Confidence: 4 Easy Ways to Boost Yours

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”

Confidence is critical to being a great man. You must believe in yourself. When you do, you can achieve great things. You will influence the world around you. You will be able to lead as men are called to lead. You will have the impact God designed you to have.

But confidence is something we should be continually developing. We should be putting in the work to strengthen this mental attitude. We should believe in our God-given gifts and abilities and take action through them to impact the world around us. This world needs this kind of mentally strong masculine man. You are called to be that kind of man.

Here are four things you can do to grow in confidence.

Know Yourself and Live Authentically

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many men do not know themselves well. I did not. I spent many years thinking of myself through this combination of what I had learned about myself, others’ opinions, and my perception of what others thought about me. Some ideas rolling around in my head were true. Some were not. It has taken some time for me to think through these things and sort them out.

Take the time to think through how you see yourself. What is the mental picture rolling around in your head? I suggest you write it down. Ask yourself, who am I? Do a brain dump of all the different ways you describe yourself. Now start to think through each one of these, asking yourself where these ideas have come from? Challenge what you think you know about yourself. Is it true? Why do you think so? Is there a strong basis and foundation for these ideas?

Do some research. Take a few assessments and determine your personality, strengths, gifts, and abilities. What have you been designed to do really well in this life? Begin to replace what is false with what is true. Write it down.

This concept, along with the next about developing a mission, is discussed in detail in “Living Life in the Sweet Spot of Your Unique Design.” You will find helpful direction in determining your personality, strengths, gifts, and abilities in this article. I recommend you take the time to read through it.

Identify the things you see as positive and the things you see as negative. Enhance the positives and develop a plan to improve the negatives. Once you form a list of things you know to be true about yourself, read this routinely. Do the work to renew your mind and strengthen yourself mentally in who you are. Work to make sure the way you think about yourself aligns with what you know to be true. Revisit this as you improve and adjust accordingly.

A key to confidence is understanding your strengths and weaknesses. Working to enhance your strengths and improve your weaknesses will begin to build confidence. If you build a routine to make this happen, you will be miles ahead of 90% of the men around you. You will be well on your way to becoming a top 1 % man. Your confidence will follow.

Develop Your Mission and Pursue It

How does your personality, strengths, gifts, and abilities relate to your mission? Organize the things that are true about you and write down how they can be used to have a positive impact. These characteristics of “you” work together to bring value to the world. What is it? How can you bring this value to more people more often?

Below is an example of how this is playing out for me.

For me, my personality type is ENTJ-A. This personality has a heavy leaning toward leadership. It is described using words like inspires, draws people together, determined, achiever, strategic, etc. My strengths (StrengthFinder 2.0) are Futuristic, Strategic, Maximizer, Learner, and Achiever. My strengths are casting a vision, developing the strategy to achieve it, continuously improving, and learning while being driven to achieve goals. In addition to this, my spiritual gifts are Leadership (Administration) and Teaching.

I have always had a passion to connect with and inspire men to live strong, masculine lives that impact the world around them. This has played itself out in leading men in the steel industry, leading men’s ministry, and coaching/mentoring men in their careers and in life in general. This blog is another step to expanding this passion.

Using my unique design I am on mission to maximize my own impact as a masculine man and in turn lead other men in these lessons so they too can maximize their impact. I want men to succeed in life. This is the reason for the blog and what drives me. I will continue to build on this and take action to expand this mission.

What about you? What is your mission? Have you identified it? What are you doing to pursue it? Take action to pursue your mission. The mission-minded man knows where he is going and why. This breeds confidence.

Develop a Continuous Improvement Mindset and Take Action

Developing a continuous improvement mindset is another key to growing in confidence as a man. I know I am stronger today than I was yesterday because I work every day to grow stronger. I have daily routines to improve physically, mentally, and spiritually. So whatever I was yesterday, I am a little better today. This mindset brings confidence.

To develop a continuous improvement mindset requires two critical characteristics, humility and courage.

Humility

I don’t know everything. As a matter of fact, the more I learn, the more I realize how much I do not know. This fuels my drive to learn. I am convinced, God willing, that I will continue to learn up to my last day of life.

But many of us as men limit ourselves by not listening. We shut down our minds to some ideas. This could be because of personal, ideological, or philosophical differences. We automatically go into a mode that closes our minds to the possibility that some ideas might have value. As a result, we gain nothing and limit our ability to learn something that may help us to improve.

A lack of humility hinders growth and the rate of improvement we experience. A continuous improvement mindset is always listening and aggressively looking for the nugget we can apply to grow. What can I use that aligns with my mission and will help me have a greater impact? This is a mindset we must develop.

Ask yourself about how you respond to new information. Are you generally open to ideas, or do you automatically shut down and close your mind? If you change this and dig into ideas who knows what kind of golden nuggets you may mine.

Develop the humility to learn new things.

Courage

Put yourself out there as a learner. Developing a continuous improvement mindset requires courage. If we want to improve rapidly, we need to identify our gaps, express them to the right people that can help us, and then listen. Too often, we as men do not put ourselves out there. We have a hard time admitting our struggles, failures, and ignorance about a topic. We will not admit we have gaps between who we are and who we want to be. Too often, we are embarrassed or self-conscience with too much concern about what others think. So we hold it in and miss the opportunity to grow. Courage is required.

We have to be more determined to improve our lives than we are to protect our egos. We have to develop a mindset that we could care less about what other people think and move forward. Those “other people” will never care as much as we do about our improvement. We cannot allow our concern about them to run our lives. We need to take control. We need to have enough courage to man up and put ourselves out there.

The longer I live, the more I realize that everyone has baggage. Everyone has a struggle. Some have the courage to admit it, and some do not. Do not be the guy that does not. Be determined to improve and have the courage to make it happen.

This process of admitting our struggles and asking for help will itself develop strength and confidence. Every time we exercise courage and push through pain and hardship, we become stronger. This should be our norm. We should routinely face hard challenges and step up to them no matter what the cost. Every time we do, we separate ourselves from the pack. In doing so we will lead with courage. We will gain confidence.

Engage with High Value Men that Push You to Excellence

Identify men in your life that are of a similar mindset. Find men that want to be more purposeful in life. They want to have an impact. They want accountability and strength to help stay on the path to becoming a better man. Reach out to these types of men and start working together.

In today’s world, this can happen by utilizing technology. You can have routine virtual meetings. You do not have to live near each other. Though it is always good to meet face to face and build that bond it is not needed to get started.

Think about who you can engage with. Maybe it is someone you interact with on social media that you have noticed is committed to going in the direction you want to go. Reach out to two or three men you know through your church, work, gym, or other social groups and start working together.

There are many men’s organizations online today that may fit you. My group is The Fraternity of Excellence. Being a member of this group has helped me tremendously. It has put me in association with high-value men that keep me on the path. They, too, want to be better men. There are other groups similar to FoE. Do your research and find a group that fits you and your path.

Being on a team of good men is like putting gas on the fire when it comes to improving. In this article, I go into detail about the advantages of being connected to high-value men. Read, Tremendous Advantages of Connecting with High-Value Brothers. Improve your confidence as a man by being connected to other high-value men.

Accept the Challenge

“A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.” – Mark Twain

Confidence can be developed. But like anything in life you must do the work. You need to determine you want to change and then start taking steps to make it happen.

More important than having a great plan is to start DOING. You have to get started. If something in this article hit the mark and you know it would help you gain confidence do it right now. Finish this article and start doing it.

Making a plan does not change anything. Thinking about it does not change anything. Talking about it does not change anything. ONLY DOING CHANGES THINGS. Be the man you were called to be and DO!

Love you brothers!

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In your corner,

“As Iron Sharpens Iron, so one man sharpens another. “