How to Gain Confidence
How to Gain Confidence
Confidence is a positive emotion that most people would like to experience with greater intensity.
All emotions are a reaction to earlier thought.
- If you think confidence-building thought patterns, then you will feel confident emotions.
- If you think confidence-destroying thought patterns, then you will destroy your confidence.
Here are three, common confidence-destroying thought patterns. If you engage in any of the following, then that will be enough to destroy your confidence.
1. Repeatedly asking yourself, "What if they don't like me?"
Everyone wants to be loved and liked, to the degree that most people carry a fear of being unpopular.
When this fear of unpopularity becomes the centre point of a person's thinking, it erodes their confidence. You take your mind off your performance and you put your focus on the reaction of your audience. You become oversensitive to other people and under attentive to your performance.
You need to reverse that order of priority. You need to increase the intensity of your mental focus onto your performance: And lessen your worry over whether or not other people like you.
When you focus more on your performance and less on your likeability, ironically, you end up being more likeable, because you are not so self-conscious.
2. Continually asking yourself, "What if I fail?"
Nobody likes to fail, in fact most people carry around a fear of failure.
When this fear of failure becomes the centre point of your thinking, it erodes your confidence.
You take your mind of your performance and you begin to worry about mental images of your impending failure. These images of failure, destroy your confidence and interfere with your performance, and will be the cause of the failure they predicted.
The solution is to refocus your mind away from images of impending doom and instead, focus one hundred per cent on the actual process of the task in hand.
3. Continually comparing yourself against perfection.
Many people continually lose confidence because they are measuring themselves against an unrealistic standard. Causing them to believe that they don't "measure-up" and they lose confidence. For example:
- Many young people measure their looks against airbrushed images of pop stars and movie stars.
- Many amateur sports people measure themselves against drug-enhanced professionals.
- Many of us measure ourselves against the standard of perfection: we try to measure ourselves against Superman or Superwoman.
Measuring yourself against an ideal is sometimes helpful, but only if you see the ideal as a guiding light to steer by. Don't use the ideal as a beating stick.
Some people beat themselves-up, because they don't have the perfect body, or the perfect job, or the perfect face, or the perfect relationship. So, they feel in some way, they are losing out. They feel like they are never "good enough".
Instead of using "Perfection" as the standard, use your "Previous Best Performance", as your standard.
You don't have to be perfect; but you should strive to improve upon your personal best performance.
If you see yourself never being "good enough", that may be enough to steal your confidence.
Instead, strive to be better than your previous best, in this way you will improve your confidence.
To improve your confidence
In summary, to improve your confidence, please remember these key points:
1. Keep your mind off other people's reaction to you; instead concentrate on giving your best performance. Overcome the fear of failure.
2. Keep your mind off thoughts of failure; and focus instead on the actual task in hand.
3. Keep your mind off trying to beat perfection, and put it onto beating your best past performance.
Blogs by Email
Do you want to receive an email whenever we post a new blog? The blogs contain article 5-10 minutes long - ideal for reading during your coffee break!
Further Reading in Personal Development
-
Why Some People Are More Successful Than Others
Success is something we all strive for in our lives. But what makes some people more successful than others? Successful people share common traits, that you too can learn and apply to become more successful.
Read Article > -
Professional development training
The art of asking the right questions Everything that exists operates according to the laws of logic. In order to understand anything, it is essential to keep your thinking attuned to the same laws of logic. If nature is operating to strict logical laws- but your thinking is not - then...
Read Article > -
Personal development - Self-discipline
Personal development - Self-discipline Personal development is the act of developing your skills, knowledge, and abilities in order to improve your effectiveness, and thus be more likely to achieve your goals. Achieving your goals is important to you because your success depends on your ability to achieve the goals that you...
Read Article > -
Don't Let Fear Stop You
Fear is one of the strongest emotions, designed to keep you safe from harm. However, not all fear is real and imaginary fear can inhibit your life.
Read Article > -
Personal Development: Wise words from Jim Rohn
Discover the one reason you are not doing very well.
Read Article >
Looking for Personal Development Training?
If you're looking to develop your Personal Development Skills, you may find this Personal Development Training Course beneficial:
Open Training Course Pricing and Availability
Next Open Course Starts in 23 days, Preston, places available