How you could benefit from raising your confidence

Low levels of confidence can affect all areas of our lives. So working together to increase your confidence could benefit you by:

Improving your career prospects – getting that promotion, making you stand out at interview, or simply making you more assertive, effective and respected at work
Improving your relationships – speaking out instead of keeping quiet, keeping calm instead of ‘losing it’, building your interpersonal skills
Facing challenging situations – the impending performance, the bully at work, the speech or presentation, the anxiety of social situations, the stress of divorce or just the worries and stress of day to day life
Improving your effectiveness – developing your confidence to get things done, to tackle tasks in the right way or in the right time frame. Let procrastination be a thing of the past not the future!
Raising your self-esteem – recognising and building on your inner strengths and wisdom, fulfilling your potential, being clear about what you want, believing in yourself rather than putting yourself down.

I use CBT Coaching - an adaptation of the successful counselling mode called CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy). CBT Coaching aims to help you build confidence in your ability to handle current issues and turn round habits of thought or behaviour that are stopping you from achieving the best.

For more about CBT Coaching and how it works to raise your confidence, click here.

Confidence coaching can help you manage your stress

Mike is stressed. There are big changes in the air at the office, and because his self-confidence is low he thinks he has to work twice as hard to keep up. As a result, he is not taking lunch breaks, and missing out on his exercise routine.

He is angry and impatient with his team, and that lowers their confidence in him, and lowers his own confidence in his abilities. He has a permanent knot of tension in his back. He brings his frustration home with him, and takes it out on his wife and children. He finds he is smoking more. He has images of losing control.

Mike's reaction to stress has undermined his confidence big time. And there seems no way back.

Through confidence coaching, Mike learns to take more control. He addresses his irrational fears about losing his job, and makes small but positive changes in his work pattern. He learns to be more assertive about his needs, and to communicate with his team in a more effective way. He improves his relaxation and health. He finds that confidence breeds further confidence.

To read more about stress and how confidence coaching can help you manage it, click here.

Confidence coaching can help you manage your anxiety

Louise is anxious. She thinks of herself as a born worrier. Even as a child she would worry about what her friends thought about her, and whether her homework was good enough.This anxiety undermines her confidence.

As an adult, Louise is still worrying. She is preoccupied with negative thoughts. She finds it hard to enjoy ordinary things because she is so anxious that something bad will happen. She isn't going out so much because of how she feels, and that is undermining her confidence further. Her relationship with her partner is suffering.

Through confidence coaching Louise learns how her worrying is a self-perpetuating cycle. She sees that it is linked to a basic lack of confidence. She works hard on challenging her negative beliefs, using techniques discussed with her coach. She learns how to let worrying thoughts pass over her. She finds a visualisation technique especially helpful to let her relax. She makes practical changes to her daily life, and re-vitalises her social life. Within two months she feels a new person, in charge of her life and no longer dominated by irrational fears and worries.

To read more about anxiety and how confidence coaching can help you manage it, click here.

Confidence coaching can help boost your self-esteem

Raj has low self-esteem. He doesn’t recognise this until he has some coaching. What he does realise is that he is constantly procrastinating – putting off important tasks at work and at home. He doesn't have the confidence to tackle tasks which seem too challenging to him.

He has to lie to get himself out of trouble. He feels bad about not tackling things, and loses himself in surfing the internet and drinking too much.The vicious cycle of low self-esteem continues to undermine his confidence.

Through coaching Raj learns that he is a perfectionist. Putting things off because they cannot be perfect is linked, in his case, to a poor self-image. Challenging his negative self-beliefs is key: Raj learns to accept himself as a fallible human being rather than condemn himself as always falling short. He also builds up strategies for breaking down tasks into manageable steps, and addresses his ‘avoidance’ behaviours – drink and the internet.

To read more about self-esteem and how confidence coaching can help you boost it, click here.

What next?

To make an appointment or to find out more, phone Kim Richardson on 01453 751457 or email him at kim@stroudcoaching.com

Kim Richardson, working to raise your confidence in Stroud, Cheltenham, Gloucester and across the UK