Boost your confidence - be prepared!

How many times have you got caught up in worrying about something you want to do? The fear that builds up can sap away at your confidence until you start to convince yourself that either you will never succeed, things are impossible or that you don't really want to do it anyway. It's certainly happened to me before.

One of the tricks that I have found to be really helpful in the past is to remind myself that its normal to feel apprehensive before taking on something new. I literally take myself back to basics and take some time remembering how I have felt in the past when I was less than confident about something. I go over in my head the steps I took to achieve what I wanted and most importantly;the lessons that I learnt. I remind myself of past successes no matter how small.

Most of the time we tend to feel lacking in confidence because we are unsure of something. There are grey areas in what we can expect or what we think is expected of us. We think of all the things that may go wrong or worry about what we don't know. We can also get caught up in the fear of failure and worrying about how we will look to others.

Preparation – Think about the things that are bothering you. Write a list and work through them one by one; eliminating them as much as possible. Will you get asked something you can’t answer? What will the situation be?

Cover your bases - Find out as much as you can, ask questions; take your time to prepare. (Beware not to allow preparation turn into procrastination).

When we are prepared we automatically feel more confident. Remember a time when you felt completely confident and prepared for a situation. Perhaps it was having a specific conversation with someone or meeting a group of new people. What did you do in the past? How can you prepare? Do you need to think about the aspects of the conversation you want to have? What kind of response do you think you might get? What might they ask you? Is there anything you can find out before hand? What sort of people are they, what are their interests.

How did you go about finding out this information before? Who could you ask? There are lots of ways in which you can increase your confidence by being prepared. Think about what fits the situation and get prepared!