There are how to articles on building confidence that list things to do to build up your confidence. That’s the scientific way. How does faith help us build our confidence? Can we build our confidence in a scientific manner while also considering the place of faith in building confidence? Let’s consider how to grow confidence through science and faith.

Lessons on Growing Confidence

In last week’s article I shared where I am in building my confidence through two very important insights. If you missed last week’s article you can read it now: Is There a Secret to Confidence? | Growing Confidence

In this week’s article I want to highlight a few practices from science and faith that can assist in building confidence.  In my experience, the faith practices that assist in developing confidence are those that help me persevere. The scientific practices I am just beginning to learn. I want to share what I am learning

Confidence: The Science

Let’s start with the science. You can get that list of ways to boost confidence if you just want some quick tips. Y’all know me though. I want the podcast that goes into detail on how to act on those scientific tips. I listened to a podcast the other day that interviewed a high performance psychologist Dr. Michael Gervais. The topic was performing under pressure and performing with confidence.

Dr. Michael Gervais works with top performing athletes, musicians, Olympians, and others that are faced with maintaining their confidence under pressure. This brings an interesting focus to building confidence. Dr. Gervais speaks of training our confidence, in a similar manner to how we train for a sport or activity that we love.

Train Your Mind

The emphasis is on training your confidence in low pressure, calm environments. You then work your way up to what Dr. Gervais calls progressively more aggressive environments. You might think that the process to actually doing this would be complicated. It’s not. It’s actually something I’ve been sharing with readers on this blog from the beginning. You need to rid yourself of your negative thoughts…they are holding you back .

According to Dr. Gervais, it’s not preparation or past success that affects your confidence. It’s those things that you tell yourself. If you don’t train and practice your confidence in the calm places, you might freeze under pressure when it really matters.

Take Steps

For several weeks now I have been considering how much I hold back when there are important things to say. I started to wonder if I could help myself by starting to say more of what I think even when it’s a small comment. I realized that I wasn’t practicing speaking out with the little things, so of course I lacked the confidence to speak out when it really mattered.

That’s what Dr. Gervais is talking about. For us to gain our confidence and keep it when things are more intense, we need to be working at it all the time. He suggests writing out the bad thoughts and replacing them with good thoughts. Those negative and limiting thoughts are important to address and replace. However, this article is looking at confidence through science and faith. What about faith practices?

Confidence: The Faith

How do faith practices fit into this athletic training image of how to work hard at building our confidence?

At first glance you might not see it. Let’s look back at my article that I wrote last week: Is There a Secret to Confidence? I share how taking action and perseverance are ways that help me grow more confident. This relates to the struggle of the athlete on the field and not shrinking back when the spotlight is on you or you find yourself in a difficult situation. In those places you have to take action and you have to persevere. Faith is the same way.

You start small and take small steps to practice your faith. But you have to build it up. If you stay at that first step, that starting level, you will not deepen your faith. If you give up when it gets difficult you will not deepen your faith.

Confidence in life comes from training our minds as well as training our hearts.

Train Your Heart

When I am working to train my heart I do it through prayer and building a community.

Prayer and building a community around you of those that share your faith are important for confidence building. I know that this is a different angle than you hear at church, but don’t worry. I understand that in terms of growing your faith prayer brings us closer to God and a community helps us grow closer to God also.

Yet look at it from the angle of how prayer and community building affects your inner being, which therefore affects your confidence.

Open your heart

If I am closed off to prayer or to the community around me, I might be so caught up in myself that I miss the message that I am to give to the world. If I open my heart, however, I can see the needs around me. I can see how my gifts can serve the world and I can act confidently.

Confidence through Science and Faith

From looking both at science and faith we can see that they work together to build confidence by building and training both the mind and the heart.

Where is your current focus, mind or heart, in terms of how you are working to increase your confidence?

Behavior Challenge: Take some time this week to decide how you can better train your heart and mind to improve your confidence.

This is just the beginning of my posts on science and faith. I’m excited to share that I will post about science and faith once a month. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to my email list.

Listen to the Podcast: Your Ultimate Guide to Performing Under Pressure and Unleashing Confidence – Dr. Michael Gervais is BACK – Science of Success Podcast.

Around some people there is an air of confidence and around others the lack of confidence is obvious. Still others are somewhere in the middle. Is there a secret to confidence? When we are confident we are more likely to do the things we want to do. However, confidence isn’t as easy to grow in ourselves as it is to spot in other people.

The secret to confidence

I am working to grow my confidence. I say grow because it doesn’t happen overnight.

I can’t say that I have the secret to gaining more confidence, but I’ve learned the importance of sharing where you are. So here is where I am in growing an attitude of confidence and discovering the secret to confidence.

It’s about perseverance and action.

The way to confidence through perseverance

As I was drafting my thoughts for this article, I realized that perseverance through difficult situations has influenced my level of confidence. There are several situations that I can pull up in my mind that have been trying situations through which I’ve persevered.

I’ve faced each of those trials without giving up as soon as it got hard. This gives me the confidence that I can face present and future trials confidently. It is the ability to persevere which grows my confidence.

The way to confidence through action

JUST ____.

I know you think I’m quoting Nike, but I’m not. Or maybe I am. In this case, however, you get to answer the fill in without the visual of the commercial.

Seriously, it took me months to regrow my confidence in the level of my writing skills after I started this blog.

JUST…whatever it is you need to do.

I had to JUST WRITE.

Even though I have always loved writing and have always done well in writing, picking it up again to start this blog meant that I had to shake the dust off my writing skills. I hadn’t written anything (I’d even stopped journaling!) and here I wanted to go public with my posts!

Those first few posts were difficult, because I lacked the full confidence in my skills that I once had. However, I regained my confidence in my writing skills by persevering through those first few drafts and posts….through those first few months.

I had to JUST WRITE.

In conclusion, I think that confidence is a muscle. You can work that muscle out and you can’t expect it to grow unless you do.

What’s your fill in answer? Today I need to JUST _____.

Behavior Challenge: Pick it. Do it. Answer the above fill in and do it.

Finding time for silence and reflection often gets pushed aside. There’s too much to do to. You’ve been going, going, going and just want to lounge on the couch and watch a movie or listen to music. Maybe you don’t like silence. Maybe reflection isn’t something you’re used to and you can’t understand why someone would want to be so thoughtful about everything. Some people enjoy silence and reflection and others are struggling to use it wisely. Which one are you?

What we avoid: silence, reflection, and veggies.

I had a strange thought yesterday and I want to run it by you. I’ve been making a lot of changes to what and how I eat, so keep that in mind.

Our language about vegetables and silence are more similar than you’d think. Veggies are rich in nutrients and they are good for our bodies. Silence is rich in opportunity for clarity and it’s good for our minds.

Yet we like to avoid them.

Why do we always blame the veggies?

“Opps, I got too many veggies!” I bet we’ve all said that many times.

Or me just after my meal tonight, “I ate too many vegetables.”

Veggies aren’t the bad stuff. Do we really get or eat too many vegetables?

Thanks to some reading in this area, I am working to think different thoughts about vegetables. Like this, “Alright, I’m good. Half my plate is veggies.”

Or “I love steamed broccoli!”

Or “I ate too much meat (or bread, or potatoes).”

Do you hear the difference? With the thinking about veggies as something negative we are framing our experience of veggies as negative. Therefore we don’t eat as many of them. Veggies are really good for us though, so thinking of them in a positive way will likely improve our health.

The same goes for silence and reflection.

Why do we always blame the silence?

Ok, maybe not always, but think about sayings like these, “It’s too quiet in here!”

“I just spent way too much time thinking.”

Are you going to explode if it’s too quiet? (Extroverts, I see you nodding your heads yes.) Did you think that you could make a big decision without a bit of thought?

It’s so difficult these days to unplug, but it’s important for our clarity.

We open ourselves up to more clarity when we are able to spend time thinking about next steps, future goals, what we really want to do, and how we want to do it.

If we can see how our clarity is affected by our thoughts, we can work towards saying things like, “This quiet is just what I need to do some reflection on my day and see if there is anything to be learned from the day.” Or “I just had a very helpful reflective session and I feel clearer about my next steps.”

Silence is as good as veggies. Let’s not waste it or pass it up.

Do you enjoy silence and reflection or is it something that you have to work at?

Behavior Challenge: Turn off your screen after this post and sit in silence for a minute. Or, if you usually do things on the computer while listening to something in the background turn that background sound off. Be present to what you are working on or doing.

You thought I was going to make you eat veggies. That’s the Bonus Challenge.

However, if you are looking for a different way to approach your health and weight loss, or want to know where I got my energy for vegetables, read Mini Habits for Weight Loss (I currently don’t have any affiliate links).

Here’s more reading on changing those negative thoughts: What’s a Limiting Belief and Why Should I Care?

There are only a few days left in the year!  Some scramble to finish goals strong and others wish that they hadn’t given up on a goal. Can you relate? Maybe you are someone that didn’t set goals for the past year. Maybe you are wondering how to make the coming year a more meaningful and focused year.  Journaling is a helpful tool for gathering your end of the year thoughts. Read below for journal prompts for the end of the year.

Did you try the holiday journal prompts?

Before we get to the end of the year journal prompts, did you try any of the holiday journal prompts for the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas? The prompt I had the most success with was the one that encouraged going back through the day to identify where others helped you and where you were helped by others.

If you tried any of the holiday journal prompts, I would love your thoughts on them. Leave me a comment on this page.

End of the Year Journal Prompts on Celebrations

If you missed my post on celebrating your successes you can read it now. It’s important to celebrate your wins from the year. One way to acknowledge your wins and reflect on them is to journal about it.

1. What is one success that I celebrated well?
2. Were there any successes that I could have celebrated better? If so, name them. Is there a win that I haven’t celebrated?
3. How can I improve my process for coming up with ways to celebrate and following through with those celebrations?

End of the Year Journal Prompts on Attitude

1. What was the most helpful attitude that I embraced this year? (What helped me grow?)
2. What was the least helpful attitude that I embraced this year? (What held me back?)
3. How can I begin to change the least helpful attitude?

End of the Year Journal Prompts on Clarity

1. Am I resisting setting a goal in a particular area or not acting on a desire to change?
2. If so, am I resisting the goal, or not acting on the desire to change, because I am afraid of either success or failure? Name the fear specifically.
3. What area in my life causes me the most pain and struggle right now? (There’s so much room to grow!)

Try the journal prompts for the end of the year!

Journaling can seem intimidating, especially if it’s not a habit. However, it is a great tool for processing and gathering thoughts. I hope that the above journal prompts will get the wheels turning for you. Grab a pen, or pencil if you like, and let’s start writing! Write with the intention of reflecting on what went well this year and what needs improvement, so that next year will be even better!

Behavior Challenge: Pick one of the three categories of celebrations, attitude, and clarity to journal about each day of the remaining days of the year.

How do you reflect on your year?

Is there an area of focus that I didn’t mention that you journal about at the end of the year?

For more reading on attitudes that will help you grow:

Develop a Grateful Mind

What is a Limiting Belief and Why Should We Care? 

For more reading on clarity:

2 Ways to Cope When You Don’t Know the End Goal

3 Tips to Jump-Start Your Personal Reflection Habit