our culture’s beehive mindset, which is strongly rooted in thinking about “what I want to have.” To see the wood for the trees, we must understand that our external realities are often shaped by the culture that built them up.
Our culture, for example, strives to acquire more in a vain pursuit of the happiness that’s found bouncing around in a Coach bag. Since we weren’t culturally conditioned to break past the threshold of material value, we rarely ask ourselves, “Who do I want to be?”
I use the country’s real estate industry as an example of a content mindset that focuses more on having things. The opposite of this would be a context mindset, in which who you are as a person and who you want to be hold greater value than material things when it comes to strengthening your confidence.
Visualization to develop a context mindset
A simple way to get in touch with the confident version of yourself that you want to be, and develop a context mindset, is to find time for quiet meditation. Another creative way to adopt a context mindset is by performing a quick thought experiment. Let’s try it together now.
Step One: Picture yourself alone
Picture yourself alone on an island. If you prefer, you can picture being the only living person in your city. No one else is alive or present anywhere. Don’t think of your family and friends, your job—they’re not here. It’s just you and an empty world, alone on your island or in your city.
Instantly, your worldview expands. Your sense of self-awareness heightens. Why? Well, you’ve just become the producer, the director and the main character of your movie production. Why? Because you’re the only one here. Your locus of agency is restored as you shift your focus from your obligations and relationships to… just you.
There’s an old Japanese proverb that says, “You have three faces. The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends, and your family. The third face, you never show anyone. It is the truest reflection of who you are.”
It’s the third face you embody when you visualize yourself completely alone.
Step Two: Ask yourself what you’d like to do
Your next step in the visualization process is to ask yourself, what will I do today? The answer to the things you want to do will often correspond with who you want to be (remember, the context mindset).
Pay attention to what you see in your mind’s eye. Are you outside in nature? Are you moving a lot? Using your hands? Or are you sitting still? Are you renovating or decorating your home? Swimming?
Suddenly, you’ll realize you can be doing these things. More importantly, you’ll realize what you value by identifying what you’d do if you had all the time in the world and nobody to answer to.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a fairytale made in heaven. The reality is, we do have jobs and families to get back to.
Step Three: Pick an activity
Next, pick an activity you visualized yourself doing and make it your responsibility to incorporate it somewhere in your daily or weekly schedule.
Swimming? There are no pools near me, you say.
Pick up the phone and call a local recreation centre that has a pool and ask about costs. That’s it. The next day, find out more.
The more you do this visualization process in solitude, the more you’ll begin to individuate into your authentic self. This is important, as it’ll help you build true self-confidence.
4 actions that increase confidence
Confidence doesn’t look like the loudest person in the room. You don’t have to dress to impress. You also don’t develop confidence just from establishing boundaries. The quickest and easiest solution to becoming more confident is to make a habit of these four actions:
Set and accomplish short-term, low-risk goals
If you know you like planes and you’ve always wanted to learn how to fly, and then you proceed to sign up at an aviation school, that’s great! However, becoming a pilot is a long-term goal where the observable result of your progress is limited. Contrary to popular belief, a goal like this can make people feel less confident, as the goal itself seems daunting—it’s far out in the future and usually involves some element of risk.
The best and fastest way to develop your self-confidence is to set a short-term, low-risk goal for yourself. Short-term, in this context, is defined as a range of anywhere between one week and three months.
To build self-confidence quickly, it’s also best to set a goal with low-risk consequences. If you’ve always wanted to be a designer, a good initial step towards your goal would be to start creating some designs in the next month, maybe one each week or whatever feels comfortable and realistically doable for you. Take inventory of where you’ll be able to rearrange your daily schedule to accommodate this goal and how often you’ll (realistically) have time for it during the week.
You might say, “I’m a mom, there’s no time outside baby time.” Well, yes, there is. A common goal for moms is to find more peace and quiet in the day. It’s difficult, but doable! After truly confronting this alleged obstacle of time, you might find an hour or two in your day or even in your week. Start there. Use that hour or two and listen to a five-minute meditation on YouTube or just relax and have a coffee in your backyard while looking at the trees.
And then? This is the best part: Do it as often as you can without a deadline. Try to genuinely enjoy your experience instead of constantly thinking about it as an obligatory goal.
Chances are, if you set a realistic, short-term goal that’s low-risk, and tell yourself you’ll “just try it out,” you’ll probably find yourself doing more of it. You’ll be so proud that you did it twice, and then again and again. Over time, these short-term successes will add up to a great reward that’s found within—the courage to grow and to really live.
Develop strong personal integrity
Start being honest with yourself by keeping your promises to yourself. Be someone you can actually trust. If you tell yourself you’ll start getting up earlier in the morning, then start getting up earlier in the morning. Developing this lifestyle of holding yourself responsible for what you say and do, even with what seems like insignificant actions to most, will be a huge boost to your confidence game.
The reliability and security you offer yourself by sticking to your decisions will birth a profound level of attractiveness that you’ll start to notice within yourself. It’s simply beautiful to feel that warmth of pride and love for yourself right in your belly.
You need to start doing this with yourself first, as only then will you be able to act with integrity towards others.
Practice something you struggle with
Taking this action often works very quickly. I’ll share with you my personal examples because… well, sharing is caring, and experience is the best teacher.
Example One:
During my time spent attending university, the boys would always interrupt me when I spoke, dismissing my claims as “unfounded” and “hearsay.” They said things like, “Ha! See, you can’t reason beyond that because you didn’t know about this fact, did you? Or that these two connect, did you?”
An obnoxious boy once (rhetorically) asked me, “What do you know? You’re a woman!”
So I enrolled in Harvard University’s Accelerated Law School Admission Program. I took the test. My score was 170 out of 180. I was later accepted to two law schools within two weeks of applying.
I never went to law school.
But what do I know? I’m a woman.
Example Two:
I had a job, many years ago, at which I lied about my accounting knowledge. I got a job that had an accounting component to it, and I thought this component would be insignificant to my role, but I quickly learned that I had to know my accounting inside out.
When I was tasked with responding to a client’s accounting-related issue, I pulled three all-nighters to read and fill out two full accounting practice books for beginners. I went online every day during my break and learned more. I printed all the terminology that I needed to know and gave myself problems to solve. I dove in.
I ended up getting fired soon after being transferred to the sales department—for my poor return of successful cold calls. Not for my lack of accounting knowledge.
It felt good.
You don’t need to be as stubborn as I was, but if you’ve always felt that you’re just OK at something or you currently wish you were better at something in your life, just dive into it. Just for a week. Learn about it, ask others about it, practice it. The best way to take this action is to laugh at yourself and have fun.
Circle back to yourself
You don’t have to perform all these actions in order, but circling back to yourself is an action that happens naturally as a consequence of employing the other three actions. Once you begin to see the
progress of your short-term goals, especially when you develop strong personal integrity, you’ll begin to embody your truth by trusting your opinions, your reasoning and your intuitive ability.
Why? Because you already know you can trust yourself, so when you have a biological reaction or a natural response to a situation or person, you’ll automatically trust your feelings.
For instance, say your friend is positively ecstatic about a product he’s used, and you become elated, thinking it really is great. When you circle back to yourself later, you can ask yourself, did you really like that product? How did it initially make you feel when you used it or bought it?
In this example, you’ll rationalize appropriately about the situation and trust your own judgment. Remember, your initial feelings will almost always be your initial truth in disguise.
Nobody can be 100 percent correct, but as long as you always somehow find a way back to yourself and your thoughts and feelings about what you encounter in life, your confidence will grow.
When you know, you know. You know?
Be brave enough to recreate yourself
The process of building or rebuilding your confidence is a process of realigning your entire being (your thoughts, your emotions and your will) with your true self. When you get used to coming back to your true self, you’ll have someone to come back to, always. You’ll have made a haven of yourself because you were brave enough to recreate yourself in silence and in strength.
That is confidence.
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image 1: geraltالصورة 2: بيكساباي; الصورة 3: StartupStockPhotos
