Your image at work: confidence

Projecting an air of self-assurance can do wonders to boost your image and raise your profile as a successful, positive professional. Find out how you can give out the right impression all the time.

By careers expert Jane Smith

We've all been there. Sitting in the office, at a meeting or in the pub when in comes a woman who simply oozes confidence. Her head is held high and she walks the walk of someone who is in charge of her actions, her choices and her life. Even if we don't speak to her we know that she is efficient and successful – around her hangs a visible aura of confidence and achievement.

What does it mean to be so self-assured? Can the rest of us hope to achieve this happy state? Or do we have to be content with simply admiring or envying it in others?

Confidence is an emotional state of ease and well-being. You are confident if you feel you will be OK in any situation and you don't have any doubts about your ability to achieve what you want. Is it really a mysterious gift that is granted to the elite few who are lucky enough to receive a certain kind of parenting or education? Actually, no. Confidence is a mixture of skills, behaviours and attitudes that we can all develop and apply to any situation. The trick is to become more aware of our natural strengths and qualities and how we can use them in the face of life's challenges. Remember – we are often our own worst enemy, putting artificial restrictions on ourselves and on our ability to succeed.

Courage or confidence?
In seeking to develop self-assurance and self-belief, it's useful to distinguish between courage and confidence. Courage is the ability to take on difficult tasks and challenges, to act in the face of fear or risk. It seems to develop like a muscle in the body – the more you use it, the stronger it gets.

This is the theme of Susan Jeffers' inspiring book Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway. She argues that the way to develop courage is to 'step outside the comfort zone'. This means gently pushing back the boundaries of what you feel you can do, stepping into the unfamiliar territory and staying there for a while till you feel comfortable again. You will be amazed at what you can accomplish when you make yourself do something that has always terrified you in the past. Susan Jeffers talks about moving from 'a place of pain, paralysis and depression to one of power, energy and excitement'.

While it is possible to demonstrate courage without ever feeling very confident, confidence tends to generate courage. In that sense it is a bit of a 'trick' - a way of making yourself perform beyond your current boundaries.

Developing more confidence
To find the real meaning of confidence, and to get closer to achieving it, you first have to like and accept yourself as you are today. Successful people don't feel negative, critical or guilty about who they are. Their self-esteem does not depend on others' opinions of them. Tell yourself that, although you are aiming for improvements in the future, you are happy with yourself in the present. It helps to note down all your good points and all the things you have done that you are proud of. Read through your list and recognise it to be true. Developing your confidence does not involve rejecting all these positive achievements but, rather, building on them in everything that you undertake from now on.

You can try one or more of a number of ways of developing this elusive quality:

Act as if: one of the easiest tricks is simply to 'fake it till you make it'. You must have seen or heard of the work of hypnotists like Paul McKenna, who are able to persuade people that they are dogs, babies, court jesters or rock 'n' roll stars. After being hypnotised, these willing victims are able to play the allocated roles with total commitment. It follows that if you can convince yourself that you are self-assured, if you say it often enough and banish any negative thoughts, you will soon adopt the behaviours and skills of a confident person. Before you know it, your self-image will catch up with your actions, and you will no longer have to pretend.

Relax: Perhaps the single most important ingredient of your success in this area is to learn to stay physically relaxed. This does not mean that you must sit around with your feet up all day, but rather that you should take steps to release tension from your body. If you try to project confidence while still feeling tense, you may come over as rather aggressive. In the long term you may find it useful to take up a hobby like yoga or Pilates. In the short term it's worth experimenting to find a breathing exercise, an affirmation or a visualisation that will help you to remain relaxed and in control. The more you focus on relaxation as a key element of your confidence-building, the more effective you will be.

Give yourself a makeover: There is a very strong link between feeling confident and looking good, but nobody is quite sure which comes first. You can transform your image and build your confidence by consciously planning how you would like to appear to others and how you would like them to respond to you. Ask a friend what impression you make with your clothes, make-up and body language and then work to alter those outward signals until you become what you would ideally like to be.

Confidence is a vital ingredient of career success. It will invariably enhance your image and your performance, no matter what your career or area of work. Confident people see difficult tasks as challenges and persevere when things go wrong. If you project self-assurance, others will have confidence in you and their response will further increase your confidence in yourself.

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