5 Weird Confidence Building Exercises

Imagine for a minute if you were totally confident in yourself……………..

What would you do today that you were not doing yesterday? What could you achieve if you were completely self confident?

Now, I don’t mean you have to be good at everything, but you’re willing to give everything a go, just try it and see what happens, and if you fell flat on your face you would either walk away from it having tried it, or you would try again until you got it right.

Well, there’s a few things holding us back from being confident, and believe me, every single person reading these words right now has the ability to have total confidence in themselves. What’s holding us back? It’s your thoughts, beliefs, habits and actions.

If I were to say to you ‘Let’s climb Mount Everest for charity’ what would your immediate thoughts be – maybe it was ‘I could never do that’, ‘I’m not fit enough’, ‘I don’t like heights’, ‘I don’t like the outdoors’, ‘I don’t like the cold’, but someone who was totally confident and they were interested would probably say ‘Okay, let’s give it a go’ or ‘When do you want to do it’. Wouldn’t that amount of confidence in yourself be amazing.
3 Attributes of truly confident people:

1. They don’t mind trying new things, even if they’ve never done it before.
2. They don’t let what others may or may not think influence their decision to do something.
3. They have let go of their inhibitions and don’t mind letting their guards down.

I’d like to share with you 5 weird confidence building exercises

1. The Wrong Shop exercise

• This exercise will give you a strange sense of power and control over yourself and make you really drop your guard to feel confident.
• Walk into any type of shop and ask for something totally weird, that the shop does not sell. For example walk into a newsagents and ask if they sell the latest 42 inch flat screen TV, or go into an Apple store and ask for a PC, or McDonalds and ask for a KFC Bucket.
• The aim of this is to let go of your inhibitions and get over yourself, be willing to make a fool of yourself and learn to not care what others may or may not think about you. This is an exercise I tried myself on a number of occasions a few years ago and it’s totally liberating. I first heard it from Jamie Smart who was coaching some telesales people who were anxious about cold calling.

2. Ask for a hug

• Stand in the middle of a busy street, hold up a plackard asking for a hug for a special occasion and get someone to film it.
• Overcome that fear of rejection and to release your inhibitions. Watch the video below to learn more.

3. Be wrong on purpose

• A lot of us are so hung up on always being right and feel really self conscious when we have been found out to be wrong about something, and can feel really embarrassed. This exercise is designed to let go of that altogether.
• Whenever someone asks you a question about anything, give them the wrong answer on purpose, but make it so wrong that the other person knows it’s wrong as well, for example If someone asks you ‘Oh who was that actor in that film’ you might say ‘Oh! that was Christopher Columbus’ You’ll most likely get strange looks.
• If you do this often enough it will get you over always feeling the need to be right. Of course when you are wrong always admit it and drop it.

4. Radical Honesty

• Whenever someone asks for your opinion on something, be totally honest with them. However, when you first start being completely honest, always say to the person ‘Do you want my honest opinion or do you want me to say what you want to hear?’ that way it takes them off guard, but they will always say honest opinion.
• People come to nice people for an opinion when they know what the answer will be, but people go to honest people when they want a valued opinion.

5. Learn to feel uncomfortable

• The only way to grow as a person is when you are outside your comfort zone. Nobody ever grows inside their comfort zone.
• The next time you are asked to do something, or think about doing something that you feel uncomfortable with, say yes to it immediately. For example if a friend asks you to a party that you know will make you feel uncomfortable say yes immediately to it. You don’t have to stay all night, but show up, feel that uncomfortable feeling and then leave shortly after.
• If you can do this all throughout your life, you will never be afraid to try anything.

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