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.
Change is taking place at an ever increasing rate. The business world is quickly responding to changing market trends and new customer habits. But what about personal change?
Do you embrace change readily and easily or have you been slow to respond or somewhat hesitant? Perhaps you been waiting for the right time, a better opportunity or a push in the right direction?
Change is part of growing and developing. When we reflect on the major changes, the personal upheavals, the setbacks and the challenges we have encountered, we often realise that they were catalysts for personal growth.
When you begin to understand more about change and how you deal with it, you can begin create powerful and lasting changes in your live. Change can be exciting and something to look forward to, but more often it is dreaded. Why? The fear of the unknown can leave us feeling paralyzed. As humans, more than anything we need to feel the sense of certainty in our lives, when in fact, the reality is, that change is the only thing we can be certain of.
Sometimes there is no compelling reason to change or lack clarity about what the future may hold. With such feelings of fear, lack of focus and little certainly it’s no wonder that the process of planning to change can often take longer than change itself. With a new awareness of why you might resist change, use the following steps to break down the barriers and guide you to change.
1. You must have a compelling reason to change
Having a clear and compelling reason to change will give you the determination you need to change. It will encourage you to creatively seek out solutions and new ideas to overcome the challenges you face along the way.
2. Have a clear vision of what you want to achieve
Having a clear vision of what you want to achieve will enable you to focus on the future and propel yourself forward. Clarify your vision and set clear goals that enable you to achieve that vision.
3. Overcome fear of change
It’s natural to feel anxious, uneasy and uncomfortable about something new. Use the process of visualisation to mentally rehearse a positive outcome and reduce the feelings of anxiousness. When you accept that fear is a necessary part of growth you can begin to have more control of the changes in your life.
Never underestimate your ability to create meaning, clarify your vision or overcome your fears. Change is not to be dreaded; it’s something to look forward to.
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.