I was very surprised when I went for my first session on leadership and assertiveness with my amazing life coach, Anita Giovannoni. She said to me: “Do you know you are actually confident and assertive? You just don’t see it - but others can?“. I thought, “Wow! That’s pretty cool!". However, I still feel I have a lot of work to do - to take my career to the next level and to become a confident, successful leader or manager.

Confidence, self-esteem and assertiveness are all interlinked and the key to achieving success, whether it be in the workplace or at home, is simply by having healthy self-esteem. This, in turn, will lead you to be more confident and even more assertive!

One of the ways to become more confident is to be happy, and to illuminate yourself – bring out your sunshine! Another is to convert the negatives into positives. For example, when you face a conflict situation at work don’t think of it as a bad thing that would bring you down, rather take it as a challenge. A learning curve from which you can grow and become better at what you do. This will make you feel good about yourself, which will lead to a boost in your confidence.

Lack of self-esteem, or confidence, is actually due to the conflicting ideas or opinions we have about ourselves in our own minds. A way to overcome this is to project your self-confidence. Even if you’re not 100% sure of yourself, make out as though you are. Dressing well, the way you walk, the way you talk, make it look like you know exactly what’s going on, even if you don’t. These are some of the other techniques I learnt when learning how to develop my self-confidence.

A few of the other lessons I learnt was that when you are reluctant or hesitant to indulge in the things you really want you also break down your confidence. For example, when you are reluctant to go for a spa day or to buy new clothes because you feel that you can’t actually afford it, you break down your self-confidence. This is again where projecting your confidence comes into play. As Anita said, “you have to fake it before you make it”. In other words, believe that you are able to afford to indulge in things once in a while, and then work towards actually making that happen.

Set goals for yourself, and work towards those goals one step at a time. One of the ways Anita has challenged me to do this is to write down a “wishlist” of 30 things I want to do before I turn 30 years old (which is in just over 2 months time!). And although it seems impossible, I’m going to tackle this challenge head-on and see how far I can get!

Every day, wake up, look in the mirror, smile and say: “no matter what happens, today is going to be an awesome day!“. That way you’re already projecting confidence onto yourself - and to others throughout the day!