How to be Confident

Being confident can mean the difference between gaining an opportunity or missing one.  Have you found yourself in the situation of turning into a bumbling mess at an important interview?  Has your mind ever gone blank when you were nervous and caused you to not do nearly as well in a test as you knew you could have done?

Or perhaps, you have found yourself lacking confidence when you were attracted to someone, and you were unable to bring yourself to speak to them, or maybe worse, you did find the courage, but knew you had blown your chance as soon as you opened your mouth?

One of the greatest gifts you could give yourself is to build your self confidence.  Being confident in who you are as a person, will positively impact every area of your life, as well as making life much more fun.

So, what can you do to ensure that you do not miss out on any future opportunities in life because you lacked confidence?

Your Value Comes from Within

Look honestly at the way you think about yourself.  Do you measure your value from what others say about you?  Or, do you measure your value by what you know about yourself – your talents, your character, your qualities as a human being, and the way you interact with others.

The truth is, that regardless of how much work you put into improving yourself as a human being, there will always be those who will criticize and find fault with you.  If you allow the opinions of others (and it is only their opinion after all), to decide for you what your value is, then you are always going to struggle to be self confident.

A person who is unshakable in their value, will present to the world a confident face, because they know they are of worth, and what they think and do matters.  Other people and circumstances only have the power to affect our self esteem, if with give that power to them.  If we stand strong in our own self worth, outward circumstances cannot affect us.

Get Clear About What you Want

A person who has purpose in life has their energy focused and does not have a problem with self confidence.  The reason for this is that when you are definite about what you are out to achieve in life, there is no room for indecision.

A lack of confidence goes hand in hand with indecision.  People who do not know what they want out of life, what their goals are, do not have something to focus their energy on.  So instead, that energy goes into second guessing their decisions, and talking themselves around in circles, instead of actually getting things done.

Getting clear on what you want, and then setting up an action plan to follow, will go a long way to giving you greater confidence.  Start writing down your short, medium and long term goals.  Set out specific small steps you can take daily to work towards those goals.  Once you see yourself making progress it will do wonders for you self esteem.

Listen to Your Thoughts

Being confident, or lacking confidence,  is a direct result of what you are saying to yourself.  Think about how easy it is to build up or destroy someone else’s self confidence by the way you speak to them.  It is exactly the same with the self talk going on in your head.  You cannot get away from the thoughts going around your head, and if those thoughts are negative and tearing you down, then your self confidence will be very low.

For this reason, it is extremely important, to first take note of what you are actually thinking about yourself, and second, to correct those thoughts which are negative and destructive by replacing them with positive thoughts.

It is a process that takes time, but the results can be life-transforming.  It is very easy to talk down to ourselves when we make mistakes.  Comparing ourselves with others is another way that we create negative thoughts that affect our confidence.

So, start listening to your thoughts and take note of what you are really saying about yourself.  Initially, you might be quite shocked at how often you are down on yourself.  A simple way to change this, is to immediately correct yourself, and say something positive instead.

There are simple affirmations that you can read out loud to yourself each day to help you get into the good habit of praising yourself, instead of criticizing yourself.

Some examples are:

I am a valuable and worthy person.
My opinion matters.
I perform my work capably and confidently.
I am healthy and fit.

Know that your worth and value is equal to every other human being on this planet.  You are robbing yourself and others of your gifts and talents when you hold back from giving all you have to offer because of a lack of confidence.  Do yourself and the world a favor and be the best you can be, and do not hide it.