Many people think confidence is something you either have or do not have. It is not that simple. Even highly confident people have times when they lack confidence or privately worry about their ability to keep on achieving good results.

Thankfully, we can all become more confident and take charge of this valuable emotional state. It is easier than you think!

Here are a few quick tips on how to have confidence:

1. Know your best time of day

Are you a morning person? Or are you more dynamic later in the day? Access to our personal greatness depends to a large degree on our physical well being. Pay attention to when you tend to be at your very best and where possible use those times to get involved in the activities that require you to have confidence. For example, if you want to ask your boss for a raise and you are not a morning person then wait until later in the day and catch her when you are both in a good emotional state.

2. Forget about perfection

Confident people know they can handle whatever happens and they believe this even if they do not always produce perfect results every time. You can do the same. Decide that you will do the very best you can in the moment. Aim to give 100% but do not demand perfection. this attitude frees you to get things done and to keep learning and improving. Those people who aim for perfection live very stressful and demanding lives. And ultimately their confidence will suffer because they never quite live up to their high expectations.

3. Build confidence in unrelated activities

Confidence is simply a feeling. This is good news because it means you can develop greater confidence in yourself outside of the activities where you sometimes lack confidence. If you lack confidence meeting people but are good at sport, for example, then spend more time playing sport to get used to feeling confident again. You could also play this sport before you go out to meet people. The confident feelings you enjoy playing sport will help you later even though meeting people is an unrelated activity.

The key then is to spend a little time each day on activities that flex that "have confidence" muscle until feeling confident is your normal state of being.

Now, go and play with these simple tips. You know how to have confidence. With a little time you will find yourself feeling confident more and more often until it becomes second nature.