The One Idea To Unleash Your Confidence

Antti Niittyviita

Feb 16·5 min read

Have you ever thought about what your life would look like if you had the confidence to live life to its fullest?

I know I have. When I look back on my timeline, I see a trail of missed opportunities, indecision, emotional eclipses, and some broken relationships too. Exploring this path revealed that for me, one of the missing skills was a lack of confidence.

Just think about it. How much more freedom and happiness could you feel if you had the healthy kind of confidence within you? How much easier would it be for you to make better or even daring decisions? How could an increase in your inner confidence transform interactions at work and even the intimate relationship?

What about your emotional life? You may know someone whose emotions always seem to be like a toy ship adrift on the open sea? With confidence, you can be the captain and take charge of everything that life tosses at you.

The list could go on and on. That’s why it leads me to think that confidence is one of the root causes of success in every area of life. For this reason and my handicaps in the area, I started to explore confidence deeper. It’s been five years since I started the journey, and I can tell that it’s been worth every step.

Now, you may know an annoying smartass; hence it may lead you to think that too much confidence is a bad thing. And you are probably right if you think about the cocky kind of over-confidence that makes people suck out the energy of everyone else in the room.

The curious thing that I’ve noticed with seemingly over-confident people is that it usually is a mask they’ve created to hide the truth. To me, it seems like over-confidence is just an expression of low confidence.

The kind of confidence I’m talking about is different. I mean confidence that grows and shines from within you. It’s something that others feel drawn towards, something that gives energy to everyone you touch. And it even allows you to playfully laugh at your own mistakes and admit your errors in front of others.

So wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could develop this radiating confidence to the next level?

From my years of diving deeper into the root of confidence, I wanted to share one of the critical insights that greatly served me.

While the insight may look simple at first, there is a danger involved as well. Simple things are easy to neglect until it’s too late.

So, here are the three steps of the insight. I hope you use them well.

Step #1: Confidence is a muscle

I often meet people trapped by their current state of confidence. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be you.

The trap is self-imposed because of a deep-rooted belief that things like past experiences, genes, level of health, you name it, determines the level of confidence.

The truth is very different. Success leaves clues.

There can be terrible life stories, and still, you can find some who rise and become icons like Oprah Winfrey. Then there can be terrible luck in terms of how the genes express themselves, like Nick Santonastasso, who was born without legs and one arm. Yet, today he stands proudly on stage sharing his story of becoming an athlete.

So here’s the deal. Nobody defines your confidence at birth, nor is it imprinted on you by past experiences.

Confidence is like a muscle.

And you know what to do with a muscle if you want to make it stronger, don’t you?

Confidence grows with use and dies with refuse.

Step #2: Consistency is the key

If you want a muscle to grow, is it enough to take it to the gym once?

Of course, it’s not. To make it grow, you must drag that butt to the gym frequently enough!

But now comes the tricky question. What are the exercises that help the confidence-muscle grow?

Here are some of the rituals that I use for this purpose.

1. Preparation. There are two ways to approach important things in life. You can either “wing it” or prepare. Which way would help you train that confidence muscle more? Just think about your day, for example, will you let the day drive you, or will you drive the day?
2. Writing goals. For most, it’s tough to tell what their goals in life or business are. Without goals, you have no way to know if you are succeeding or learning (some call this failing, but I don’t). Now, if you make even a little progress towards your goals, will it give you more or less confidence? Yes, you know the answer.
3. Reflect on the language. The most important dialogue in life is with the self. Every day I sit down and listen to my thoughts. The inner dialogue can drag you down, or it can boost you. If you can observe those thoughts, would it be possible to start changing the words here and there? Could you be the director of that reel instead of the audience?
4. Define your mission. When you are hitting the pillow at night, how do you know if the day mattered? This one is hard to answer without a guiding light. For this reason, I often encourage to think about the personal mission. It doesn’t need to be big, but knowing this helps you know if you matter. And when you do, what does it do to your confidence?
5. Re-work your posture and expression. Look back in your life and find a moment when you felt fantastic and proud of yourself. How did you stand then, and what was your posture? How did you breathe? What was the expression on your face? What did you say to yourself? Just try it for few minutes. Put up a show for yourself, and then see how you start to feel. Do you feel a little shift in confidence too? That’s the muscle you’re building now!

The list could go on and on! The important thing is to reflect on yourself. What would be the 3–5 small rituals that you could do every week that helped you to train your muscle of confidence?

Step #3: Calendar is the unlock

If confidence is important to you, it needs to appear on your schedule!

And if you don’t schedule it, who would do it for you?

Now go ahead and take out that calendar and book your first session of the confidence gym! Steal my rituals or have a session to find your own.

Now stop swiping and make that move!

P.S. Did you like this read? If you did and are committed to re-crafting confidence you deserve, let me know by leaving your info here— There’s something epic coming out soon!