Five Tips to Help Grow Your Confidence
Tips on how a self-proclaimed introvert became a more confident extrovert
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Hello there all! If you’ve met me in person particularly in a business context, you might have an opinion that I’m an outgoing, confident person. The truth is actually sort of the opposite. I would definitely consider myself an introvert, and outside of work, you’ll most likely find me doing something by myself. I grew up a very shy kid, which sort of made me an easy target for light bullying all the way from grade school to undergrad. Even to this day, there are a handful personal social interactions that cause me to freeze up.
But what I recently learned is that confidence can be a learned skill! By adopting what I’ve shared below, I’ve been able to maintain a relatively confident persona. Trust me, it’s something I always have to work at since it doesn’t come naturally, but it’s been very effective in helping me have successful personal and business relationships.
Let’s keep this intro brief and jump directly into the tips!
1. Become more knowledgeable in a specific domain.
This first tip is more so useful in a business context. A big reason that people tend to exhibit an underwhelming confidence in the business world is because they don’t know what they’re talking about. I’ve definitely found myself in that position and still do from time to time! So the best thing you can do here is to get better educated on your domain. For me, that means constantly keeping up with what’s the latest and greatest in the machine learning world, and fortunately we live in a time where excellent platforms like Udacity, Skillshare, or even YouTube can teach you pretty much anything. (My wife still likes to poke fun at me for watching a YouTube video on how to properly cut an onion. 😂)
2. Get to a state where you are happy with your physical self image.
In 2015, I chose to go on a weight loss journey in which I lost 100 pounds, and the surprising thing to me is that while I did not set out to do this, I found that because I was much happier with my physical self image, I became a much more confident person. Now, I want to be…
