Trust in yourself comes in a variety of forms: confidence and honesty being the main two factors. If you cannot be honest to yourself, how can you expect others to believe you are being honest to them?

Let’s begin with confidence. I have confidence by the truckload. And I have the ability to make this bold statement because I also have confidence in my honesty. When I was young, I used to be shy – I was a quiet kid who played with my (amazing) Lego and Hotwheel cars, building (seemingly brilliant, yet in reality rubbish) tree houses. Girls? I didn’t even know they existed.

When I did raise my head and peak into the real world, the one that wasn’t made of Lego, I was pretty much terrified. However, I was always taught to be polite and courteous so talking to strangers compulsorily was not a problem. For example, when my Mum would go shopping, I would sit by the door and wait. Old men and ladies who needed a rest would sit by me, and being a cute boy with plump cheeks, their mouths drooled with envy. Yet they covered this up by initiating conversation. I was always told I was “a very nice and polite boy.” Yipee. Now I wanted to rebel and be bad.

As the teenage years brought a few surges in testosterone which trebled the size of my action/adventure cortex of my brain, squishing communication quarters to a minimum, I became a grumpy prat. Everyone else around me seemed to have better social skills, though in hindsight, everyone else had old school friends and I had none (actually, there was one, only that he wasn’t in my class). Luckily however, my reaction to this was a creation of a confident personality. The biggest trait being an extremely fast paced speaking style. I didn’t like silences, and I would speak about anything to cover them because of the fear of coming across as shy.

This habit of speaking fast still occasionally pops out now, especially when I’m nervous, however more so when I’m a little bit hyper. For example, at my T4 audition, when I had to sit in front of the camera and speak for one minute, although I had no preparation time, this wasn’t a problem because my natural reaction is to speak fast and about anything.

Over time, this slowly built confidence in myself. After a few tweaks here and there of my personality, resulting from lessons of life (for example lying), I decided I was confident. And believing that I was confident only resulted in more confidence. People around me could see my confidence now, and they told me as much which, further spun the upwards cycle.

However, it’s one thing to be confident, and another to radiate confidence. After beginning to read/learn self-development, especially on how to influence people and giving back to the world, I decided that the only way to improve my confidence even more, would be to uncover the confidence in others. It meant to create excellence around me. Firstly, I knew I had to believe in myself more, so I set out to essentially prove to my mind that I was confident and that I could show people so.

When I was 16, I got my first job in a ladies clothes shop called Hobbs. There were 28 staff, 27 female, and one male: me. Ok, so I didn’t join just to boost my confidence, nor because of the pretty girls (though I’m sure this had a large influence in my decision) I joined because the pay was high. A few months into my job, when I had this revelation about creating confidence, I stopped bringing in lunch money to work for food. I decided I had to get the money from the public.

I looked at my current assets and I resulted in deciding that the best option would be to perform magic tricks with cards to the public, and asking for money afterward (as I was already fairly skilled in this). So, after switching my lunch money for a pack of cards, I hit the streets every workday during my lunch break and approached the criticizing public. My main trick was the one that is performed very easily and always provokes a strong response: guessing the card they choose (over and over again). When it came to asking for money, I was honest:

“Hey let me just stop you for a second, I’ve left my lunch money at home, and I was wondering if I can guess your card three times in a row, you would care to give me 50p?”

Most people gave in. Some even gave me up to £3. There’s big money in the entertainment business. So now I had proven confidence for sure in my mind. I began developing deeper relationships with my current and new friends. I went out my way to help people who needed it, and who wanted it. I invested time in finding out what was really bringing people down. And then slowly, over time lifting them up to a greater level of confidence in themselves. I’m sure some of you reading this will be one of those I refer to.

However, over the years I have realized something critical in bringing confidence out of others: honesty. The greatest boosts of energy I aided people develop always resulted in me being brutally honest about myself. Being honest, shows confidence, even if you’re being honest about being in pain. I talked about my problems before they talked about theirs. I showed my weaknesses, and how I had/will change(d) them into strengths. This enabled the recipient of the conversation to have confidence in themselves that there was no need to hide anything from me, resulting in the creation of confidence. Like Daniel says, in order to get them to open up, you must open up yourself first.

I’ve used this metaphor before regarding other matters whilst helping people, yet it is perfect for this concept as well. Confidence comes from success. Where you stand now is in one room. This room has no doors, windows or any points of entry or exit. However, there is a room next door, and that room next door is your future, desired state. The only way to get there is to smash down the wall which divides the rooms.

If you walk up to the wall, nothing happens. If you jog lightly and jump into the wall, nothing happens. Only when you sprint, and give it your all do you smash through that wall.

There are many rooms with dividing walls in life, the great thing is, every time you smash down a wall, you get stronger and stronger and so each wall becomes easier to break. Eventually, you’ll have confidence in your ability to smash down those walls, so hesitation will be a thing of a past, indeed, it will be left behind in a different room. Once you smash down the wall leading to that of living a life of honesty and openness, things become much easier. I like to think of this wall as leading into a corridor.

Be confident in your honesty, and be honest in your confidence.

Complying to these attributes automatically increase your confidence. What have you to lose? Nothing. What is there to gain? A tremendous life!

Words: Tom Church, the creator of marketing site Flabble

Photography: Calvin Wallace. You can check more of his art in his page.