The Tools: Confidence Resume

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Nearly every high performer I work with would like to enhance their confidence. Trying to strike the balance between trusting our abilities and not underestimating our opponent or being overconfident is a challenge, compounded by the fact that for most high performers, their strongest critic is inside their head. Over time, we learn to downplay our wins, our minds exacerbate our losses or failures, and we lose a bit of our mojo.

Then natural human tendencies take over.

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Our minds are more responsive to the negative and the critical. It feels like there’s a problem to be solved, and some data suggests that thinking deeply about our own limitations actually feels like we’re working toward a resolution despite there not being any observable change in behavior (more about the psychology of worry here). This deep thinking feels productive, but actually pushes us further away from an honest assessment of what we’re good at, capable of, and what we need to address.

When our strengths are obscured like this, it can be helpful to take stock of our successes. For that, I often use an intervention called the confidence resume.

Since this is a common performance problem, the confidence resume is often homework I assign in the first 2 or 3 sessions.

The goal of my work is to help people become a scientist about their own performance. We need to experiment, test and iterate, and double down on what works. To figure out what to double down on first, it’s helpful to identify strengths and successes.

Here’s what it looks like, and how you can use it for yourself.

The confidence resume has several layers to it. You can choose to do a deep version or a lite version. Just know that the more you put into it, the more helpful it’ll be.

Step 1: Map Out Your Wins

The first thing to do is grab a blank sheet of paper or note on your phone. Then, think back over the course of your life. Write down the wins you had - small and significant. The goal is to be as thorough as possible in identifying the times you’ve been successful.

What most people find is there are a lot more wins than they typically give themselves credit for. That’s good - it’s a sign that you’re getting back in touch with what’s really possible for you. You’re seeing yourself more accurately.

Step 2: Link Wins to Strengths

Now that you’ve tallied your successes, you want to identify what strengths you leveraged to achieve them. For example, if one of your successes was graduating college, some strengths you may have leveraged would be hard work, diligence, or organization. Everyone uses different strengths to get things done - the key is to find what resonates for you.

This step is often where we can start to see and feel more confident. Our strengths are unique to us and can become an evergreen source of confidence and enjoyment if we can engage them regularly. Applying our strengths in our daily lives is how we put our stamp on things.

Step 3: Zoom Out

At this point, you should have a robust list of strengths and successes sitting in front of you.

Hopefully, that’s a powerful thing to see.

These two parts of our lives tend to get obscured and overlooked in the course of our day-to-day. It can be easy to go through the motions and not notice opportunities to use our strengths or the small wins we’ve had. Reconnecting with our major achievements and how we did them can be remarkably empowering.

Our past successes are an evergreen source of confidence and a reminder of what we can accomplish.

Bonus Step 4: Create a Strengths Inventory

If you’re still feeling jazzed up, go ahead and take note of the strengths you used most to reach your goals. The strengths that show up often are your signature strengths. Most people have just 1-3 that really stand out.

Once you’ve got your signature strengths nailed down, see if you can find ways to engage them in your everyday life. Research suggests that the more we use our strengths, the more satisfied we are with the work we do, and the more confident we can feel.

Count your small wins as you go. Now that you’ve done the work to use your strengths regularly, stay in touch with how that impacts you on a regular basis. Let the small wins with strengths stack up, and your confidence will grow even stronger.

At the end of this exercise, you should have a clear list of what you've done well and how. This should give you some insight into ways you can best show up in the future, and what works well uniquely for you.