Steve Errey gives mercifully fluff-free advice to help millennial professionals live a truly confident life and grow up without getting old. His advice and strategies will get you thinking bigger, being bolder and leading your life in ways that you never thought possible.

Steve answers our questions about his methods and his own life goals ...

You say that your ‘Truly Confident Living’ system allows ‘real people in the real world to find inner confidence’. How does this work?
It’s based on what I’ve seen work with the women I’ve coached. The process tackles self-confidence from a few different angles simultaneously, and is founded on what I’ve called the 5 Principles of Self-Confidence. Here’s a really quick summary of them -

Principle 1: You’re Already Confident
There are things you do in your life - whether it's a feeling, a thought an action or a behaviour - that you just do, without thinking about whether you're confident enough to do them. That’s significant because that's exactly what confidence is - being able to choose your behaviour with implicit trust in that behaviour. The fact that you have that in some areas means that you can have it in other areas.

Principle 2: You’re as Confident as You Need to Be to Live the Life You’re Living
Your confidence works just like a muscle – the more you use it the bigger it gets, the less you use it the smaller it gets. You're already as confident as you need to be to live the life you're living, because your confidence muscle is the perfect size for the life you're already leading. To grow your confidence you need to work your confidence muscle.

Principle 3: Being Truly Confident Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Not be Confident
Being confident doesn't mean that you can't be shaking in your boots when you're about to do something new or scary, it doesn't mean that you never have doubts and it doesn't mean that you're unconfident when you're in a place where you're not feeling confident. I know, it sounds like I’m contradicting myself, but I guarantee it’s true. Confidence - right at it's heart - is self-trust. It's trusting that no matter what happens you'll be okay.

Principle 4: Confidence is a Game, Not a Goal
Goals are good if all you chase in your life are things with simple, clear criteria, but how often is life really that simple? Confidence - and I’m talking about true confidence here - is an ongoing process. It’s not something that finishes and it’s not something that you can forget about when you get the level of confidence you’re looking for. That’s why confidence is more of a game than a goal, because it requires you to engage with it in an ongoing way for it to come alive.

Principle5: You Can’t Forget the Environment
No man’s an island, and your environment – that’s everything you have around you in your life – can either add to or take away from your sense of who you are and your level of confidence. If there’s something around you that makes it easier for you not to stretch your confidence muscle it’ll start to shrink.

Some people have faced real adversity in their lives, this has caused a lack of confidence they don’t think they’ll ever get back. How would you help them overcome this?
It’s important to make a distinction here. You’re right, some people have suffered trauma, adversity and otherwise negative experiences that have been damaging to them. The key is for them to resolve or accept that negative experience, and it’s their responsibility to do that. All the time they think they can’t deal with it or accept it, they won’t.

So while these people will see some benefits from the Truly Confident Living process they need to be completely ready and willing before they start to get the full benefit. If someone comes to me and it’s clear that they keep getting pulled back to the trauma or drama of what happened then I’ll suggest they receive broader coaching to deal with the experience or seek out specialist help.

It’s like a fast flowing river with a big old rock in the middle of it. The river keeps flowing but when it hits that big old rock it causes one hell of a storm. You can’t ignore the rock, but you can smooth it down and minimise the impact it has on the river.

Do you feel your own life experiences have helped you to build the systems you now use to help others?
You betcha. I’ve been completely lost with zero self-confidence, and it was incredibly tough to build that back up and get back to a strong sense of who I am. Many of the tools and strategies I use with clients are those that I’ve found of use myself. I think that’s where the value is; if I wasn’t adding in what I know works and leveraging what I’ve learned personally then I’d be missing a massive chunk of the process.

What gave you the motivation to become a Confidence Coach?
I guess that comes down to a couple of things. The first thing is that I’m able to use my own story and my own experience in what I do – it’s all personally relevant and that’s why what I do means so much to me.

The second part is that I’ve seen way too many times that modern, professional women are run ragged trying to be all things to all people, and often lose a sense of who they are in the middle of everything. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard clients say ‘My friends and colleagues would say that I’m confident, but I don’t feel it on the inside’. Working with my clients and seeing that change is just priceless.

Do you feel there are any goals that you haven’t yet achieved in life?
Hell yes! I rarely set or use goals any more for a variety of reasons, but there’s a bunch of stuff I’d love to do. I want to live in New York City for a while. I want to turn my Truly Confident Living into a workshop and take it around the world. I want to write a hit comedy sketch show for the BBC. I want to find that special someone who I can laugh myself silly with. The list goes on and on, and that’s part of what Truly Confident Living is about.

You have a genuinely open & caring approach to your work – how do you see yourself developing in the next few years?
That’s an interesting question. I think what I’ve seen in the 5 years that I’ve been coaching is that everything I do is becoming more ‘me’. At first I was very conscious of being very ‘coach-like’ and doing everything by the letter. What I’ve learned is that that dilutes the whole coaching relationship and dilutes the results, so now I just run from instinct and pull from the process where necessary.

I’m always learning – about myself, about others and about how things work – and that will never stop. Stay still and you atrophy and ossify. So I can see myself continuing to add more ‘me’ into what I do and how I do it, and pioneering my own methods based on what works rather than just accepting what other people are saying. I want to work on a workshop and have a book proposal in the works too.

In your opinion, can anyone achieve true confidence in themselves, despite adversities they may have faced?
The easy answer is yes, but that’s a purely scientific statement. The truth is often more complex than that, and it really depends on context. Some experiences are so traumatic that it just isn’t possible to live as rich or as full a life as you might be able to without that experience. That might not be what people want to hear, but that’s the harsh reality.

Having said that, there is always capacity for people to learn and to grow beyond what they currently know and who they currently are. Everyone has opportunity in their life, it just comes in different shapes and sizes.

If you could give one piece of advice, what would it be?
Just one?! I guess it would be to trust your intuition. You typically have the answer you need right when you need it, it’s just that it sometimes gets buried underneath layers of drama, confusion, doubt or hesitation. That’s what truly confident living is really about – being able to trust yourself and knowing how to manage those extra layers of ‘stuff’ that only serve to make things more difficult then they need to be.

Thanks to Steve for his time!

You can view Steve's fantastic new Blog and Website at www.theconfidenceguyonline.com.

online forex currency trading says:

Friday 25th, July 2008 at 2:50pm

If you lack self confidence, you must face the fact that it
is a necessary and desirable personality trait that is
found in most successful people.

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