I really rate the titles in the 'Overcoming' series. All are written by practising psychologists, yet in a highly accessible, practical style. Melanie Fennell’s book in the series is a great example. Dr Fennell is an experienced Cognitive Behavioural Therapy teacher and practitioner, and it’s the CBT approach that informs the thinking and exercises in this book. The thinking is robust, yet wears its provenance lightly, and the exercises are paced to encourage step-by-step progress. So this isn’t a ton of theory: it’s a practical workbook to guide the user through the necessary stages of dealing with what can be a crippling problem.

Just what low self-esteem is, its origins and its impact, are the subject of the early parts of the book. There’s a brief questionnaire to help you work out where your self-esteem may need a boost. The section on 'how low self-esteem develops' plots the path of 'how you got to here' in a way that makes total sense if only someone had said so earlier. We can then behave as if we have low self-esteem permanently installed on our hard drive, reinforcing our negative self-perception.

People who want to boost their confidence often compare themselves (negatively) to those who seem to be brimful and bursting with the stuff. Doing this negatively doesn’t help. However, we can make a really useful project of observing and studying the people who seem confident, and breaking down their 'code for confidence'.

1. Identify two or three people you think are confident (and this next bit’s important), in a way you like. It’s no use studying people whose confidence jars with you, or would make you cringe if you tried to mimic it. Go for exemplars who model confidence in a way that sits well with you. These people may be on TV, or doing stuff on YouTube, maybe they are written about in books. Or they may be colleagues, friends and relatives, or people in your community.
2. Now study them closely: how do they 'do' confidence? What do they actually do that makes them seem confident to you? We need to brush up our grammar here: we’re after verbs. For example, they stand tall, they pause when they speak, they make eye contact with each person around the meeting table, they smile more than they frown. Make notes on each person for the same criteria: it may be how they speak, or how they handle a group, or how they make a point really clearly, or how they stand. If possible, observe how they handle setbacks, such as tricky questions: what do they do then? You will need to gather as much information as you possibly can, for each exemplar, against each of your criteria.
3. Next, stand back and look for what your different exemplars have in common. Is it the level of eye contact, or the way they walk? Do they ask genuine and respectful questions? Do they use facial expression and gesture to put others at ease?
4. When you have a basic 'code for confidence', review it for compatibility with your own values. Eliminate anything that you would never, ever do because it just isn’t you. Put anything you’re hesitating slightly over on hold. Focus on the core of your confidence code with what’s left. What you now have is a code you can put into practice.
5. Try out one thing at a time, knowing that this may be like walking in new shoes - a little strange at first, but fine once you get used to it - and add other elements steadily, refining as you go.

For more on boosting your confidence, and a great in-depth resource, I recommend Melanie Fennell’s book 'Overcoming Low Self-Esteem'.

I’m often asked about confidence: how to get it and then get more of it. The thing is, I think that confidence isn’t something we can just go out and get. It’s a combination of practising confident thoughts, feelings and behaviours - and then practising some more - these three aspects of confidence interact.

Thoughts. Getting the thoughts part right may take some deep digging - but I think it’s well worth it. By the way, it’s not just a case of ‘think confident thoughts’ and ta dah! Oooh get you, all shiny and confident. No. First we need to notice our thoughts, especially when we’re in situations when we’d like to be a bit more confident, but just when we need it, what confidence we have seems to desert us. What are you saying to yourself?