Building self-confidence is mostly about finding ways to combat the lies we tell ourselves about our abilities. Sadly, most people in western societies doubt their knowledge and skills on a regular basis. There are entire books written about “imposter syndrome.” If you’re struggling with having enough confidence to toot your own horn, consider taking the following steps to build your self-confidence while building your expertise.

Write Down Your Accomplishments

You don’t have to share this with anyone but take some time right now to write down your accomplishments in the past year, five years, and even ten years so that you can easily look at them. Avoid describing another person as an accomplishment.

For example, raising a child, while a wonderful thing to do, isn’t the type of accomplishment you should be listing right now unless it has something to do with your audience. Instead, choose things that relate to your business and the benefits you want to promote to your audience as you write down your accomplishments. Make them relevant to the types of things you’re going to want to brag about.

Always Keep Learning

Lifelong learning is an important aspect of maintaining your expertise. No matter what we do, technology changes things. Not only does technology change but audiences do, too. Even if their demographics stay the same, over time culture changes - which changes the values of the demographics you’re working with. Continuing to learn and staying ahead of your industry as much as possible will not only ensure you are ready for change but will turn you into the expert you want to be.

Whether you’re learning about your audience’s problems more thoroughly, or identifying complementary problems you can address, or learning technology that can help you and your customers, it’s important to keep learning. There is never going to be a time when you can say you’ve learned all you need to know about the customer, problem, or products that you promote.

Do Something Scary

When you do feel fear about something, especially something like tooting your own horn, don’t let the fear get in your way. Learn to do the thing you’re afraid of correctly and then take baby steps toward doing it. As you gain experience doing things you’re afraid of doing, and nothing bad happens, and only good things happen (more conversions!), the fear will go away.

However, if you don’t seek to overcome fear by doing it anyway, the fear can start to get worse and grow. That first time you go ahead and listen to the anxiety and fear and let it stop you won’t seem like a big deal, but after months of saying no when you should say yes, you’ll realize you’re being left behind by your competition because they’re willing to do what you aren’t.