When confidence goes missing…3 ways to get it back!
When confidence goes missing…3 ways to get it back!
Confidence is a belief and feeling of trust in your abilities, qualities and judgement. Confidence can also play a role in keeping you motivated to achieve your goals.
For your clients, confidence is usually one of the first things that goes missing when it comes to finding and keeping a job. The negative impact of being long-term unemployed erodes confidence at an even faster rate.
So, how can you help your clients start to feel more confident about their journey to employment? There are three simple, yet very powerful tools you can encourage your clients to use and when used in conjunction with the Bounce Program, you’re sure to get even better outcomes.
Positive Anchors
Positive emotional anchors can be a very powerful tool for your clients. Positive anchors can be something you can see, hear, smell, taste or touch. You can help your clients discover their positive anchors by getting them to think about times when they’ve felt really happy or proud – what can they remember about that experience? What senses do they connect with?
You can also try supporting your clients to use their strengths as a positive anchor by creating a mantra or positive self-talk.
For example, what positive self-talk can you encourage your clients to practice? What do they tell themselves before they go into an interview, e.g. I am capable, I am resourceful, I can solve problems. Research conducted by the University of Toronto and published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that self-affirmations do indeed boost confidence.
Body Language & The Power Pose
Amy Cuddy is a researcher from Harvard University who studies body language. In 2010, her research into the ‘power pose’ showed that standing with your hands on your hips, shoulders back and chest open gives your hormones a positive boost.
Practise with your clients to use the ‘power pose’ to help them prepare for interviews. Just two minutes of breathing and standing in the power pose will help them feel more confident and comfortable before heading into an interview.
You can also practise confident body language when you meet with your clients to help them feel more engaged with you.
Integrity
Integrity helps build self-esteem and confidence. When you hold yourself accountable and stay true to your word – you hold yourself in high regard. However, it’s not always easy to practise integrity with yourself. It’s easier to have integrity with others, like saying you will help a friend move house or look after their dog. But it’s harder to have integrity with yourself, such as saying you will walk every day or eat more healthy meals at home.
It’s important to help your clients to build integrity in themselves and show them how to take small steps forward to do that. Here are five ways to help your clients live with more integrity:
- Be assertive – stand up for yourself and stay true to your values.
- Take responsibility – if you make a mistake, own up to it and do what you can to make things right.
- Tell the truth – white lies might seem harmless, but they are still untruths, and they can erode your level of trustworthiness.
- Keep your word – follow through, and don’t make promises you can’t keep.
- Stay humble – be genuine and authentic.
The Bounce Program has been proven to build job seekers’ confidence, self-esteem and resilience. Help your clients discover more about themselves and create a plan for finding their way into work by encouraging them to sign up. Find out more about the program here.
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