How to find self confidence?
I am confident if you begin a journey to work out yourself and work on yourself, you will discover things about yourself, you never imagined in your wildest dreams could be possible. We all have the natural ability to mask our vulnerable weakness by cowering behind fake confidence, normally acquired by a few drinks, pills, lies and our egos but this is not real so therefore is no use when seeking personal success and popularity.
Confidence for real comes from knowing and believing in yourself and your choices, never being tempted to be led astray or influenced by what others believe. Most people fail in life and remain stuck in misery because of fear, a paralyzing feeling that keeps us frozen solid and separate from our reality. How can a six foot man be afraid of a small harmless spider? Fear is not real; it’s a state of mind, triggered by something subliminally from your past.
An example of this is as follows;
If you have grown up with an older sibling who was well established with life before you arrived, chances are you will have looked up to them for ways to do things and develop skills yourself, this is called modelling behaviour. If your older sibling is better looking, more charming, funnier and can paint like Picasso, you will have a lot to live up to and if you discover you hate painting, cannot make people laugh or command attention, eventually you begin to feel like the underdog, forever in the shadows. Being the underdog caused by modelling on someone else who was better at playing the piano than you were because they liked it more than you did, does not in reality make you a failure because we all have our own unique talents.
Carrying this feeling of failure and underdog mentality through the rest of your life is why you end up unconfident and afraid to be heard, never reaching high, always hidden away in a dark corner. If you want to be confident, you have to recognise facing fear is all it takes to achieve life changing results in everything you do.
If you are a shy, nervous, unconfident secretary with a bossy controlling boss and have never travelled anywhere alone because you are afraid to fly in case you die, you are never going to be happy, fulfilled or confident and need to do something drastic. In order to overcome fear in this situation, you would have to somehow become someone else in your mind by creating an alter ego, the side of yourself you have not got to know yet.
You can be whoever you want to be in order to practice confidence building, so a good exercise is to create in your journal, the ideal person you would like to become. For example write down all the things you dislike about your life and then write a list of the things you desire in your life, if only you had a magic wand. Doing this will allow you to see how big your challenge is and allow you to see what is immediately achievable when it comes to making simple changes without the wand. If you hate the fact you have no friends because you are afraid to go out and meet people, recognise you have to be a friend to have a friend, so start being more open with people around you by making the first move and doing something out of character.
Of course we are never going to get everything right or please everyone but practice makes perfect and if you don’t try you will never know because the best things always happen when you least expect them. So be in it, to win it.
Being confident is about being sure because if you are sure, you can never make a mistake.
If you are looking at someone else and wishing you looked like them because if you did, your life would be better, recognise you are not them and never will be no matter how hard you try, so stop day dreaming and start working on developing what is good about you.
Holding your head high, feeling good about yourself and smiling at people you come into contact with is the first step in developing personal confidence because what you put out to others is what you get back. If you spend your life hidden under a hoodie with your head down, people you come into contact with are not able to see you, therefore are likely to imagine then judge you, which leaves the real you trapped and supressed like a recluse.
Just because people cannot see you, does not mean you are invisible or safe because who you are is not what you wear or cover up, it’s how you feel, so if you feel invisible recognise it is only yourself you are hiding from.
Judging others by your own standards is only possible if you are perfect and let’s face it, none of us come close, so never feel insecure or worried about what others think about you because as long as you are putting out your best, others will struggle to fault you. Doing your best is all you need to do for others to have confidence in you and anything you do because when you give something your best shot, you are closer to success and with success comes recognition, even if it takes you time to get there.
Step outside your comfort zone and face the world without convincing yourself you will fail and when that uncomfortable feeling of fear mixed with nerves, pumps adrenalin around your body, take a deep breath and a leap of faith, never looking back, as you confidently stride towards the life you have been missing but more importantly, deserve.
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