Break The Chain - Become Self Confident
February 11, 2008
Self confidence is a vicious circle. The more you lack self confidence the more difficult it is to succeed. A low success rate will further lower your self confidence… That’s what makes gaining self confidence a very difficult task, since you have to push yourself to break the low self confidence habit.
I want to be realistic… It’s very hard to increase your self confidence. It is not something that you will get overnight. You have to try hard and more than once. Gaining self confidence is a challenging exercise for everyone at first. But if you put enough effort, you will manage to increase your self confidence.
Several tips are suggested to gain self confidence all of which help you in different ways to break the chains of the low self confidence vicious circle. But the tip I find most useful is the following.
Identify something that you feel you are good at. It can be playing an instrument, practicing a sport or maybe you have excellent writing skills. After you find what you are good at, start a conversation with a close friend of yours or maybe a family member (someone you feel very comfortable with) about what you are good at and mention your abilities. Make sure that you explicitly mention that you are good at doing that particular thing, giving evidence by showing a sample of your work, for example.
The fact that you managed to discuss something about you, something that you are good at is a very positive achievement. After doing the above exercise you will feel more confident of your abilities, since you feel the backup of those who have agreed with you (in this case, family members or close friends).
The next step is to get out of the comfort zone of your family members or close friends and go out and talk about your abilities with someone else, maybe a colleague or a friend. Use the experience that you have obtained from previous similar discussions by focusing on the statements that were the most convincing. It will work for sure as it has worked when you have addressed your close friends and family members.
As you can see, gaining self confidence is an exercise that you should repeat frequently. Each time you should push yourself further. The more you talk with other people, the more people will appreciate your skills and value your knowledge.
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by a friend from FruitfulTime - a software company behind the todo list software “FruitfulTime TaskManager”.
FruitfulTime has a blog focusing on personal productivity, you may like to visit FruitfulTime Blog or subscribe to feed.
(Photo by floato)
Thank you Lawrence for accepting our guest blog post. I am very happy that FruitfulTime has a post at your great blog
Something else that you can do is ask someone else to describe what qualities that they like about you. Then take their words to heart and make them yours until you truly believe them.
Interesting post. Confidence is one of those emotions that seems to come and go. I have been putting SU aside lately and concentrating on blog building. SU can be a distraction. But I feel more confident now that I have done this.
Confidence is important for getting where you want to be in life. As you said it is important to regularly reinforce your confidence.
Yes, a balanced sense of self-confidence is very important for success. I very much agree with your statements in this article.
I agree with most of the points. But, for me, it is opposite. I would do or learn something that either I don’t know or not good at. If I succeed, it will build up my confidence. If it failed, I will try harder, and that in fact strengthen my desire to succeed.
Hi,
How do I promote good self confidence and self esteem in my life?
Thanks for posting this.
It’s comforting to know that other people go through the same things.
Gaining self-confidence is a constant struggle for me too. As you’ve mentioned above, I find that my family and friends do help a lot in reinforcing my belief in myself — by their presence and belief in me.
Ultimately though, I believe the best way to gain confidence is if you find it within yourself without depending on other people’s actions or opinions. When you know that you have the confidence to face whatever comes along, you get to live more and make more out of life.
I Think that You want to be confident and feel confident, but what if you’re starting with little or no confidence? How do you get from Point A to Point B? True self-confidence isn’t an overnight acquisition. It takes dedication to realize you are a good human being that is worthy of respect and you have to believe in yourself.
Yes! i am agree with you..!! self confidence is very important in life and never say i can not ….!!!
I agree, self confidence is a must in every business venture. I am currently working a building a self confident business life that suits me anyway I would like to work.
I want to start going to few party and make friends, but i am leaking in confident and terribly shy, How to be more confident and what affirmation i can use to overcome fear of rejection?
Building confidence will take some time, but the earlier you start, the better it will be for you. You can’t always be timid because being shy will only keep you from your goal. Everyone has something to be confident about, even though they might not see it at first glance. There is always something within us that we can be proud of, so we can start with that.
P.S. In order to become confident, we should banish fear from our lives. That’s not an easy task, but it’s worth the effort, and it’s certainly doable. If you read this article http://budurl.com/762z, you just might realize how unreasonable you are for being afraid.