This is the third and final part of our three-part series on cultivating your own kind of confidence.
In part one, we learned what confidence is and what it looks like in action. In part two, we explored the impact of confidence on your career, as well as strategies to improve confidence in order to support your success at work.
We will now broaden our focus in part three and explore one game-changing habit to begin cultivating confidence in your life starting today.
As we learned in part one, confidence is a skill just like any other - not a trait that only some people are born with. Confidence is accessible to everyone!
There are countless articles on strategies and tactics for building confidence (we shared some in part two). Today you will learn the one game-changing habit that I believe will have the biggest impact on your confidence.
The game-changing habit is…..drum roll please.....no really, this is not rocket science.....tracking and sharing your accomplishments consistently.
Why is tracking and sharing accomplishments game-changing you ask? Well, we already know that being aware of our strengths is a foundational component of confidence. We build awareness through feedback and reflection, so the habit of tracking and sharing wins and accomplishments is really just about creating a structure so we can consistently stay on top of them.
Seems simple right? Well as with any habit - they are often simple but not easy to be consistent with. So let’s dig in and explore four ways to build this habit into your life starting now:
Develop Your Routine - The first part of bringing this habit to life is creating a consistent process for reflecting and capturing your achievements. Once a week, write down at least one accomplishment you had that week. No matter how big or small the achievement is, write it down. This could be on a word file on your desktop, a note on your phone, physically written down, or any other method that is easiest for you. We are going to call this your “Wins Tracker.”
Track Reinforcing Feedback from Others - On top of your own reflections, track the reinforcing feedback that others have given you in your Wins Tracker. This doesn’t mean you ignore the corrective feedback - but please don’t write that down, research shows it’s already nine times more sticky than positive feedback and is probably already etched on your soul.
Decide Where and When to Share Your Wins - The second part of this habit is about sharing your accomplishments regularly. This is not about bragging, it’s about finding ways to share your progress and accomplishments with those around you to inspire their continued confidence in you and their willingness to support you. When you share wins you also increase engagement and positivity in general and you inspire others to share their wins too! Once you track your win, take note of the people and places where you will share it. Some ideas are - at team meetings, at your 1:1 meetings with your direct leader, with your sponsors and mentors, with your family, with your friends, at presentations, on your resume, at your annual performance review and the list goes on…
Commit to Routinely Sharing Your Wins - The final way to build this habit into your life is to find a wins buddy. Think about one person in your life that would also benefit from starting this habit and book fifteen-minute wins writing meetings with them once a week for the next year. Make this a recurring meeting and call it “Wins Writing”. Sit in a room (virtual or physical) together and capture your wins every week. Take the last five minutes of the meeting to build a commitment to one place you will share this week. If one of you goes on vacation - keep the appointment with yourself.
It is challenging to incorporate new habits into your daily routines at first. As you routinely practice a habit, it will get easier as time goes on and eventually become second nature.
Remain diligent towards maintaining this habit and you will begin seeing improvements in your confidence, and in turn, see improvements in the areas of your life impacted by confidence.
We hope you have enjoyed this three-part blog series, and to tie it all together check out A Guide To Cultivating Your Own Kind of Confidence.
Does your organization have a group of leaders who want to come together to learn about confidence? Leaderstamp is a program designed to help people build strong leadership identities and grow their confidence. Contact me to learn more!