Confidence

Clients can spot a quiet confidence. Feeling good about your travel practice, its prospects and the job you are doing for clients shows. People rally behind the self-confident person who carries their confidence with grace.  It’s easy to understand why: confidence inspires confidence.  Yet, confidence must be genuine and authentic, borne of a sense that you can actually accomplish the tasks and projects you set out to do, and you can accomplish them with style.

There are a few things each of us can do to maintain the proper attitude and to generate the inner confidence we need to approach each and every day correctly. Confidence can be built.

Stress is the #1 enemy of confidence.  Locate the stress points in your life and begin working on resolving the issues causing you undue, unwanted stress.

• Set aside some time each week to remind yourself why you started your travel planning career and why you really are good at what you do.
• Have clear goals – without them, you can not truly measure your achievements.  To get what you want, you have to actually know what you want.
• Reaffirm your commitment to excellence, to good customer service and making a positive impact on your clients’ travel ambitions.  Resolve that every client encounter will be the best it can possibly be.  Set out to WOW your clients.
• Reconfirm your commitments to professionalism and to education, and step up your efforts to take sales, marketing and product training.
• Make a list of your strengths. The chances are that your better qualities will easily dwarf the significance of an error or mishap.
• Keep momentos of your achievements close at hand where you can see them. Past achievements are the building blocks for future ones.
• Re-establish your goals and adjust everything to point at the shortest path to achieving them.
• Refuse to give in to the negative people in life, the ones just looking for their next dose of Schadenfreude. Stay focused.

Confidence is easy to muster when things are going well. The key is to keep your self-confidence in place when things take a bad turn. It is too easy to let a bad week or a negative event affect the way you perceive your own performance as a travel planner. No business person will operate for long without a mishap or a setback. The secret is in bouncing back after a fall. Understand mishaps for what they are – opportunities to learn, to reshape your methods and to grow into the next stage of your business and personal maturity. Choose to silence your inner critic – put your confident Self in charge of each and every day.