Are there times when you doubt yourself and your abilities? Have you missed out on opportunities because you felt you were not talented enough, lacked education or felt unattractive?
Time and time again, I coach people who have lots of talent and wonderful ability, yet for various reasons they are filled with self-doubt. They give up on their dreams, settle for less and become stuck in a rut due to lack of self-confidence. It is no wonder that those who lack self-confidence are less adventurous, get less out of life and always underachieve.
Having self-confidence is crucial to living a fulfilling life. It influences your success at work, your relationships with others and your performance in everything you do. Confident people have faith in themselves and their abilities and they believe that that they can have the best in life.
The good news is that confidence is a skill, it can be learned, and just like driving a car, it can become a habit. As you know, we don't even have to think about our habits as they are part of us.
Apply the following 5 steps to greater self-confidence and you'll soon notice positive changes:
Step 1 - Decide to Become Self-Confident
Write out the answer to the following two questions:
- What would your life be like if you were confident?
- What would self-confidence mean to you?
Based on your answer make a decision today to invest your time, effort and money in becoming self-confident. Read books about self-confidence, listen to confidence building audios, attend confidence building workshops and consult with a coach who specialises in confidence coaching.
Step 2 -Become More Self-Aware
Learn to develop an awareness of your unique individuality. When you know and understand yourself at a deeper level, you will have greater control over your thoughts, feelings and attitudes which in turn will help you build greater self-confidence.
Step 3 -Act with Confidence
If you want to feel confident; act with confidence. When you think confidently, walk confidently and talk confidently, it will easily and effortlessly become natural for you to be confident.
Step 4 -Use your Imagination
When you use your imagination to visualise yourself being confident, you are impressing very powerful images onto your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind stores images and the more you visualise yourself being confident the more it becomes part of our life. Whenever your subconscious mind accepts an idea, it immediately begins to execute it.
Step 5 - Belief in Yourself
It is not your actual abilities that determine what you can achieve but your belief in them. It is essential that you let go of limiting beliefs that hinder your progress and develop empowering ones that assist your development. Often we are like the fish that does not even realise it is in water. When you work with a coach you will identify and eliminate those limiting beliefs that hinder your progress.
In order to achieve what you want in life, you must develop your self-confidence. Begin today to create a new and confident you, that uses and values your talents and creates the life you want. Break free from self-doubt and learn to trust in yourself and your abilities. With greater self-confidence, you will feel inner strength, greater happiness and much more fulfilled. Begin today to sow the seeds of confidence and you will be amazed with the results and positive effects that ripple through all areas of your life.
It is easy to think that Alice in Wonderland is a dreamland fairy tale for children. On the surface it appears to be just that. However, if you look closer, you will realise that Alice's world translates into much more than a children's fairytale.
The story has been studied and analysed by psychoanalysts since the early 1900's and although it is filled with chaos there is lots to learn from its underlying messages.
1. Manage your Personal Growth
The most important metaphor in the story is one of growth. We see Alice grow from tall to short and from big to small. Growing up is about changing body size, dealing with ups and downs, feeling confident or insecure about oneself. When Alice eats she grows, when she drinks she shrinks. She soon learns to use the resources in her world to control her personal growth.
We spend our lives 'growing up' in one way or another. What are you doing to manage your personal growth?
2. Be Specific about What You Want to Achieve
Alice learns about the importance of knowing what she wants. We can learn a great deal about the importance of goals from her conversation with the Cheshire Cat.
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
“'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to”' said the Cat.
“'I don't much care where” said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
Think about what you will achieve over the next 90 days! Write it down together with the steps that you will take to achieve that. Imagine specifically what you will see and hear as you achieve your goal. Think about it until you can run a mental movie of what you want over and over again. In particular think about how achieving your goal will make you feel, and build the intensity of that emotion in your mind.
3. Develop your Identity
The characters in wonderland continually ask Alice who she is. As a result, she questions her identity. When we have doubts about who we are and what we stand for it affects our entire life. Consider the roles you have in your life, for example; a parent, a spouse, a son or a daughter, a colleague, a leader or a friend. Write out the qualities you believe you have in those roles. E.g. "I am a caring father" or "I am a creative business person". Remember that you will assume different behaviours in each role. As you learn more about yourself in each role, you will reinforce your self-belief and learn to develop your capabilities within each role.
4. Say What you Really Mean
Alice is continually told to say what she means. How often do you really say what you mean? When did you last have a conversation really meaningful conversation? When you connect with people who share similar values, you will find that you share more meaningful conversations.
5. Challenge your Creativity
In the latest movie Alice's father, a successful entrepreneur, tells her that he thinks of 6 impossible things before breakfast every day. Imagine if you just thought of 1 impossible thing per day. You could find ways to solve problems or create something that was never invented before. Get your creative juices flowing by thinking of 1 impossible thing everyday.
6. Follow the Advice you Give Yourself
"Alice generally gave herself good advice (though she very seldom followed it)."
Do you give yourself good advice and do you follow it? Or are we better at giving others advice and expecting them to follow it?
Whether you enjoy this fairytale for its entertainment value or search for the deeper meaning like I have, there is lots of value to be had.
We spend all of our lives “growing up” in one way or another. The underlying messages in Alice in Wonderland are about personal growth and development. Growing up is about learning who we are, what we stand for, what we want to do, be and have. It is about dealing with difficulty, hurt and pain as well as love, laughter and fun. It is about overcoming fears, embracing new challenges and nurturing relationships. It is about using our talents and learning to be the best we can be.
This may be a children's story at heart, however we can learn a great deal from a young girl who acquires the confidence and courage to break free from rules to become that person she aspires to be.
Perhaps you have read the story or been to see the movie. Was there something in particular from the story that resonated with you?
As I write this article the word 'confidence' returns 124 million results on Google. It's no wonder as confidence is surprisingly difficult to tie down precisely and regardless of how much we have, we crave more.
Confidence is one of our greatest personal resources. With it we can handle any situation, reach our goals, take on new challenges, yet without it we tend to suffer. Simply put, the more confident you are the more likely you are to succeed.
Confidence means something different for each one of us and rather than searching for the perfect definition, let's focus on how we can build more of it.
Confidence is almost all about perception and the perception you have of yourself also impacts how others perceive you. Self-confident people believe in their ability to achieve which drives their success.
Believing in yourself, means that you recognise and accept that you have all the capability you need to achieve whatever it is you want. It also means that you accept failure as a challenge and an opportunity to learn and grow. Knowing that you are the greatest asset you have translates into a whole range of positive outcomes.
There is a lot of truth in the phrase confidence breeds confidence. The best way to build confidence is to relive times of prior success and develop empowering beliefs about future success. The key to doing this successfully is to use the process of visualisation. Allow your mind to relive the uplifting and empowering emotions of times when you felt really confident in the past and also to rehearse future envisioned confidence.
Repeatedly focus your thoughts on the things you want to happen in your life and vividly imagine them happening now. Remember to use all your senses to build up the positive experience and emotions of a confident and competent you. Visualisation is extremely effective, as our subconscious mind cannot distinguish between thoughts that are real or imagined. It is particularly useful when building up confidence for a future experience, of which you have no experience or even where you previously failed.
When you repeatedly visualise the confidence you want, you change how you habitually think about yourself. When you begin to see yourself as you want to be, you gradually and naturally feel yourself enjoying more and more confidence.