How to Be Confident in any Situation at Work

there could be a variety of situations in which you need to be confident it could be a job interview with your dream company could be a performance review with a boss who daunts you it could be a presentation in front of the whole department but just because you need to be confident in those situations doesn't mean you will be nerves stress negative selft talk fear of being judged can all impede your ability to feel confident in yourself in those moments and to project confidence at work plus if you've had failures in the past past situations in which you clearly lacked confidence and it showed these can send you into a downward spiral that's really hard to get out of confidence may seem to many to be an elusive quality that some people are just born with but rather than give up admit to feat and convince yourself you can never be confident at work I want you to spend the next 10 or so minutes watching this video because here I'm going to help you understand exactly how you can be confident in any situation at work let's dig into it the first step happens before the event or situation that you need to be confident in you need to use positive visualization to mentally prepare yourself for that situation now before you click off this video thinking this is a bit too woo woo for me hear me out when you're stressed before a presentation it's probably because your mind is full of fears of everything that could possibly go wrong you are going to forget your lines the audience will laugh at you the presentation slides won't work what you're doing In This Moment is you are practicing negative visualization you're imagining all the negative things that could go wrong and you're telling yourself that is what's going to happen Tony Robbins says when you visualize something over and over again your mind starts to believe that that has already happened so when you visualize your presentation being a disaster your mind starts to believe that that's the reality and then you will have no hope of approaching the presentation in a confident way but just as you can practice negative visualization you can also practice positive visualization and this is how you do it first visualize the specific situation that you need to be confident in so for example a presentation visualize that presentation how many people are in the room waiting to hear your presentation who is in the audience what does the room look like what are you wearing where are you standing then second visualize yourself succeeding in that event or in that situation so for the presentation imagine yourself remembering every line that you need to say imagine yourself remembering every key point that you need to communicate imagine the audience applauding you after you've set a profound thought during the presentation imagine your boss congratulating you after the presentation for an amazing event then hold on to this feeling as you enter the Pres presentation room this is positive visualization and it works it removes all of the negative selft talk from our minds and it replaces it with positive self-talk if it's good enough for elite athletes and actors like Jim KY then it's good enough for you to at least give it a try it's also very effective to remind yourself why you are in that situation why were you invited to the meeting why were you invited to give a presentation and I bet if you think about this carefully you'll realize that you weren't invited to these situations because of some oversight people don't have time for this in business when managers and leaders invite you to a meeting when they invite you to give a presentation when they invite you to a job interview it's because they feel that you are capable of succeeding they feel that you have what it takes and it's this knowledge that should help you feel confident in that moment you just need to make sure that your negative selft talk doesn't breed insecurity and get in the way of you meeting their expectations before that situation in which you want to be more confident spend some time thinking about how you're going to answer this question why are you there and refer back to your competence your strengths your past experience and your past achievements and I'm sure you can come up with at least one valid reason as to why you are involved in that situation hold on to this reason as you walk into that situation into that meeting into that presentation and into that job interview you to help you feel more confident in that moment once you've worked on your mindset with step one and step two then you need to work on your physical state because this will have a profound impact on how confident you feel in that moment I've talked about this many times in my body language videos but I'll mention it again just to make sure we're all on the same page Amy Cy in 2010 conducted research where she found that when you adopt confident body language postures or power poses it helps you feel more confident in that situation it increases your testosterone which is your strength hormone it decreases your cortisol which is your stress hormone and it helps you feel more confident in that moment it's basically a way of changing your mental state by changing your physical state so just as in step one and two of this video we talked about how to change your mental state you can approach it the other way around as well by tackling your physical state first so what power POS can you use to make this confidence shift well if you are familiar with yoga you may have a few power poses in your mind already the warrior pose is one that comes to my mind right now where you are lunging forward on one leg with your arms straight above your head the Superwoman pose is one that Amy Cy refers to in her research and her Ted Talk this is where your feet are placed slightly wider than hip width apart your hands are on your hips and your head is high with your chin lifted bit a really good physical state to adopt as you are walking into a room say a meeting or a presentation that you might be a little bit nervous about is to look straight ahead as you are walking to that room look into the distance this will force you to keep your eye level up higher it will force you to lift your chin a bit it will force you to use open body language postures rather than closed where you might be folding your arms and it will help you feel more confident as you are approaching the room that you were going to enter and from my experience if you walk into that room with a confident feeling about yourself then that confident feeling will last throughout the meeting or the presentation that you have to give the fourth way to be confident in any situation at work is to focus on the other person or to focus on other people essentially what you're doing here is you're moving the main focus from yourself to somebody else when you move the main focus from yourself to someone or something else you feel a sense of relief from the stress that's been building up in your mind and in your body as well you see it's likely that you don't feel confident in that situation because you are worrying too much about how you're coming across you're worrying about what others think of you you're worrying whether you sound intelligent or not you're worrying about whether people will notice if you forgot one of your lines all of these worries focus on you which makes you feel a whole lot more stressed than you should by taking your focus away from you and putting it on someone or something else it relieves you from this pressure it relieves you from the stress that you've been building up it sounds easy right but how do you do this in conversations well try to think about the message that the other person is trying to tell you think about the problem that they would like your help with think about the outcome they would like to achieve with you think about how you can contribute your confidence to help them achieve that outcome it's about shifting your focus again just like we shifted your physical state to help you be confident in any situation the fifth way to be confident in any situation at work is to practice confident communication this is where you purposely choose words and phrases that help you to sound confident instead of not confident you see when you're feeling a lack of confidence it shows up in your non-verbal as well as your verbal communication and you would choose words and phrases that make you sound insecure rather than confident this is noticed by people around you and it causes them to question the value that you're contributing it causes them to question whether you are competent as a professional and it doesn't make them see you as a confident leader that you would like them to see you as here are some common communication mistakes that will give away your lack of confidence a quiet voice this is where you don't have enough volume to be clearly heard and understood you try to hide your voice in an attempt to hide yourself or to hide your thoughts tentative speech this is where you use language that makes you sound indecisive for example kind of sort of Maybe Might somewhat probably veryy tentative speech has a strategic purpose in that it can help you sound more inclusive but it doesn't help you sound confident in fact it's a speech characteristic of people who lack confidence in themselves self-depreciating language this is where you belittle yourself undervalue yourself or you're excessively modest for example introducing yourself as I'm just a graduate programmer or deflecting praise with responses like actually I think I could have done a better job these are examples of self appreciating language and they do not make you sound confident in that moment now because it's a little harder to identify if and when you're using these communication habits it can make it a bit more difficult to change so I recommend that you start to become more aware of how you communicate start to become more aware of whether you use any of the communication mistakes that I've mentioned in this part of the video keep a journal of the communication mistakes that you make make and when you do make them make sure that you write them down in your Journal if you're going to write them down in your Journal then I encourage you to cross them out and to replace them with a more confident sentence it won't happen overnight but over time as you do this process you will be able to change your communication and you will be able to sound more confident in those moments the sixth way to sound more confident in any situation at work is to make personal commitments for that situation for example if you're going to a meeting and you want to be confident in that meeting make a personal commitment to share at least one idea in that meeting if you're attending a conference and you want to be more visible and confident at that conference then make a personal commitment to ask at least one question to the keynote speaker if you're going to a networking event and you want to be more confident at that networking event then make a personal commitment to introduce yourself to and start a conversation with at least at least three people personal commitments require planning they force you to think about the event and set goals for how you want to behave or communicate in that situation basically you commit yourself to a specific action and that specific action will help you be or at least appear confident in that moment and if you're thinking about the situation in advance then why not use the positive visualization exercise that we talked about earlier in this video the seventh way to be confident in any situation at work is to take initiative specifically to be the first to do something for example at a networking event be the first to introduce yourself to someone don't wait for other people to approach you and put yourself in a passive mode be proactive and introduce yourself to other people in meetings greet other people as you walk into the room offer a handshake and start a conversation with them during performance reviews proactively ask your boss about areas in which you can improve rather than waiting for them to bring it up these are all ways you can take initiative in that situation to put yourself in active leadership mode and come across as more confident in that moment now when you are required to introduce yourself well this cont test your confidence and some of you watching may not be confident in that situation so if you want a structure to follow to know how to introduce yourself properly at work and confidently at work watch this video up here thank you so much for watching this video I hope you got a lot of valuable tips and insights from it if you did like it please hit the like button below subscribe to my channel as well for more content like this every week don't forget to hit the notification Bell so you know exactly when I release videos every week thank you again for watching and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Kara Ronin

Views: 23,077

Keywords: leadership, career, career tips, How to be confident in any situation, How to be confident, How to be more confident, Be confident in any situation, Be more confident in any situation, How to be confident at work, Be more confident at work, Confidence at work, Confidence in social situations, Social confidence, Want to be confident at work, Confident in any situation, Want to be confident in any situation

Id: Y_UgGn6KLq4

Length: 13min 19sec (799 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 25 2024