Confidence tips – be here, be now

The application form looks accusingly at you, the interview looms. Turn negative job hunting feelings into positive with the following confidence boosting tips.

• Talk yourself up. Your subconscious mind laps up everything you say about yourself and will shape your behaviour accordingly. Use positive language and tell yourself you’re great, good at X, quick at Y.

• Know your value. Do a brain dump. Write down what you’re good at and where you’ve excelled in the past. Get a friend to help, or write it in the third person. This enables you to talk about yourself in a new way and help your subconscious mind take on new ways of ‘thinking’.

• Focus on the baby steps. Goal overwhelm can lead to a massive dent in confidence. Don’t try to conquer Everest when you haven’t made it up Primrose Hill yet. Break your large goal into more realistic, digestible chunks to move forward more clearly.

• Be present. Stop lamenting about the past. It won’t help and only lead to procrastination and ineffectiveness. Break the destructive "if only" cycle by thinking about things that have not yet happened and focus on these.

• Can I do anything about this? If the answer to the question ‘Can you do something about it’ is ‘no’ then the next question is ‘Then what shall I focus on instead today?’. Devoting your focus to worrying about the past and future will prevent you moving forward. Devoting your attention to what you can do right now will mean you start to take small actions towards what you really want and therefore grow in confidence that you are able to achieve.