Without A Doubt: Here’s How to Feel 100% Confident About Yourself and Your Career

The love month at Kalibrr ended with the Get Hired with Kalibrr event last February 28 featuring Amanda Cua, CEO of BackScoop and Tessa Mercado, Tiktok’s Millennial HR Manager, as they shared their perspectives on the value of discovering and embracing your best self. 

How do we do that? How do we find and celebrate our best selves? We may have varying answers, but one thing is for sure: letting our confidence shine through is one of them! 

Girl bosses Amanda Cua and Tessa Mercado shared tips on how they built their self-confidence and achieved their greatest potential, which eventually translated into the work they do.

1. Confidence is the Key 

At times, people seek external validation from the people around them, may it be at home, in school, or at the workplace, and sometimes we rely on these to help motivate us to do better. It is important to remember that while external validation is fine to a certain extent, being able to muster internal confidence allows us to do better in what we do. 

For example, the work that you do, you can have the skills and the knowledge to be able to do it, but if you’re not confident about what you’re doing, this can translate to your output. It is easy for us to learn about the skills we need or expand our knowledge on the field we would like to venture into, but through all of that, we must also learn to be confident in ourselves and our own capabilities. Quoting what Amanda Cua said in her talk, “I was able to learn those skills but more importantly, I was able to learn more of the sort of confidence in myself that I never had before– I started to grow an internal confidence inside me because I saw myself to have zero skills, no nothing, but after that one year of really trying very hard, reading all the books I can, making a lot of mistakes and asking for feedback from my coworkers, I was able to learn all these skills and that allowed me to become a lot more confident with myself.”

According to this article from Rachel Boswell, self-confidence is the key to success because this can help shape our outlook on life. When you let your self-confidence shine through, it means that you believe in yourself and that you have the courage to take on anything. 

2. Know Your Purpose

We often can get caught up with how fast paced the world is to the point that we lose sight of the important things in life. We forget our whys and what motivates us to achieve what it is we have our eyes on. Knowing our purpose in doing what we do drives us to take the necessary steps in order to get there. Amanda Cua shared the reason why she started BackScoop: she wanted to offer a more convenient way for people to be able to keep up with the start-up and tech industries in Southeast Asia and this was her purpose in establishing her company at such a young age. 

This article from Scottsdale Community College discusses how having a sense of purpose is vital as we go through our journey in life. Our purpose can also be an intention we have that is meaningful to us. Knowing what our intentions are can help us stay focused on the things and people that matter to us. 

Just like knowing your purpose when finding a job or a career, you don’t always find it the first time around. It may take some time, but recognizing your why and aligning it with your values and what you want to achieve can help you set your intentions for what you want in your career.

If you have the time, sit down and reflect on what your purpose is; you might just be shocked to know what yours is. 

3. Self Love is Important

Being confident starts within you, and what better way to start building on that than by loving yourself! It may be hard and it takes some time to fully develop that self-love, but don’t worry; we all have our own pace in life that will help us achieve this. We often hear the line, “How will you be able to give your 100% in the things and people you love if you don’t love yourself first?” Before we branch out to committing to other things, let’s commit to discovering our best selves first.

Tiktok’s Millennial HR Manager, Tessa Mercado, shared the following tips to jump-start our self-love journey: 

• Stop comparing yourself to others – We all have different timelines and seasons, we just have to wait for our turn. Let’s not get discouraged.

• Don’t worry about others’ opinions – The people around you aren’t the ones creating your future; you are incharge of your life. It is better to do something and feel that sense of fulfillment knowing that you did it for yourself and your career. 

• Allow yourself to make mistakes – Our mistakes help shape our experience, and we learn from them. You can have so many backup plans, and whenever you want to start over, you’re not starting from scratch but from your experiences. 

• Remember that your value doesn’t lie in how your body looks – Health is wealth and learn to slow down when you know you need it. Rest is important to be able to bounce back again. 

• Don’t be afraid to let go of toxic people – Letting go of people and situations that do not support you or are bringing negative energy into your life will help you focus on the more important aspects of it. 

• Put yourself first – Self-love is about prioritizing yourself and your needs above anything else. Find time to do things you love to help you get back on track. 

Are you practicing these tips for self-love? Slow down and breathe. Knowing that you are taking care of yourself will allow your self-confidence to radiate from within you. 

4. Take that Risk!

Going into something for which we don’t know the outcome can be quite scary. At times, we would just stay in our own little boxes because of our fear of the unknown. Remember that you have to start somewhere, and sometimes, taking that risky first step can bring us to where we want to be. In her talk, Amanda Cua mentioned that because she took risks, it gave her wildly different experiences that allowed her to grow. When she started her business, she had apprehensions because she lacked resources, but because she took that risk, BackScoop has grown so much in the past few years and is successful in its field.

Whenever we decide to take that one big leap of faith, remember that it means that you are trusting yourself to get you to the place where you want to be.

You might want to finally take the risk to get that job you’ve been eyeing, or talk to that one officemate you want to form a good relationship with. It may be hard to get out of your comfort zone to be able to do that, but remember that it’s better to try than to regret not being able to do it. That one risk you took may be the start of something bigger and better for you! 

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Kalibrr is a recruitment technology company that aims to transform how candidates find jobs and how companies hire talent. Placing the candidate experience at the center of everything it does, we continue to attract the best talent from all over, with more than 5.5 million professionals and counting. Kalibrr ultimately connects these talents to companies in search of their next generation of leaders.

The only end-to-end recruitment solutions provider in Southeast Asia, Kalibrr is headquartered in Makati, Philippines, with offices in San Francisco, California, and Jakarta, Indonesia. Established in 2012, it has served over 18,000 clients and is backed by some of the world’s most powerful start-up incubators and venture capitalists. These include Y Combinator, Omidyar Network, Patamar Capital, Wavemaker Partners, and Kickstart Ventures.

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