20 self-confidence traps holding smart people back

by Barrie Davenport

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly,
you cease forever to be able to do it.”
―Peter Pan

Do you ever feel like a duck stuck in white water, paddling furiously and never getting any closer to where you want to go?  The goals and dreams you have just aren’t coming together, and you’re not sure where or why you’re missing the mark.

You think you’re doing your best and busting your butt at work, but that promotion never materializes.  You’re so excited about the date you had last week, and you thought it went well, but he never responds to follow-up calls.  You work really hard at a new business idea, put in significant time, effort, and energy, but for some reason it just never catches on.

So you catch yourself thinking, “What’s wrong with me?  Am I not good enough?  Am I not smart enough?”

Then at other times you know you’re not on your ‘A’ game, but you try to cover it up.  You put on a happy face and hope no one notices how fearful and full of doubt you’re feeling.  And while acting confidently like this, despite your doubt, may be a decent strategy for boosting self-confidence over the long-term, you’re still sending out lots of low confidence signals to the decision-makers and important people in your life.

Your behaviors, thoughts, and feelings translate to noticeable expressions that actually spotlight just how unsure you’re feeling.  And unfortunately, low self-confidence is an unattractive and off-putting quality to almost everyone, no matter how smart you are or how ingenious your ideas may be…  Which means it may be the very reason success in various walks of life has been so elusive.

In fact, did you know that 93% of the recognizable messages we send to others are through non-verbal communication?

Dr. Albert Mehrabian, author of Silent Messages, conducted several studies on nonverbal communication.  He learned that only 7% of any message is conveyed through words, 38% through specific vocal elements, and 55% through nonverbal elements (such as facial expressions, gestures, posture, etc.).  When we remove the 7% for vocal content, that leaves us with the 93% statistic.

If you are going to act confidently (whether you feel it or not), you must first understand what low confidence behavior looks like.  Here are 20 ways you might be trapping yourself by sending out signals of self-doubt:

1. Using weak body language – Such as crossing your arms, not smiling, looking down, and not making eye contact
2. Hesitating to speak up in groups – Whether in a meeting, social setting, or a public speaking situation
3. Avoiding interaction with anyone new – Being unable to initiate new connections or approach someone you want to meet
4. Weak verbal communication – Speaking with a low voice, ending sentences with questions, or sounding really nervous
5. Fear of trying new things or taking on challenges – Difficulty taking actions that stretch your comfort zone or feel even slightly uncomfortable, even if you know they will improve your life
6. Hesitating to ask for what you want or need – Inability to confidently express your desires because you don’t feel worthy
7. Resistance to letting go of past failures and mistakes – Dwelling in negative thinking and embarrassment of what happened long ago
8. Not trusting your own judgment – Feeling your ability to solve problems, make decisions, initiate ideas, or take assertive action is compromised or not as sound as your peers
9. Indecisiveness – Not trusting your own judgment enough to even begin to know what you want
10. Letting others make your decisions for you – Letting the opinions of others dictate your reality
11. Fantasizing about not being successful enough – Feeling intimidated around people perceived as being more successful or accomplished than you
12. Feelings of jealously or resentment towards successful people– Projecting your insecurities and longings into negative feelings and behaviors towards others
13. Expressing no motivation to take action – Feeling depressed or defeated and seeing action as useless or too difficult
14. Purposeful self-sabotage – Creating a situation that makes it impossible to succeed so you’ll have an excuse for failing, or to justify why others should feel sorry for you
15. Needing constant external validation – Not just in personal relationships, but from bosses, co-workers, teachers, clients, and peers
16. Fear of rejection – Constantly worried that others will purposely shun you or hurt you
17. Extreme self-consciousness about how other people perceive you – Feeling painfully shy and uncomfortable about your intelligence and your appearance
18. Highly focused on physical appearance and physical flaws – Constant need to check your appearance, compare yourself to others, or obsess about parts of your face or body, at the detriment to everything else
19. Establishing no personal boundaries with others – Allowing others to take advantage of you simply because you don’t have the confidence to say “no”
20. Being overly accommodating or people pleasing – Completely ignoring your own values, needs, or desires to win affection and approval

Do you see yourself in any of these low self-confidence behaviors?  If so, sadly, you are sending signals to those around you that you aren’t deserving or capable of stepping up to take charge of whatever situation you’re facing.  And if you don’t appear confident to those around you, they won’t have much confidence in you.  Even worse, when these other people show a lack of confidence in you, it will make you feel even less sure of yourself.