Jesus said it is more blessed to give than to receive – In this post I’m going to show you how to get confidence blessings by first giving it. Few people use this technique yet it’s so easy to do and comes back to you big time.
Recently I received a gift of a mug, a water bottle, and a shirt. Normal everyday items, not much to get excited about except…
I had not seen this person for many years, and they had spent hours deliberating the right items to buy me, the right colour, the right size etc. Knowing this person had spent so long thinking about how to make me happy did three things:
1. Made the receiving of the gift ten times more pleasurable
2. Made the gift ten times more valuable in my eyes
3. Increased my affection for the person giving it
I have now introduced two concepts into this blog post which, when married up to each other, can change the world. Those two concepts are - giving a gift (specifically a gift of confidence), and increasing somebody’s affection for you.
How do you give someone a gift of confidence?
Especially if you are not a confident person yourself. And it’s not like you can just visit your nearest department store and browse the confidence section either.
The answer is – you do it through giving a reputation. Here is an example of a reputation I gave to somebody:
As part of my job, and in my capacity as an advanced driver, I was doing annual driving evaluations on staff for a footsie 100 company. Some staff were notable by their determined lack of effort and interest in impressing me, others went the other way and tried too hard, both these groups put in a poor drive as a result (and even outright dangerous in one instance).
One particular employee however, stood out for me as having a good standard of driving, but more than that, I could see he was giving it his full effort. I was impressed and could genuinely see that he had potential to be an exceptional driver. I advised him to join his nearest advanced motoring organisation and get advanced lessons.
The great thing about giving a reputation is that the person you are bigging up does not have to be excellent at what they are doing, they only have to be good at it for your feedback to be believed and accepted.
When you successfully give a reputation, a magical thing happens…
The person re-evaluates themselves for the thing you are complementing them on, and if they find your words plausible, they will feel good and they will grow as a result.
Having given a reputation, the person will begin living up to it until they are as excellent as you originally stated. The rule to remember in reputation giving is that they must be already good at what you are complementing them, for the reputation to take hold.
In the example I gave for the driving assessment, I could see my feedback immediately hitting home, and the person growing almost perceptibly before me.
Although he didn’t say it, I knew with a certainty he would go and seek advanced driving lessons and live up to the reputation he had just been given.
A summary of the wider implications and benefits of giving a confidence gift:
1. You feel good in the act of giving a confidence/reputation gift
2. The person receiving feels good and potentially goes on to develop a good ability into a real skill
3. That person associates their good feeling with YOU and a connection is made
4. That person goes on to inspire other people and help them grow
You think step four is a step too far? Advanced driving exams are done by a police officer, part of the drive involves giving a commentary on everything that is happening. Most advanced drivers find this difficult and unnatural to do, I happen to find it easy. At the end of the drive I was told my commentary was the best he had ever heard, better even than his police chief.
This was the first time in my life to receive a reputation, before that I had never considered my commentary as being anything special. Passing the exam did not give me any particular confidence, but his reputation gift multiplied my self-belief, which led to me becoming a driving assessor for a brief period in time.
P.S. Lets start feeling good and start get confidence blessings right now by giving out some reputations and weaving some magic into the lives of others.
Thanks for reading right to the end, that tells me this post has resonated with something inside, which means you are already thinking about who you want to give a gift of confidence to. And that makes you pretty special already.
