As a motivational speaker college students often tell me that they used to be more confident. If you find that you do not have that rock-solid confidence in your personal makeup, what happened? Where did all the confidence you had as a child go? The answer may be in the type of questions you are asking yourself. If you ask yourself, “why am I so insecure and fearful all the time”, your brain is going to spring into instant alert and give you a whole bunch of reasons why you are fearful. Your brain is, for certain, going to give you responses—and they may not be what you will want to hear.

The same goes for any emotion we experience, whether it is fear, happiness, depression, worry or anxiety. None of these states are actual, innate, immutable, tangible “things”. Emotions are the result of complex chemical processes running through our brains on hard-wired neural pathways or tracks of our own creation. Guided and driven by an internal dialog that runs in endless loops tens of thousands of times a day—the activity is non-stop. And it is all based on the specific questions that you ask your brain. And the answers you get back will govern the emotional outcome you are left with.

Ask a dis-empowering question such as, "why do I fear public speaking?" and your brain will give you ten absolutely convincing reasons why you should be fearful of getting up on a stage. If you ask your brain, “Why am I such a jerk?” you again get ten convincing very reasons why you are a jerk. Lousy questions will always lead to lousy answers.

On the other hand, if you ask better, more positive questions you will get better, more empowering answers. For example, if you ask your brain in a typical dialog, “why am I so confident?”, your brain, after searching through a few hundred billion neurons, will search out and find examples of when you felt confident and strong and give you, at least, a few well considered compelling reasons why you are confident. And if you persevere and continue to ask this same empowering question over and over, you will get more and more positive reinforcement.

We must understand that confidence is a process, it is not a thing; it is not a physical state of mind and it is, most definitely, not something you either have or don’t have. Defining something “confidence” is really a misnomer. A better understanding of confidence comes when we acknowledge that there is only such a thing as: ... acting confident, behaving in a confident manner, thinking confident thoughts.

Thus, the solution to acquiring self-confidence is not a hugely, difficult enterprise. It is really quite simple but it does require some focus and effort on your part to ask the right questions.

It’s time to immediately stop the negative internal dialog and replace it with positive empowering questions that build you up. I always discuss how unfortunate it is that there is no motivational speaker college to equip students with these skills, but since there is not, it is on you to develop your own confidence!