‎5 Tips to Increase Confidence

Mohammed, a zero-generation student, immigrated from Yemen as an adult to pursue ‎higher education at an Ivy League ‎university in the United States. He arrived at his university with ‎limited English skills and ‎almost no familiarity with the American way of ‎doing business.

Although Mohammed is adept at ‎engineering, he tends to be fairly oblivious when it comes to leaving good impressions on others. ‎He has limited soft skills that would allow ‎him to foster and maintain social, professional, platonic, and romantic relationships. Although Mohammed is gifted academically, he is inexperienced socially.

When I spoke with Mohammed, he was ‎frustrated beyond measure because he ‎desperately needed a job; yet he could not ‎receive a single offer. He had only gotten interviews, most of which were ‎followed by rejections.

Mohammed’s frustration was ‎palpable and I deeply felt his pain. He had ‎immigrated to the United States in search ‎of better educational and economical opportunities—but once there, he found he could ‎not join the workforce. Out of necessity, he started working in ‎restaurants to stay out of ‎poverty, pay his bills, and support his family in Yemen who are living through an egregious war. ‎

Mohammed recently had an interview with three ‎hiring managers. The interview lasted for an ‎hour and felt to Mohammed like an interrogation. ‎He was asked all sorts of technical ‎questions, which he answered competently, ‎and soft questions, which he answered incompetently.

When the hiring manager ‎asked, “Where do you see yourself in five ‎years?” Mohammed did not know how to answer ‎because he lives his life day by day, in survival mode. ‎He could not imagine the person he might be in five years when he is struggling to conceive of his life now. What's more, Mohammed is an observant Muslim and often leaves ‎future planning in the “hands of God,” as he ‎puts it.

But more specifically, Mohammed is not concerned with his ‎future in five years because he is currently ‎preoccupied with finding a job—a process ‎in which he feels utterly confused and lost, ‎and on which he receives limited support. ‎His answer to the hiring ‎manager's question, therefore, likely did not cast him in the ‎best light possible because he was not ‎perceived as professional in the ‎modern sense. A clash of civilizations was ‎happening in the job interview, for which Mohammed paid a heavy price—namely, not getting any job offer.

Mohammed’s non-native ‎English accent is also an obstacle, as it compels many hiring ‎managers to proceed with caution, since ‎they sometimes cannot make sense of his traditional ‎ways of speaking. Mohammed's tonality, voice pitch, ‎and accent often put hiring managers on alert, ‎simply because he doesn’t fit their preconceived idea of their "ideal" ‎candidate. In some hiring managers' minds, an ‎ideal candidate sounds something like “X” ‎whereas Mohammed is coming across as ‎something like “Y.” This can create ‎unconscious bias at the level of impression ‎management. Intelligence, as psychologists ‎have ascertained, is expressed differently across ‎cultures. ‎

Mohammed has a serious decision to make—and ‎a tight deadline on which to make it—because he has no other options. ‎He either gets a job and stays in the United ‎States, or he returns to Yemen and works for ‎a monthly salary of less than $100. He lives ‎under a precarious visa situation, which ‎means that he must either be employed or get ‎deported.

Mohammed told me that he has two ‎more months to find a job, after which he ‎would have to return to Yemen, with his ‎Ivy League degree that he could not ‎capitalize upon here in the United States. ‎“Other people in my condition,” Mohammed told me, “might have considered suicide as a solution.”

Many zero-generation students pour all of their efforts ‎into the education system yet they don’t ‎receive an equal return on investment. When ‎they get into the job market, they struggle ‎to compete for jobs and receive naked ‎discrimination from hiring managers, for ‎legal, language, and cultural reasons. In all ‎cases, the zero generation just does not get ‎the opportunity for which they applied. ‎

Zero generation are not voluntary immigrants but rather involuntary refugees. They are endangered to return home because of natural and human disasters, yet at the same time, they struggle to belong in their newfound home because of human discrimination. They are neither welcome there nor here, thereby existing in the elusive “in-between” area. They struggle with having a solid identity that belongs to one place, language, and culture; they are always jumping between two places, languages, and cultures—all of which create unbearable frustrations for the zero generation.

However, after studying the cases of many zero-generation students, I realize that their main problem is not only shyness but also a lack of confidence, which then results in an inability to make good impressions on people, including hiring managers. So, how to increase confidence?

5 Strategies to Increase Confidence

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1. Have a bold imagination. If you struggle to feel confident, then you have limited imagination, perhaps due to dysfunctional childhood and trauma. But imagine that you are confident and get specific about the details. What reactions do you hope to elicit from people? How do you want to be received? Why do you want to be confident? Have the imagination to figure out all the details about confidence. “Imagination is everything,” wrote Albert Einstein, “it is the preview to life’s coming attraction.” So have the audacity to imagine a new confident persona for your new self.

2. Believe in your imagined vision. Once you had the imagination of how you would like to behave in a certain situation, dare to believe that imagination. It is no longer an imagined dream, but rather a belief that can be—and will be—enacted in the world. In other words, transform the bold imagination into a solid belief. If you imagine being confident, then believe in it—like your life depends on it and as if nothing in the whole world can deter you from believing it.

3. Act on your beliefs. If you have a bold imagination, and a solid belief, then the final step is to act. The process of learning how to be, feel, and act confident is akin to the process of learning a new language. In essence, you are learning a new language of confidence—of how you can leave good impressions on those whom you meet. If you learn a new language, you will know that, during the beginning stages, you will struggle no matter how intelligent and determined you are. Making mistakes is part and parcel of the process of learning anything. So act on your beliefs and learn from your mistakes.

4. Learn the process of change. The process of change is laborious, painful, and rewarding. If you do not like where you are right now in life, especially with your confidence level, then you have the chance to improve that. First you have to learn that gaining confidence is an attainable goal; you are not the first person who struggled with confidence, nor will you be the last. It is a universal problem. Knowing the process of change will save you much unnecessary confusion.

5. Unlearn bad habits. Sorry to report the bad news, but you are neither unique nor special; your struggles are ordinary and common to the human experience; even worse, the universe, with all of its glory, is indifferent to human suffering. God, or any supernatural deity, is not going to save you unless you become the change you want to see in the world. All in all, unlearn all the bad habits that maintain your inertia; you need to take control of your life and become responsible for your imagination, beliefs, and actions.

Conclusion ‎

Life is short. If you are not happy with your level of confidence, then the time to work on that is now. Try the five strategies: (1) have a bold imagination, where you reimagine your self; (2) follow that with a solid belief, where you transform the imagined vision into a set core of beliefs about yourself; (3) act on those new beliefs, while understanding that change will emerge slowly but surely; (4) learn the process of change, to save yourself unnecessary confusion and be patient; and (5) unlearn bad habits, which have not been serving you well, and be honest.

If you kept digging into yourself, then one day you will be confident—most likely when you least expect that change. Just as those who learn new languages will tell you: they study and practice, and one day, they become fluent in the language. It often takes years and hours of intensive practice to master anything in life. So, ask yourself this question: How badly do you want to be confident? Your success rate in achieving confidence will be somehow proportional to your motivation level.