As if

OK, so who thinks they are not confident?  Many of us feel like that sometimes, perhaps even a lot of the time (if we were prepared to admit it).  Who would like to feel confident more of the time?  I guess most of us would.

Well, here's a little adapted NLP/coaching trick, based broadly, with a bit of poetic licence and a few other NLP concepts thrown in, on Milton Erickson's idea, 'you can pretend anything and master it'.

To start with, remember a specific time when you have really felt and acted confidently.  Yes, you have been confident at some point in your life, even if it was when you were 10 and organising your friends in the playground to play your favourite game at break time. Or what about when you are cooking a meal you know you do really well?  Or when you are telling a funny story to your best, best friend/sister/mother (ie anyone who doesn't judge you)?

If any of you are telling yourself that you are never confident, think of someone you know or someone famous who is really confident and imagine that you are them for a minute.

Right, now pause for a moment and really remember (or imagine) how it felt to be confident - see what you saw, hear what you heard, and really feel those feelings of confidence that you felt then.  Bring them back to mind and make the picture bigger and brighter, louder and clearer, and really feel those lovely feelings of confidence.  Imagine yourself putting on a confidence coat, with all of those good feelings and memories of confidence woven in to the fabric, surrounding you, making you feel secure; sure that your confidence is all around you.  Decide what colour it's going to be, and exactly what shape and style. Make sure you know exactly what this coat looks like and how it feels to wear it. Every time you put on this confidence coat now, the feeling of brilliant, uplifting confidence you have just re-created will come flooding back.

Go through the sequence again, re-creating the sounds, images and feelings of that time when you were really confident, and feel that great feeling even more intensely this time.  Put on your confidence coat, look at  yourself in a mirror if you have one nearby while you are wearing your confidence coat and see yourself smiling, standing upright, taller. Notice how you stand, how you look, giving off messages of cool, calm, confidence.

Now practice it - think of a specific time you want to be confident.  Don't try to do it all the time at first; make it easy for yourself to succeed.  Now you've thought of your moment when you want to be confident, imagine youself being in that situation wearing your lovely confidence coat.  Notice in detail how you act, how you look and how you feel.

(By the way, it doesn't have to be a coat if that image doesn't work for you - it could be a confidence bracelet, confidence socks, whatever you like, as long as you know exactly what it looks like and how it feels to wear it.)

Next step: go and actually do it in the situation you've chosen!  You have nothing to lose, and, trust me - it really works.  Please let me know how it goes.  Have fun!