Gaining Self ConfidenceGaining self confidence involves changing how you think and feel about your potential to do well in the various areas of your life. Use the following suggestions to help you strengthen and build your level of self confidence. Learn to Trust YourselfOne of the key steps to gaining self confidence is learning self trust. We all make mistakes, have lapses of judgment, and make the wrong decisions sometimes. No one is infallible, and your missteps can provide the best lessons in life.Trust in your ability to make decisions and follow your intuitions and desires. You won't always be right, but you will learn what works and improve as you go. Other people may second guess your decisions, make you feel guilty for going against their will, or try to manipulate you to do what they want. Trust yourself. Learn as much as you can from other people, gather information, but make the final decision yourself. Visualize your OutcomeVisualization is a very powerful technique to gain self confidence. Imagine exactly how you would act if you had complete self confidence using as much detail as you can. Think about how you would go about your day, how interactions with other people would go, how you would approach new activities.As you visualize this, think about how you would feel, how other people would react to you, what you could accomplish. All behavior begins with your thoughts. If you visualize each day what it would be like to have total self confidence, over time your behaviors will begin to match your thoughts. Develop an Internal Locus of ControlAnother step in gaining self confidence is to develop an internal locus of control. Locus of control refers to the belief in how much influence you have over events that affect you. An internal locus of control means you believe you are largely in control of the events in your life. Realize that you have a great deal of over events through your own actions and reactions. You have the power to change your environment through your own initiative.Taking control and responsibility for your situation will build your confidence as you learn to effect change through your behavior. You are not a slave to circumstance or fate, you can shape your own reality. Decide what things in your life you would like to be different, and start taking steps to make changes. Your confidence will increase as you find your actions make a positive difference in your life. Avoid PerfectionismDon't expect perfection- focus on perseverance. Eventually you'll get the results you want. Expecting things to be perfect all the time will negatively impact your confidence because perfection will never come.Learn to persevere, push through the mistakes and problems, and build confidence in your ability to keep going despite obstacles and lack of perfection. Learn to focus on the process rather than on the ultimate outcome. Bridge across ContextsSelf confidence can often be context specific. It may be that you are extremely confident in one area of your life but in another area you may feel very unsure of your abilities. For example, you may feel very confident in your job, able to act decisively and surely, but when you are put in a different social setting you may be unsure of how to act or what to do.It is possible use the confidence you feel in one area of your life to develop a general, global self confidence that you bring to every situation. This involves developing a belief that you have the potential to learn and do well in any situation. Start by building success in one context and use your experience to strengthen the belief that you can do well in other areas. Once you have succeeded in multiple domains, you build and strengthen the belief that you can do well in just about any situation. Return from Gaining Self Confidence to How to Build Self Confidence Return from Gaining Self Confidence to Self Motivation Strategies |
