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Real Confidence: Stop feeling small and start being brave
Psychologies
provides their inspirational yet rigorous approach to the perennial topic of confidence How confident are you? If you feel like your confidence could do with a bit of a boost to help make personal and professional situations easier Real Confidence will help you take on the confidence robbers, keep track of your confidence daily and incorporate confidence-building habits into your life on a regular basis.
Written in association with Psychologies Magazine, the leading magazine for intelligent people, covering work, personal development and lifestyle issues Real Confidence is:
Packed full of tips, techniques and advice to help you build your confidence Based on scientific evidence and cutting edge global research Rigorous with credible content presented in a light and accessible manner Inspirational yet down to earth and practical
Written in association with Psychologies Magazine, the leading magazine for intelligent people, covering work, personal development and lifestyle issues Real Confidence is:
Packed full of tips, techniques and advice to help you build your confidence Based on scientific evidence and cutting edge global research Rigorous with credible content presented in a light and accessible manner Inspirational yet down to earth and practical
192 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2016
20 people are currently reading
103 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 18, 2016
I have been thinking that maybe my confidence needed a bit of a boost after a difficult period in my life but having read this book and answered the various questionnaires in it I have realised that actually my confidence level is higher than I thought it was. Like many people I have always tended to assume that the people who are the life and soul of the party - the really outgoing ones - are the people who have the confidence that I should be aiming for. But reading this book has made me realise that such behaviour is often a front and a way of covering up lack of competence - especially in a work environment.
If you have a work colleague who is always full of themselves and how good they are and always rushing around and who seems to get promoted when the rest of their colleagues are languishing in the same old jobs year after year, you can stop envying them because they are probably frantically covering up their inadequacies in the job. You can be quiet and confident and you don't have to make a show of how good you are to be confident.
This book has been a real eye opener for me and has made me realise that lack of confidence isn't the factor which is stopping me doing things but simple dislike of those particular tasks. The book points out that the people who are actually the most confident also have the most humility and are probably the people who have time to listen to you properly because they don't have anything to prove to you or themselves.
There are many useful strategies in this book for helping you assess your current level of confidence and for helping you increase your confidence gradually. There are also useful tips to help you stop sabotaging your own confidence. It also helps you assess what sort of confidence you actually want to achieve and there are plenty of useful quotes and case histories in the book.
I think this has to be one of the best self help books I've ever read. It is practical, down to earth, doesn't promise a new you in thirty days - instead it suggests small steps you can take to improve your confidence on a daily basis. I recommend this book if you want to assess your current level of confidence and maybe improve it gradually.
If you have a work colleague who is always full of themselves and how good they are and always rushing around and who seems to get promoted when the rest of their colleagues are languishing in the same old jobs year after year, you can stop envying them because they are probably frantically covering up their inadequacies in the job. You can be quiet and confident and you don't have to make a show of how good you are to be confident.
This book has been a real eye opener for me and has made me realise that lack of confidence isn't the factor which is stopping me doing things but simple dislike of those particular tasks. The book points out that the people who are actually the most confident also have the most humility and are probably the people who have time to listen to you properly because they don't have anything to prove to you or themselves.
There are many useful strategies in this book for helping you assess your current level of confidence and for helping you increase your confidence gradually. There are also useful tips to help you stop sabotaging your own confidence. It also helps you assess what sort of confidence you actually want to achieve and there are plenty of useful quotes and case histories in the book.
I think this has to be one of the best self help books I've ever read. It is practical, down to earth, doesn't promise a new you in thirty days - instead it suggests small steps you can take to improve your confidence on a daily basis. I recommend this book if you want to assess your current level of confidence and maybe improve it gradually.
May 3, 2017
Our brain contains what are known in neuroscience as mirror neurons. 'This is why we feel what other people are feeling,' explains research scientist Dr Nitasha Budleo. If I feel sad those neurons will highlight areas in your brain. Buddhist meditation works by turning this into something positive: everyone reflects the same thing to create peace.
The Buddhists know that if one person in a group is experiencing another emotion it will affect the entire group.'
...
Essentially spending time with negative people will make you negative.
The Buddhists know that if one person in a group is experiencing another emotion it will affect the entire group.'
...
Essentially spending time with negative people will make you negative.
October 18, 2021
Saw this on a bookshelf in my dorm and got figuratively "clickbaited" by the title, as I was curious what advice they're dishing out to people.
It's mostly bullshit in my opinion. I have a strong feeling that the cabal of authors (which includes a few self-proclaimed "confidence coaches") just had a desire to appear authoritative via endless feel-good platitudes, with zero substance and zero regard for whether those platitudes will be useful in practice. Most of the good advice can be reduced to either (a) "scared? Just do it!" or (b) "if you're not confident enough to do something, gain some competence in it first". Most of the bad advice can be attributed to the book's habit of avoiding the question of confidence altogether by redefining it to be something more vague and less actionable.
To expand on this point, the book tries to vaguely distinguish between "confidence" and "real confidence" in a way that avoids giving readers the advice they actually want. Sure, "real confidence" could be defined as self-efficacy or "belief in our capacity to try and accomplish something" or being "fully present", but is that what a reader picking up this book really wants? Will that really transform the reader into the person they want to become? I'd argue that the typical reader picking up this book constantly sees others around them who are bold and social and successful and wants to learn how to be like that, and start doing things that they're scared to do. After reading the book, that reader is likely just left with vague advice about how to feel comfortable in their own skin, and start to *believe* that they can do those things, without even having to do those things (or by just taking baby steps towards those things). Now, the advice about taking baby steps is good, but I feel that it's countered by the fact that the book tries to leave the reader with counterproductive feel-good coping strategies, like "that guy/gal who seems so confident isn't actually confident, they're just compensating for their inadequacies, ergo I don't need to change anything about myself to become like them".
I honestly think the book could have been way shorter, and the only parts of it worth absorbing are the parts about gaining competence and then pushing one's own boundaries. I have a hard time believing anyone's life situation changed as a result of reading this book, even if they finished it feeling extremely good about themselves and their ability to change.
It's mostly bullshit in my opinion. I have a strong feeling that the cabal of authors (which includes a few self-proclaimed "confidence coaches") just had a desire to appear authoritative via endless feel-good platitudes, with zero substance and zero regard for whether those platitudes will be useful in practice. Most of the good advice can be reduced to either (a) "scared? Just do it!" or (b) "if you're not confident enough to do something, gain some competence in it first". Most of the bad advice can be attributed to the book's habit of avoiding the question of confidence altogether by redefining it to be something more vague and less actionable.
To expand on this point, the book tries to vaguely distinguish between "confidence" and "real confidence" in a way that avoids giving readers the advice they actually want. Sure, "real confidence" could be defined as self-efficacy or "belief in our capacity to try and accomplish something" or being "fully present", but is that what a reader picking up this book really wants? Will that really transform the reader into the person they want to become? I'd argue that the typical reader picking up this book constantly sees others around them who are bold and social and successful and wants to learn how to be like that, and start doing things that they're scared to do. After reading the book, that reader is likely just left with vague advice about how to feel comfortable in their own skin, and start to *believe* that they can do those things, without even having to do those things (or by just taking baby steps towards those things). Now, the advice about taking baby steps is good, but I feel that it's countered by the fact that the book tries to leave the reader with counterproductive feel-good coping strategies, like "that guy/gal who seems so confident isn't actually confident, they're just compensating for their inadequacies, ergo I don't need to change anything about myself to become like them".
I honestly think the book could have been way shorter, and the only parts of it worth absorbing are the parts about gaining competence and then pushing one's own boundaries. I have a hard time believing anyone's life situation changed as a result of reading this book, even if they finished it feeling extremely good about themselves and their ability to change.
March 23, 2016
For me it worked. It contains a lot of obvious truths, but these are not so obvious as to be confident about these before reading this book :). The idea that there is fake confidence and the real confidence should be built on education and practice is not a new one, but it helps when it is repeated to you throughout the book. And not to have control over the situation and leap more into the unknown was one of the self-help ideas for me. Would recommend it to read to anyone who is not feeling confident. For anyone else time could be put to better use.
September 7, 2018
I really enjoyed reading this book called Real Confidence: Stop Feeling Small and Start Being Brave. It really helps you to be able to regain your confidence back and it also gives you some important stuff to think about being more confident. I really thought that this book was very helpful to me and I think that it will definitely guide me and others in the right direction. It also had a really great section where they had questions to let you think about being more confident and certain things. I think everyone that is lacking confidence should definitely give this book a try as I think that it will help to boost your confidence. I recommend this book to others.
July 14, 2018
Good quick read for people who haven’t read a lot of similar books. I thought the quizzes let it down - I didn’t think they were helpful at all.
August 31, 2018
Concise, educational, and informative. Very good read.
January 1, 2020
Did not tell me anything new
January 20, 2024
Platitude title, platitudes book.
July 18, 2024
bruh why’d my dad get me this book
May 12, 2020
I'm begining to see that not all 'self-help' really helps.
This tome is heavy on the academic explainations of what, where, why, how confidence and to be fair does include self-diagnostic quizzes and answers at the end of each chapter. However, I think moreover that confidence (as with so many other things in life) comes from doing - 'that which does not kill you, will make you stronger'. Apologies, I'm doubtless paraphrasing an (ancient?) philosopher there, but not sure who.
Chapter 9 has the most pragmatic guidance on developing confidence, listing 15 confidence building habits. These are:
1. Assess yourself
2. Keep learning
3. Develop your willpower
4. Talk about your positive experiences
5. Tone down your worst thoughts
6. Ditch thinking for doing
7. Adopt a good posture
8. Eat a well balanced diet
9. Exercise
10. Five minute morning wiggle
11. Breathe, breathe, breathe
12. Take good care of yourself
13. Turn your home into a haven
14. Support don't compete
15. Be with confident people
Finally, having reached Chapter 10, the two peices of 'gold' that could be distilled from this book were: to start or keep doing different tasks for work or pleasure (hobbies) as the 'doing' is a form of confidence building in and of itself. Secondly, to keep socialising, again whether that be at work or with groups (e.g. running club).
All in all, worthy of a read if you are not so long in the tooth as me ;-)
This tome is heavy on the academic explainations of what, where, why, how confidence and to be fair does include self-diagnostic quizzes and answers at the end of each chapter. However, I think moreover that confidence (as with so many other things in life) comes from doing - 'that which does not kill you, will make you stronger'. Apologies, I'm doubtless paraphrasing an (ancient?) philosopher there, but not sure who.
Chapter 9 has the most pragmatic guidance on developing confidence, listing 15 confidence building habits. These are:
1. Assess yourself
2. Keep learning
3. Develop your willpower
4. Talk about your positive experiences
5. Tone down your worst thoughts
6. Ditch thinking for doing
7. Adopt a good posture
8. Eat a well balanced diet
9. Exercise
10. Five minute morning wiggle
11. Breathe, breathe, breathe
12. Take good care of yourself
13. Turn your home into a haven
14. Support don't compete
15. Be with confident people
Finally, having reached Chapter 10, the two peices of 'gold' that could be distilled from this book were: to start or keep doing different tasks for work or pleasure (hobbies) as the 'doing' is a form of confidence building in and of itself. Secondly, to keep socialising, again whether that be at work or with groups (e.g. running club).
All in all, worthy of a read if you are not so long in the tooth as me ;-)
July 24, 2016
The reason I've given this book 4 stars is because I started off thinking I was generally low in confidence but though the process of reading and applying the tests and information I realised that I'm only low in confidence in one area of my life. This is quite a revelation! It's very helpful and had given me the confidence to support my journey in that area. To get 5 stars I think, (I personally would have liked), some practical meditations or some of those step by step plans, such as visualisations of, "Where would you'd like to be in 5 years? or exercises for grounding etc. There's a bit of it in the book but I'd like more. I feel like now I know what to work on, I'm not sure how to acquire the tools. But my problem is identified and minimised so hey, I'm happy.
July 30, 2016
Light and easy to read this book explores confidence and espouses the view that this is based on competencies.
A little light in places but effective tips to reverse the viscous cycle to become self aware and change behaviours to start in developing real confidence.
A little light in places but effective tips to reverse the viscous cycle to become self aware and change behaviours to start in developing real confidence.
September 6, 2023
Useful tips, concise, and I liked reading the 'real stories.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews