Self-Confidence Checklist | How’s Your Self-Confidence Doing Today?

The Ultimate Self-Confidence Checklist!

Whenever you feel like you’re just stuck and making very little, if any, forward movement in life, you should come back to this self-confidence checklist to see where you may have gone off track.

Self-confidence as defined in the dictionary: Assurance: Freedom from doubt; belief in yourself and your abilities.

Now, let us see how this adheres to your personal life.

In the struggle to succeed at any complex challenge, there is probably no psychological problem more common than a lack of self-confidence.

Out of the seven significant conditions for success spelled out for you on the previous page, I suspect there is not one more commonly violated than this one.

Self-confidence plays a critical role in one’s journey toward success, and if you are weak in this one department, it can and will hold you back from achieving your greatest dreams, desires, or goals.

Do You Have A Personal Self-Confidence Checklist?

As you examine your life and the lives of those around you I tend to believe that you will agree with me.

Why is this? I mean, what gives?

Why do people have such an extraordinarily hard time with issues of self-confidence?

To get a better handle on this problem, let us look at some of the deep foundations of confidence in human life.

Whenever we have confidence in a person, we believe that they will get the job done or that they will succeed.

When we believe in ourselves, we think we have what it takes and will succeed in accomplishing the task at hand.

Anytime I believe I will accomplish something, that belief is rooted in other, more fundamental assumptions about what can be called my ability and my moral capability.

The Foundation For A Positive Self-Confidence.

Whenever I believe in anything I will do, I must also think the following: One, I have the power to do it; two, I have the skill; three, I have the opportunity; and four, I have the practical knowledge.

I also have to believe I am morally capable and ethically open to the task. I also must have the heart, will, and the determination to do it.

Here, we have an almost complete analysis of the background beliefs for any instance of self-confidence.

This provides us with a checklist for assessing the likelihood of finding confidence in a person and diagnosing a lack of confidence when it’s not found or lagging.

Self-Confidence – You Do Not Only Believe You Can Do Something You Know You Can Do It!

Let me say something first about ability here, and let’s start with power.

Power operates on many levels: physical strength, political power, organizational power deriving from institutional status, and less formally instituted forms of interpersonal power.

Any one or more of these types of power might be relevant to a particular task or a goal.

Now, let’s talk about skill for a second.

Skill is something like a cultivated, habituated form of “know-how.” An ability to effectively use your power is typically the result of relevant experience.

It is possible to be powerful without being skillful; we see it all the time in government and sometimes even in business life.

Although skill requires some degree of personal power for its cultivation, it is possible to have a skill level far exceeding your organizational power to act, so power and skill are different.

Skill To Do Comes of Doing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Next, we have opportunity, and opportunity, of course, is a matter of access. Is a person in the right place at the right time? Or at least can he be?

Does your schedule, with all its other commitments, allow the task to be undertaken well and accomplished?

Can you position yourself to plug into the assistance needed to complete a project?

These are all questions about opportunity.

A Man Must Make His Opportunity As Oft As Find It

Now, we have practical knowledge.

Practical knowledge is a form of understanding. When we ask whether a person has the practical knowledge necessary for undertaking a particular assignment, we want to know whether they know how to use the power and skill they possess in the opportunities available for accomplishing the task at hand.

Practical knowledge ties all these conditions together and makes them all realistically available for effective action.

Practical knowledge could even be said to be a form of wisdom.

Self-Confidence And Moral Capability

Now, let us take a look at moral capability.

What is at stake here is a small group of what might be called, broadly speaking, moral attributes.

A person may be incapable of acting even if he has the power, skill, opportunity, and practical knowledge required as long as that action is contrary to his formed moral character.

A serious intention to act this way could not arise or at least could not be maintained among his habitual tendencies.

Some plants can’t grow in some soil, and in the same way, some people cannot do some things, which is a very positive fact about the world.

Part of moral capability is what we might call moral openness. When we say of an evil person, “he is capable of anything,” we mean that he has no stable moral character incompatible with an evil intent or action.

When we wonder if some individual can do some particular deed, one relevant consideration is whether he is morally open to it.

If this condition is not fulfilled, we should not be confident that he will do it; instead, we should have the opposite confidence that he will not do it!

In addition to openness, another part of moral capability is having the heart. Sometimes, a person is morally open to a task and even possesses every relevant ability but does not have the heart for it.

By this, I mean that the individual cannot muster the will or determination to see the task through to completion.

This seems to be a separate matter of whether a person can and will manage to do something.

“We have more ability than will power and it is often an excuse to ourselves that we imagine that things are impossible.“

An announcement like “It can’t be done” is frequently a mask for “I don’t feel like doing it” or “I can’t be bothered to help.”

Often, people who don’t have the heart for a job and don’t want to admit that fact even to themselves will resist a new idea with a claim, “It’s impossible” or “It just won’t work.”

We always have to be on guard for this little bit of misdirection in our minds or the reaction of those around us.

This, Then, Is The Self-Confidence Checklist, Ability, And Capability.

On the ability side, you have power, skill, opportunity, and practical knowledge.

On the capability side, there is moral openness and heart.

Whether we want to assess our confidence in another person or confidence in ourselves, these are the touchstones we need to ask about.

Does the person assigned to do a job have the personal ability and the moral capability to do the job? And does that person believe they have?

This determines the basis of the self-confidence that person holds within themself.

“To Be A Champ You Have To Believe In Yourself When Nobody Else Will.”

Sugar Ray Robinson

One of the most important things about the self-confidence checklist is that we can use it to diagnose any confidence problem.

Is a person at work struggling with worry and self-doubt? Ask yourself, “Am I experiencing some strong hesitation about a direction that I am taking?”

We must apply the self-confidence checklist to see exactly where the trouble is.

Whenever we are confident that a particular outcome we are shooting for will happen, we must already believe three things.

• Number one, it’s possible; we can make it happen.

• Number two, it’s permissible; instead, it is not wrong for us to make it happen.

• Number three, it’s preferable to any alternative.

These beliefs are positive responses to the three simple questions: Can it happen? Is it OK for it to happen? Is it right for it to happen?

We do not work confidently toward what we believe is impossible; this is widely understood.

What is not so commonly realized is that we also don’t act very confidently to bring about something we strongly believe would be wrong or even less preferable than some other alternative.

A strong self-confidence in what we are doing requires a conviction that our goal is attainable, permissible, and preferred result from a prudential point of view.

Now, this maps out some exciting territory that does not seem well understood by executives and managers in the business world; at least, it is not widely acted on at all.

If we give people who work with us new goals and want them to work confidently toward achieving those goals, we need to engage in a multiple-level confidence-building exercise.

We need to help them arrive at positive answers to all these questions.

We need to do everything that we can to convince them that the goal is possible, that it is permissible, and that it is preferable.

We need to explain the big picture behind the setting of the new target or targets.

We need to build their self-confidence into believing they have the power, skill, opportunity, and practical knowledge to make the target.

What are the values behind the target they can share and believe in? Let them know why this particular strategy or goal was chosen rather than some alternative.

By involving co-workers or associates in arriving at new goals and targets and not just delivering them ready-made and unalterable, we make it easier for everyone to buy into those goals.

When their values and sense of what they can accomplish have been consulted, you will not face a hard sell from ground zero.

Building The Self-Confidence Of Others Is All The While Building Your Very Own Self-Confidence.

People are creatures of habit, and any new challenge will be a stretch, and any such stretch produces the conditions under which doubts can arise and grow.

But if we excite our colleague’s imagination correctly, we can stretch their conceptions of what they can do.

We can help them satisfy the second condition for success, strong self-confidence, thereby raising the objective probability of their attaining success in the new venture.

They can because they think they can.

The power of belief is great and needs to be tapped more deliberately and regularly in our efforts together, but first, of course, we need to deal with our own personal problems with self-confidence.

“What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree.”

Logan Pearsall Smith

As You Construct Your Self-Confidence Checklist, Consider The Following:

• Number one: Think of one instance where you or someone around you have seemed to lack a measure of self-confidence that would have been good to have.

Can you use the self-confidence checklist to identify what the source of the problem might have been? What was in doubt? Really try to think this through.

• Number two: Think of some goal you are pursuing now. How would you explain to someone else why you would think it is one, possible, two, morally permissible, and three, preferable to the most obvious alternative that might be identified?

You must always believe in yourself and maintain a robust and positive self-confidence.

You can always refer to this self-confidence checklist if you ever begin to doubt yourself or your abilities.

Never Allow The Daily Trials We All Face From Time To Time To Derail You From Your Self-Confidence Checklist.

How to Build Self Confidence Articles about gaining self-confidence and improving self-esteem. As you work towards building your Self-Confidence Checklist, you should take every opportunity to explore new resources.

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