Having strong self-confidence that allows you to be your best under stress is what differentiates people who are good versus great.

This is video four in our, How to Build Confidence Video Series.
It doesn’t matter whether you are an athlete, a business leader, a top sales producer, or leading your family. You want to be your best under stress — when it counts the most.
This fourth video in our confidence series includes wonderful examples of being confident in the most challenging situations. And it ends with a technique that Olympic and professional athletes often use in preparing their minds to be the best in their most challenging competitions.
Join speaker agent Kim Tracy and me in learning how to build your confidence. Either watch the video or read the text below, which was edited to enhance readability.
[vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/bKJk1SXA2Tw”]

Kim: Hi, I’m Kim Tracy with the Maxwell James Speaker Agency. So excited to be here with TC North. In our last interview he covered the 12 benefits of increasing self-confidence and today he’s going to really delve into being the best under stress. So can you elaborate on this for me?
TC: Yes. Being the best under stress, in my perception is the best aspect of being confident. That’s when we all want to be our best, right? You want to really be your best when things are most challenging, whether that’s in a relationship, in those moments in your work that are really challenging, or let’s say you’re with your teenage kid and there’s a tense moment around drugs or something? If you’re coming from a strong confident place – you’ll speak from there. Or as a business leader, or sales, being your best under stress is really critical.
Kim: Perfect. Can you give us some examples from the areas you mentioned?
TC: Yeah. I’ve trained a lot of Olympic athletes and if you think of the Olympics, most Olympians get one shot. That’s it. It’s one and done. And you’re either at your best and you can feel great about it, or not. So these athletes will train years and years, most of their young lives for that one opportunity at the Olympics. And when the day comes are they going to show up and be their best or not?
There’s two kinds of confidence – there’s general confidence and that’s the baseline of all other confidence and then there’s sport specific or task specific confidence. One of the easy analogies that people understand is maybe you’re great as a leader, maybe you’re great in sales, or a great computer programmer and then you go and have a baby. How confident are you now holding that little thing in your arms? Most people are just shaky and thinking “oh my gosh, I could easily kill this thing”. There’s no confidence there at all. And my experience with most parents is that they have to learn to be confident as a parent because that’s very task specific.
Kim: So what about a personal situation?
TC: A personal situation could be in sales. What if you’re in sales and all of a sudden you’re faced with the task of selling something that’s three times larger than you’ve ever had the opportunity to sell before. Or say you’re an entrepreneur going through a business accelerator and you have to stand on stage and pitch your company to a venture capitalist and they’re quite possibly going to make a million or multi-million-dollar decision on whether they’re going to buy into your company or not. Now that’s pressure! That’s when you want to be your best under stress.
Kim: Well that would definitely be a tough challenge. So give us a great a tip to leave us with today.
TC: It’s really important to prepare your mind to be your best under stress and one of the ways to do that is to use imagery. You can literally program in advance how you want to be when it’s most important to be your best.
Kim: Any lasting thoughts?
TC:  No, I think that’s it for today.
Kim: Alright, perfect. If you would like to bring TC in for one of his amazing keynotes, or workshops contact me, Kim Tracey through MaxwellJames.net. Thank you so much.
TC: Thank you, Kim.
My speaker agent Kim Tracy at the Maxwell James Agency produced this video. Please contact her if you’re interested in having me deliver a keynote, workshop or webinar on building confidence here. Or contact me if you’d like to discuss personal work with me to build your confidence and overcoming performance anxiety here.