How to be Confident

There’s a wonderful article on PsychologyToday regarding confidence, called Confidence: Stepping Out.

It gives a rough overview of what confidence is, as well as a few tips on how to develop it.

This four-page article also describes an interesting experiment relating the similarities and differences between two groups that had to give an impromptu speech.

One group reported feeling nervous, while the other reported feeling reasonably calm and relaxed.

The interesting thing was that their physiological responses were exactly the same — physiologically they were just as nervous as each other.

It was just that their minds made one group think that they were more nervous than they really were.

At the end of this article the author discusses how some people — including famously charismatic celebrities — overcame their fears.

The way of overcoming your fears is basically this: do what you fear most.

Keep doing it, practising it, until you get better.

The final line of the article sums it all up: “The lesson? Even exquisite discomfort has a silver lining.”