Do you want to learn how to be more bold and confident? Firstly, you must understand confidence and boldness are two very different things. Confidence is how you feel about yourself. Boldness is what you do in action. Bold action is where you build your confidence and is an effective leadership skill. Bold people don't feel confident all of the time, but they act anyway. They say why not, let's see what happens. If they fail, they say wow, I need to get better at this, but it was kind of interesting to try anyway.
Fred Joyal is teaching bold actions by encouraging people to move into their discomfort zone. This is where they are not as confident yet, with practice, will find themselves getting stronger and stronger. Fred refers to this as building your boldness muscle to become your default mode. This can lead to bold actions when it matters. He has found that a lot of times people feel pretty confident and bold until something important comes up.
Can you reflect on a time when a window of opportunity was open for minutes or even seconds and you had a choice whether to act or not? If you didn't seize it, it is gone forever and all you are left with is regret.
Have you read: Leading Yourself First (The Change Room) – Matt Elliot
The Wall Street Journal bestseller Superbold: From Under-Confident to Charismatic in 90 days, is a book that was inspired by reflecting on missed opportunities. Fred begins with changing your mindset and provides key insights and an understanding of how you can build your boldness muscle by using the P.R.I.D.E Model.
The P.R.I.D.E Model is an acronym for:
- Preparation
- Relaxing
- Insight
- Dosage
- Everyday Action
Being one who acts rather than one who regrets starts gradually. It requires practicing when it doesn’t matter. You may compliment someone you see at a coffee shop on their glasses or smile or say hi to five people every day. Use a random act of kindness to really connect with another person. This is a great way to practice being bold as well as make others feel good.
“What you get to everyday aggregates. You don't have any agenda. You're not out to get anything except to make that person feel better about themselves. You have no gain in mind and people sense that,” says Fred.
Have you read: One Mind, Many Matters (Strength and Resilience) – Barnaby Howarth
How to be More Bold
When you are super bold, you never hesitate. You see that person you want to meet, and you walk right across the room and start talking to them. You behave like a normal person and have a normal conversation because you have built your boldness muscle so that your mouth, brain and creativity work allowing you to project what is essentially charisma.
It’s a choice. I'm choosing to be uncomfortable until I'm comfortable and to never miss another opportunity again when it matters.
Most of the time nothing bad happens unless you decide to label it that way such as embarrassment and then you have a choice. You don't have to be embarrassed. It can be funny. You can laugh along with people. You can say it humanizes us to do stupid things.
For example, plenty of people doing karaoke can't sing, however, they don't care because they are having fun and have got all their friends cheering them on even though they suck. Guess who's having a better life?
That is what super bold really is. You are not trying to get attention or anything like that. You are chasing your dreams and you want a full life with very few regrets.
To learn how to be more bold and confident, the complete interview can be listened to here, on audio platforms, or watched here, on The Culture of Leadership (TCoL) YouTube channel.