Tuesday, December 3, 2013

TED Tuesday: The Skill of Self Confidence

The TED Talk that I want to share with you today is about one of my very own most powerful skills and weapons in my arsenal - Self-Confidence.


As a young woman in the business world, the (humble) confidence that I have in myself is often received with surprise. Like the thought that a female my age believes in herself is an anomaly. Right after the initial surprise come the questions people have:

How do you do talk to people so confidently?
How do you not crumble under the pressure in those big meetings?
Where did you learn so much about thing 1, thing 2 and thing 3 that you don't have any experience in?
Where did you learn what you know about Excel, and how did you become so proficient? 

My answer to those and many other questions I get is often one of the following:

1. I practice
2. I'm passionate
3. I believe in myself

I chose this TED Talk because here we are again at the first week of the month and my job is busy. In these three days I am responsible for communicating a confident, well thought and deeply analyzed story to our business partners about what the conditions of the upcoming month will look like as it relates to our shipping targets and performance. It can be a fairly intimidating task, so what do I do to get myself game-ready?

TONS of self-talk and daily affirmation. I am a firm believer that our thoughts influence our actions and that nobody will ever believe in you unless you believe in yourself. Daily self-affirmations can be done any way you'd like to do them, but here's a great example of a great one that you could follow to start your day with a smile:


Can you imagine walking through life as self-confident and proud as Jessica is? What liberation it would be to appreciate who you are, who your family is, all of your possessions, even love your haircut!!! 

There are enough people in this world who are going to doubt you and believe that you're not ready, so do yourself a favor by looking yourself in the mirror and being your own biggest supporter, motivator and cheerleader. 

Feel like you've got this covered? How about you try then to boost someone else's confidence?

You can do this by believing in them, praise them for the things that they are doing right and one of my favorites that Dr. Ivan Joseph says in this TED Talk, "catch them when they're good."



Happy Tuesday!

4 comments

Anonymous said...

Love this. I LOVE MY HAIRCUT! Hahah. Self-talk all day.

brooke lyn said...

i love the line 'there's enough people telling us we can't do it...why do we want to tell ourselves that'

Rachel Sedaker said...

I feel like I'm so much better at building others' self-confidence than building my own, and I realize it's because I look at most other people through rose-colored glasses, but I look at myself through a much darker lens. I like Dr. Joseph's idea of writing out a list of his qualities and keeping it by his mirror- I should do the same! I need to change my lens- I've simply developed a horrible habit of looking at myself the wrong way.

Your self-confidence is always so inspiring to me. Thank you for sharing this today!

Fash Boulevard said...

Loved this so much. Thanks for sharing, love. :)