I've always had a problem with these sort of suggestions, the idea that somebody without self confidence could gain it simply by repeating a mantra and brainwashing themselves would have me questioning the self-awareness of that person.
I have tried similiar things, and ended up laughing at myself over the ridiculousness of the entire exercise. I've found that self confidence is a little deeper than tricking one's mind and that any confidence gained by techniques like this would be superficial at best.
I haven't tried it. But if you've only tried it enough to laugh at it, how would you know whether or not it works?
Thinking back, I remember a friend in high school who was brilliant, but had no confidence. At her slightest mistake she'd say things like, "That was really stupid." If you tried to encourage her, she'd brush it off or disagree. It all made sense when I saw her with her dad, who at her slightest mistake would say, "That was really stupid."
If it works to remove confidence, I don't see why it couldn't work to create it. And indeed, my 6-year-old nephew has a lot of self-confidence when trying things new. I doubt it's unrelated that he gets a lot of encouragement for every step forward he makes.
I don't believe that somebody has to go through an entire process to question it's effects.
I agree that encouragement from a third party is beneficial to self confidence, but this article suggests that self-encouragement in the form of spoken word (rather than thought) would be helpful in gaining self confidence. Now if this works for some people I am happy for them, but I personally wouldn't put much trust in their self confidence.
Now I know that people's mileage vary with their personalities but I found that my biggest leap in self confidence was when I began to assess myself like I would any other. I look at whatever shortcomings I may have, such as motivation for example and try to look for a solution to the problem.
Otherwise I can imagine that it is much like curing the symptoms rather than the issue itself, people may use these techniques to gain self confidence but when somebody's self confidence outstrips their abilities I'd consider that to be just as bad.
Everyone's ridiculously different and I think we could all agree that no one approach would work for everybody. Before trying to convince myself that I can do something however, I'd be looking for the reasons why I think I can't and start working to rectify them.
I'm in favor of questioning. But you weren't just questioning the process. You said it didn't work, that you had found "that any confidence gained by techniques like this would be superficial at best".
In this reply, you explain that you actually just imagine that. Which is fine, but it's not as strong as what you first wrote.
I somewhat agree with what you're saying, merely tricking yourself won't increase your confidence or get you past fears or anxiety or whatnot. However, I disagree that outright dismissal of the technique, is the wrong answer.
For a lot of situational fear, a core component of the fear is ignorance of the outcome. So tricking yourself into walking into the situation, doing the thing, whatever, is a great way to change the ignorance. After you've been in the situation, you now have evidence and real outcomes to weigh against your fears. It isn't easy, and it requires some introspection, but real evidence is a great tool for combatting vague fears and what-ifs.
Take the invoice example, there are fears listed in the article and some other comments on this thread. A lot of them boil down to "will this make the customer reject my business" and "will the invoiced customer talk bad about me to other potential customers and hurt my business". These are real and valid fears. However, at the same time, everyone "knows" it's business, invoices are how money happens. So if you can trick yourself into sending some, you get some perspective to combat the fear in the future. You'll see that most people just pay, or quibble a bit, then pay. You probably will get some bad experiences, but usually this doesn't actually cause other people to stop using you. (Has anyone ever fired a business because "you billed my buddy's business per contract?".) When you have these actual experiences, ones you tricked yourself into having, you now have the evidence to combat the fears.
Note, the fears don't generally just go away, hence terms like combat, walk through, etc that are applied to them. Getting past fear-based blocks is an active participation event. But with proper tools, a large one of which is evidence, you can get through them. So I guess what it boils down to, is it is a chicken and egg game, you need to have one or the other, and a good way to break the loop is faking one to get the other, and change a negative cycle to a positive one.
I guess, I agree with the statement:
self confidence is a little deeper than tricking one's mind and that any confidence gained by techniques like this would be superficial at best
completely, I just disagree on how useful superficial confidence can be as a foothold to real confidence.
A cliche that applies here: Fake it 'til you make it.
I have tried similiar things, and ended up laughing at myself over the ridiculousness of the entire exercise. I've found that self confidence is a little deeper than tricking one's mind and that any confidence gained by techniques like this would be superficial at best.