Confidence is Contagious

If you could choose one word to sum up 2020 so far, confidence likely would not make your list…

Now suspend reality for a moment and consider what it would be like if confidence actually was the preeminent word that shaped your life now.

How would you be feeling? Or not feeling?

What would you be doing differently?

How would other people experience you now?

Get a really clear picture of your most confident, grounded self.

Okay, back to reality! Now, take a moment to check in with yourself and assess how confident you’re currently feeling. Wherever you fall on the confidence spectrum, join us this month as we explore how you can grow your confidence and the value it has in your life!

Rewiring Your Brain

You may be wondering how you can build your confidence, especially when your circumstances don’t encourage it. We have some good news! Research in neuroscience has shown that even if you don’t feel confident, you can learn to be.

New York University Neuroscientist Stacie Grossman Bloom shares in this interview that as we strengthen our neurological pathways by forming new synaptic connections, we reinforce what we know and believe in, building our confidence.

Bloom states that “Every time we learn or experience something, those incidents and the choices we make shape us. Sometimes that learning becomes reinforced and it becomes hard coded as part of who we are. So, if we make a decision to be more confident and we practice at it, we can reinforce that learning. The more we practice anything, the better we get and the more likely it is to become a habit.”

And Bloom’s research lines up with what we know about growth mindset and how we can choose to allow challenges to become learning opportunities that strengthen our resolve. When we approach life with a “I will try this” attitude, instead of defeat, we grow our brain’s capacity for hard things and model this for others.

When you speak and act with confidence, you encourage confidence in others. Think back to a time when you really showed up confidently and the impact you had. Maybe you were presenting to a major client or teaching your child how to do something you really love for the first time. How did your confidence make you feel?

Brain imaging studies have shown that when we are focusing on positive things, we activate the “values areas” in our striatum and prefrontal cortex. And as we engage these regions of our brain and the circuits involved in reward and pleasure, we grow our confidence and feel good. And the confidence others experience when they are around us leads them to become more engaged and motivated.