Highly Confident People Do 4 Things When They Feel Insecure, Says Executive Coach: 'Make This A Daily Habit'

How often do you fail? If you're ambitious, have the desire to make an impact, and are honest with yourself, then your answer should be "all the time". Failing is the only way to grow and learn, and it's necessary for true success. Yet it's difficult to fail, isn't it?

Failure — even the thought of failing — creates internal resistance and fear. You constantly start asking yourself in a panic, "Why am I such a failure?" That's why it's so important to learn how to build confidence in yourself after you've failed. If you can do this, you can banish that low self-esteem, build your self-worth, and gain self-respect.

Have you heard the term failing-forward? What does it mean? John C. Maxwell wrote a book about it called Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes Into Stepping Stones for Success. The short-hand version of what the book is about is:

People who succeed aren't luckier or more blessed than those who don't (and they don't succeed because of background, family, or money either). The difference between those who achieve great things and those who don't is how they perceive and respond to failure.
Most people aren't prepared to deal with failure in a way that helps them succeed. Instead of embracing failure, it's feared. And that leads most to do whatever they can to not fail and avoid risk.
If you want to succeed in life and make the biggest impact, then you must make failure your friend. That means you need to accept that you'll fail (and that you'll never know when or what you'll fail at), courageously move forward despite your fears, and figure out how to deal with problems instead of actively trying to avoid them.

Why is failing-forward important? You might believe that you prefer a life that's risk-averse and simpler than one of failure. But are you sure? Although that might make you initially feel better, it will eventually lead to a life of fear. Failure happens, regardless of whether you accept it or not.

When you allow yourself to be governed by risk-aversion, you're allowing your fears to control you. They don't actually go anywhere but instead grow. By ignoring your fears and "playing it safe", you'll be living with constant fear and will also have left your dreams behind. And that will eventually lead to regret that you didn't dare to go after your big dreams.

But if you accept that failure is part of life — a way to learn and grow and the best way to succeed in life — you'll actually be diminishing some of those fears because you'll no longer be allowing them to control you. That's what courage is.

Wouldn't you rather face your fears and move beyond them? Even if your fears don't disappear, it's better to act courageously than allow fear to fester within your subconscious and take control over you.

If you want to adopt a fail-forward attitude, you must understand how failure affects your mentality. There's nothing like a failure to send your self-confidence into a downward spiral. Self-confidence is negatively impacted by failure, regardless of whether you agree with the concept of failing forward, and no matter your current mindset.

Human beings aren't wired to accept failure without any impact. Part of adopting a fail-forward attitude means putting into place practices and strategies that are designed to continually build and maintain your self-confidence levels.

Otherwise, your fail-forward attitude will eventually dwindle, you'll begin to fear failure, and you'll start avoiding it altogether. And we've been over why you don't want to do that. When it comes to cultivating and maintaining your self-confidence levels when adopting a fail-forward lifestyle, there are two key areas in which to focus:

How to cultivate higher levels of self-confidence no matter what's going on in life.
How to begin feeling more self-confident after it's taken a hit due to a perceived failure.

Highly confident people do these four things when they feel insecure:

1. They build new knowledge and develop their skills

Self-confidence obviously takes a hit when you don't know something or lack the necessary skills. The easiest fix is to beef up your knowledge and/or skills where it makes sense. But there's more to it than that.

One study suggested that when you're focused on learning as much as possible and building new skills, you're preemptively guarding yourself against some of your biggest confidence killers: failures due to your weaknesses or lack of knowledge. This doesn't mean that you won't still fail, but it does help you from taking failure too personally.

If you've done all you can by striving to learn, grow, and develop, then you'll be as prepared as possible. You'll have done your best. Not only does that increase self-confidence, but it also allows you to not feel as bad when failures happen — regardless of the reason behind your failure. And it also helps create a willingness to take calculated risks and, hence, stay true to the fail-forward attitude.

2. They forgive themselves

confident woman who forgives herself when she feels insecure DimaBerlin / Shutterstock

Research shows that being able to forgive yourself is a key driver for success. You must accept your failure fully and forgive yourself if you want to learn and grow from it. This approach will motivate you to improve, hence aiding in your success.

Here's the thing: you must be able to learn from your mistakes if you want to adopt a fail-forward attitude. And part of learning from your mistakes includes letting go so that you can move on. It doesn't help to obsess over your mistakes. You can't move on if you're unable to forgive yourself for any perceived wrong that aided in your failure.

So, how do you forgive yourself? It's all about being compassionate to yourself — as you would be with someone you care about. Here are a few tips for self-forgiveness:

Create a ritual to follow every time you need to forgive yourself. This will make it easier to get started and help to make it a habit.
Start by identifying what needs to be forgiven and why you need to forgive yourself.
Don't get stuck in the story or allow yourself to devolve into negative self-talk. Once you identify what you're forgiving and why, quickly move on.
Ask yourself how you would advise your best friend in the same situation — and then take your own advice.

3. They manage their inner critic

Everyone has an inner critic, even people who are perceived by others as successful. Your inner critic is the voice inside your head that says things like:

More for You:

3 Things People Immediately Judge You On When You First Meet Them

5 Immediate Signs Of A Toxic, Passive-Aggressive Person

11 Subtle Signs Of A Woman Who Has Been Through A Lot In Life

11 Things Smart People Find Relaxing That Normal People Can't Stand

"I've really messed this up again. I can't do anything right."
"I didn't perform well on that project, so I shouldn't take on another one like that."
"I'm not as smart as everyone else and have just been lucky. One day, everyone will figure that out and expose me as a fraud."

This negative self-talk is a symptom of self-doubt and limits your ability to believe in yourself and your abilities, research has revealed. It's preventing you from achieving your full potential. In my experience of coaching high-performers, I've found that it manifests in 2 primary ways:

Grinding over decisions to ensure everything turns out "just right" or "perfectly."
Second-guessing past decisions

The good news is that you can manage — even prevent — negative self-talk through simple mindset practices. The key is to focus on cultivating a growth-oriented, mentally resilient mindset. To start cultivating and strengthening the right mindset, utilize the following 3 simple practices every day:

Practice gratitude: Find 3 things every day to be grateful for and write them down.
Self-affirmations: Self-affirm your capabilities realistically and specifically.
Practice kindness: Be kind, give a compliment, and/or express your appreciation to someone every day (this can be to a family member, friend, co-worker, or even a stranger).

4. They face and manage their fears

confident woman who faces and manages her fears when she feels insecure Hitdelight / Shutterstock

The funny thing about fear is that it grows and takes control when you do nothing about it, yet diminishes to something manageable (and sometimes disappears) when you face it. So, the question is: how do you face your fears? Here's how to get started in facing and managing your fears:

Name your fear: This is simple, yet powerful. Name what it is that you fear and be specific. In one study, the group that labeled their fear of spiders performed far better than other groups.
Identify how your fear is limiting you: This will show you that there might be something to fear on the other side, too (hence, giving you some courage to do something different and make a needed change).
Challenge your fear: Ask whether it's really likely to happen the way that you fear it. How likely is it? How bad would it even be should it happen? This has a way of making you realize that your fear has grown out of proportion to what's realistically likely to happen. And it will also help your mind start coming up with solutions. You'll no longer be a victim, but a strategist.

Heather Moulder is a career and life coach and the founder of Course Correction Coaching. She specializes in helping professional women have both a successful career and a happy home life with real work-life balance.