Self-confidence is an important key to life and career success. This career success coach has learned that self-confidence is an upward spiral. Self-confidence leads to career success, which leads to increased self-confidence, which leads to higher levels of career success, and so on.
You might be saying, “That’s great, but how do I become self-confident if I’m new in my job or if I haven’t had a lot of success to bolster my self-confidence?” There’s an old saying that applies here: “Fake it till you make it.” In other words, act as if you are a career success already. This will help you succeed. Your success will help you build your self-confidence.
How do you “fake it, till you make it?” As Tweet 16 in Success Tweets says, begin with affirmations. If you’re in a new job, tell yourself something like, “I have the skills and desire to succeed in this job,” several times a day. If you repeat this to yourself often enough, you will begin to believe it. This will help you perform at the level necessary in order to actually succeed in your job.
Affirmations are positive self talk. The idea behind affirmations is simple. When you think of the things to which you aspire, like becoming a career success, and then tell yourself that you are a career success, you will believe that you can become a career success. More important, you will be more likely to do the work it takes to make your career success aspirations come true.
As I mentioned in my discussion of Success Tweet 2, I follow my own career success coach advice. A couple of years ago, I wrote a book called Star Power, Common Sense Ideas for Career and Life Success. I used a star to depict this model. I urged readers to think of themselves as a star and to aspire to becoming a career and life star. I like the star metaphor. Daily, I repeat the following affirmation to myself: “Bud Bilanich is a star.”
I’ve done a lot of working in making this affirmation a reality – redoing my website, developing better promotional materials, speaking, writing books, blogging.
I’ve also done something a little unusual. A few years ago, right after Star Power was published, I went to the “Name a Star” website and named a star after myself. Now I can say, “Bud Bilanich is a star” and really believe it, because Bud Bilanich really is a star.
Bud Bilanich the star is Catalog Number TYC 868-1011-1 in the constellation Leo. Bud Bilanich has a Visual Magnitude indicator of 11.2. Right Ascension is 11h 58m 21s. Declination is 11degrees, 43,’18.”
I don’t have a clue what all of these things mean, except the constellation Leo, which I chose because my birthday is August 14. But I do know one thing. Bud Bilanich is a star!
How’s that for an affirmation?
Affirmations work. I have become a minor star in the career success coach world.
You don’t need to go to the lengths I did to make your personal affirmations work either. Just decide what you want, visualize yourself as having it. Tell yourself you have it. Repeat that affirmation several times a day. Then do whatever it takes to make your affirmation come true.
Affirmations alone, however, are not enough to guarantee your career success. You have to do the work. Spend the time necessary to accomplish your goals. Volunteer for projects that will get you noticed. Become an expert on your company, its competitors, and your industry. In other words, bust your butt, and you will succeed.
The common sense point here is simple. Successful people are self-confident. If you want to become self-confident, you need to become an optimist, face your fears, and hang around with self-confident people. Your self-confidence will improve as you begin to become a life and career success. The self-confidence => career success => self-confidence cycle is an upward spiral. You have to enter the cycle somewhere. You might not have a strong track record as you begin your career, move into a new job, or start a business. Therefore, you have to “fake it till you make it” by “acting as if” you are a career success.” Find ways to bolster your self-confidence until you have some real successes on which you can build. Tweet 16 in Success Tweets says, “Use affirmations to realize your vision of your success. Affirmations are statements about the future stated in the present tense.” Use this career success coach advice. Affirmations are a great tool for helping you “fake it till you make it.”
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