It's not always easy to feel confident about yourself, especially if you are overtly self-critical or work in a toxic environment. Displaying confidence can be challenging but crucial to building your professional presence and career progression. Self-confidence is about valuing yourself and feeling worthy regardless of your imposter syndrome, imperfections or what others may believe in you. 

That's why confidence is a skill and not a talent, and like any muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it becomes. Here are four ways you can strengthen the confidence muscle. 

Build confident habits

Develop confident habits to build up your self-esteem. Break old habits that don't serve you well. Healthy habits like regular exercising, eating healthy, and getting 7-8 hours of sleep, are directly linked to helping you improve your confidence. A year ago, I re-evaluated my relationship with alcohol, and it has helped me develop habits that make me feel good about myself.

Review past performance

Review your past wins to be your own cheerleader. Track all your big and small wins and quantify your value add where possible— time saved, revenue generated, enabling someone, outreach and exposure created. It is not bragging when it is facts! 

"Do one thing every day that scares you."

Commit to working on whatever is holding you back from being your most confident self. It could be as simple as speaking up and sharing your idea in the first 10 minutes of a meeting. For me, it was being spontaneous in every situation and having the ablility to build a rapport with the customers I work with, so I took up an improv class. 

Whatever your goal, you decide how you want to show up.