Todd Tidmore, Self Confidence Advice

Author: Mike Paetzold

Where does self confidence come from? How do we get it? Why don’t I have it? The answer to all of these questions can be answered with one word - you! Self confidence starts with you, your perception of yourself, and what other people think about your actions or behavior.

For some of us, a lack of self confidence only affects our high ambitions. You might have always wanted to get up on stage, or to be a professional singer or actor for example. Perhaps your life dream is to travel the world, visit different countries or cities, but you don’t have the self confidence to do it. For others, the problem of self confidence is much closer to home - in the office, business meetings, public speaking events or presentations.

Self confidence issues affect most of us at some time, and we can usually find ways of getting around the problem. Avoidance is one tactic we often use - if we can get out of an intimidating situation we’ll make up excuses not to take part. However, there are times when we can’t get out of it, or we really don’t want to. If a lack of self confidence is preventing you from doing trying something new, or from succeeding in your working life, it’s time to do something about it.

The starting point in improving your self confidence is understanding what causes the problem. Low self esteem, not believing in yourself or your ability, feeling inadequate compared to your colleagues or friends or maybe some kind of trauma from your childhood are all contributing factors. By examining the reasons for your low self confidence, you’re halfway there!

Taking positive action to overcome your fears is the next step to help boost your self confidence. A simple way to do this is by taking on small challenges. You have allowed your brain to associate certain events or actions with fear, so you’ve already pre-empted the outcome of these situations. By taking a small step towards conquering this, you’ll find that the result is most likely not as bad as you think - in fact, you’ll probably be surprised about how good you feel and your self confidence will instantly increase.

When you’ve completed your first small challenge, congratulate yourself on achieving your aim. A small reward can often help. You’re already on the right path to improving your self confidence, so you’re ready to take it to the next level. This doesn’t need to be a huge task; you don’t want to undo all the good work. Building up your self confidence takes time, and while you might want to leap ahead, it can be a good idea to take things slowly at first. Steadily increase the risks you’re taking to get your self confidence to where you want to be. Risk taking does not, of course, mean jumping off a bridge, but the perceived risk of something happening as a result of your actions is usually the biggest barrier with self confidence.

Self confidence problems are common for most people, and there are excellent resources to learn to deal with these issues, but if you do have severe difficulty facing certain situations you should seek professional help.

Author: Trevor Johnson

Even the most outwardly confident person has times when they would appreciate more self confidence. For the rest of us mere mortals, here are some helpful tips for improving self confidence.

1. Stop putting yourself down

We all have an inner voice. You know, the one that nags you incessantly if you get the slightest thing wrong. You wouldn’t let anyone else talk to you in that tone of voice, so don’t let yourself do it either! This takes a little practice but the essence is that every time you hear yourself criticizing you, tell that voice to go away (your choice on how polite you are when you do this!)

2. Play to your strengths

You’re good at quite a lot of things if you think about it. Play to these strengths. Do more of the things you’re good at. You’ll find your confidence improving as you become more successful at these. Success breeds success, so it will spill over into other areas of your life.

3. Stop being so negative!

Cut down on your intake of negative things. Turn off the news. Don’t read a newspaper. These two can be scary but other people will tell you if anything actually important hits the news. Don’t be negative about yourself either - stop saying that you’ll never be any good at whatever it is. As far as possible, don’t let others be negative about you either.

4. Set achievable goals

Set them out step by step. You wouldn’t climb a whole mountain in one giant leap. Split your goals into “bite sized chunks” so that you are constantly achieving something towards your goals. The regular sense of achievement will start boosting your confidence.

5. Remember a positive event

Go back to when you were more confident - it doesn’t matter when particularly. Remember what you felt like. See yourself being confident and calm and collected. Make this image larger and more colorful. Add in the sounds that were there when you were feeling so full of confidence. Then “anchor” that feeling - maybe touch your left earlobe, maybe pinch your thumb and middle finger together, whatever you can use to easily “anchor” the feeling. Repeat this a few times and you’ll find that the simple firing of your trigger will bring back these warm, happy, confident feelings.

6. Be yourself

You are who you are. Over time, you can use various self improvement techniques to work on yourself and improve things you want to change. But accept yourself as you are - you’ll actually find you’re probably quite likeable “as is”.

7. Celebrate failure

You didn’t learn to walk the first time you wobbled onto two feet. You probably weren’t a natural bicycle rider or car driver either. As we grow older, we seem to expect to be able to do new things brilliantly the first time we try them. Unless it’s painting by numbers or something equally facile, this doesn’t happen in real life. Each failed attempt is just one more way you’ve learned how not to do something. Learn from your mistakes and build on your successes.