What comes first – confidence or conviction

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Do you need confidence to have conviction? Or does your conviction lead to an increased confidence?

Personally, I don’t believe that it is either one way or the other. For some people, it’s confidence first, for others it’s conviction.

What I have found is that confidence, for the majority of people, is influenced by emotion. Emotion is often triggered. It could be by external events, things outside your control, or by things that you don’t expect.

Conviction is your firmly held beliefs. You can control your conviction. Your conviction is your dedication to the cause, how you turn up for your team and the way you show up as a leader.

When we’re talking about being the best leader you can be, we’re referring to what you can control.

From my personal experience, with both my own performance and my working with other entrepreneurs and leaders, and people who are looking for success consistently, your conviction is something you can choose and control.

When you have conviction about what you want to create, even if you don’t know how to get there, your confidence will be raised.

What happens then is you start seeing results.

Some results you want, some you don’t and some you’ll not expect.

When you have conviction about how you want to turn up each day, you are focused on the process. You take a step forward, then another, irrespective of outcome.

As long as you stay on your path, stay in your lane, keep your vision clear, surround yourself with the right people and refuse to give up, your confidence will incrementally increase to be the leader you want to be.

There will be days that will challenge you and your confidence will dip.

You will have ups and downs and it may come in waves, but over a period of time your confidence WILL increase.

This is down to having conviction about where you want to get to.

You cannot rely on your confidence alone, as this is mood dependent, which is potentially uncontrollable.

But when you have a conviction about what kind of leader you want to be, who you want to serve and the wealth you want to create – whether that be financial, spiritual, emotional or physical – you are entering the realms of the 1% of this world.

And these are the people who have complete conviction and do not rely on their day-to-day mood for their confidence.