Summary of  Confidence Hacks by Barrie Davenport

Top Quotes from the book summary:

“Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear.” ~ Norman Vincent Peale

“To grow in our ability to love ourselves we need to receive love as well” ~ John Gray

Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you’re making.” “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” ~ Stephen Covey

“Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in.” ~ Alan Alda

“Take advantage ofevery opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people.” ~ Jim Rohn

“When you have confidence, you can have a lot of fun. And when you have fun, you can do amazing things.” ~ Joe Namath

“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.” ~ Ayn Rand

Below is the book summarized:

1. Action is the cure for low confidence

2. You could lost confidence because of some minor event in the past

3. Acute shyness lower self confidence

4. Know that your past doesn’t define you now or in the future

5. Take repeated actions until fear have no grip on you

6. Inaction leads to nothing

7. Be comfortable with uncertainty and the sting of failure

8. Abraham Lincoln had to business failures and lost 8 elections and had a complete nervous breakdown before he succeeds

9. Thomas Edison was told by his teacher that he was too stupid to learn anything. Thomas failed almost 10,000 experiments to create his first light bulb

10. Michael Jordon was cut from his high school basketball team for lack of skill

12. Michael missed more than 9,000 shots, lost almost 300 games and missed the game winning shots 26 times

Fear of failure and rejection is the confidence killer

• Overcome fear by confronting it
• Do things you fear everyday
• You can have anything you want, be anything you want by taking action everyday
• Healthy Relationship help you cope better with stress, feel happier.

You feel happier when you are confident in connecting and communicating with others

You’ll feel insecure when you focus on your flaws. Lock away all your flaws in a imaginary box and start focusing on your good qualities

List down all your good qualities so that you know what they are

• Have a relationship vision
• Decide your communication style
• Decide how are you going to resolve conflict
• Determine how much time you want to spend together
• Find out how would you like to be touch
• Set Your Personal Boundaries

List down all the things you would not want other people to do to you anymore

• Communicate to the person kindly but firmly
• Stop people pleasing even if it causes conflict
• Make a list of the good things in your relationship and focus on them when you think your relationship is bad
• Act as if you’re already confident, already happy, already friendly
• Visualize yourself in situations where you want to act confident and act on it when the time comes

Clinginess and guilt tripping is a sign of insecurity. Write down a list of your passive aggressive behaviour and remove them

Reframe rejection as a gift, it saves your time by letting you know you’re incompatible

Express your feelings, fears and concern in a kind and honest way so that your relationship will blossom

Build sexual confidence by feeling good about yourself no matter what, be proud of how your body look

People with strong social and family connection have 50% lower chance of dying

Identify where are your social anxieties and make a social plan

Your social plan will include:

• How will you enter the room
• What will you say to people
• How many people you’ll talk to
• How long will you stay

Practice your conversation so that you’ll know what to say when the time comes

Prepare some conversation starter:

• Make a remark about the surrounding
• Comment something positive about the person appearance
• Bring up something interesting about the person
• Talk about something you read
• Talk about family
• Speak about the weather
• Say something humorous or self-deprecating
• Bring up one of your hobbies
• Ask about a person’s past
• Talk about your plan this week and ask about theirs
• Tell a funny story
• Tell a joke
• Say something vulnerable
• Comment on the music playing

Notice the negative thoughts in your head and stop believing them because they are exaggerated

Mirror their body language and verbal cues to form strong connection and built trust

Give full attention to the person who is talking, don’t play with your phone or get distracted by anything

Making small talk is important meaningless conversation:

• Comment on the weather or the surrounding
• Introduce yourself and share who are you and what you do
• Talk about a light topic like a book or movie
• Ask questions and show interest in the other person

Start expressing your vulnerability, talk about your dreams and insecurity

Realized that other are focus on themselves and doesn’t really care about your flaws as much as you think

Know your career goals in the next 5 years because knowing what you want will make you confident

Set a meeting with your boss to discuss his expectation of you

Ask your boss what you need to improve and start implementing them

Prepare very well before a presentation or meeting because when you’re well prepared, you’re confident !

Speak out in meetings to show that you take initiative to share ideas and is interested and committed

Learn from past failures but don’t let them hold you back

Find a mentor. Invite a potential mentor to lunch and tell them why respect them and want to learn from them

Respect your mentor time and express your gratitude for their help

Dress up for the job and position you want

Be an expert at something and let people know about it as it will greatly increase your confidence

Notice and stop your nervous habits like hair twirling, throat clearing, leg shaking

• Stop mumbling as it undermines credibility
• Stop using conversation fillers like “um”, “err”, and “ah”,
• Make sure your speaking pitch, tone and speed are right
• Think before you speak, try not to offend people
• Don’t move your hands distractingly when you speak
• Don’t try to pretend to be someone who you’re not, be authentic
• Use humour, prepare a few funny stories for your next interaction
• Pay attention to verbal cues of the people you’re speaking to
• Breath through your diaphragm

Accept all your flaws, how you look and free yourself from worry and comparisons that lower your self confidence

• Write down what you like about how you look and focus on them instead of your flaws
• Focus on your best characteristic and qualities
• Improve what you can for your looks while still accepting the way you are
• Avoid the media because the media is propaganda machine that skews your perception

Learning a new skill can boost confidence

• Being creative can increase confidence
• Create specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time related goals
• Breaking bad habits will improve confidence
• Define your core values, compare what’s not align right now and improve on it
• Improve your life balance between work, family, love and friends etc
• Smile more, because it reduces stress, makes you more trustworthy and attractive

Use power postures to feel powerful and confident

• Dress well to feel confident because clothes affect our perception
• Stop fidgeting as it is perceived as lack of confidence
• Use appropriate amount of eye contact, around 50-60% of conversation
• Change your thinking and your actions and you will feel more confident emotionally
• Be aware of your negative thoughts and replace them with a positive one

Actions will distract you from negative thoughts

Challenge the limiting beliefs you have since childhood that have lower your confidence. Find proof that those belief are not true and proceed to have a new belief that empowers you

Start meditating as it helps detach you from your thoughts and release their control over you and just simple be in the moment. Do it after a trigger such as after brushing your teeth

Keep a gratitude journal and write down the people and events that have impacted you positively

Be mindful every moment of your life so that you can fully enjoy it

Write and say affirmations everyday to program our brain to further support your intentions

Visualize yourself being successfully at achieving what you want in life

• Practice compassion as it improves happiness
• Challenge yourself with fun new adventures and increase your confidence
• Reduce your busyness in life and find some time to have fun
• Simplify your space, physical clutter creates mental clutter
• The more things you have the more time you spent to maintain them
• Plan your weekends, do something fun and challenging
• Join a group or a club
• Break your routine and make your life more interesting
• Find enthusiastic people

Start accomplishing your ultimate goal now because you won’t live forever

Get organized, if your life is messy you feel less competent and confident

Reduce and pay off your debt because debt causes stress and lowers confidence

Find a financial planner and plan your retirement, be in control of you life

Set your financial plans with your family to support your goals

You don’t have to be perfect to be successful, happy, and confident

Confidence is a state of mind in which you accept your failure and flaws then learn and move past them

Confidence is a skill that can be learn and improve over time

Repetitive confident thoughts and confident actions rewire neural pathways to make you a confident person

Mini Habits is an fantastic book for building great habits

Accept that change is possible, take small steps and expose yourself to your fears slowly and eventually you will overcome all fears

Hope you love the book summary, buy Barries’s book here

Barrie is a certified personal coach,  former public relations professional, author and had created a few courses on self confidence, life passion and creating good habits.

Barrie had coached many individuals into the best version of themselves and live to their fullest potential