Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

Great self confidence from praise

by

A chapter in the excellent Happiness Toolkit is devoted to praising yourself. The author Jennifer Summers states:-

Most people have no qualms about putting themselves down when they’ve not done something as well as they’d hoped or wanted. People put themselves down for all sorts of reasons, examples can include: being late, messing up the baking of a cake, scratching the car, quite often even injuring themselves can provoke a reaction, “I’m so clumsy.”

The opposite reactions can be experienced when you praise yourself, and tell yourself you did well. This shouldn’t be reserved just for big events – like running a marathon!

Recognize that most of what you do each day is positive

To do this Jennifer suggests listing 10 positive things you did today, and describe how this makes you feel? This ensures you focus on the mundane, as well as the special. The Happiness Toolkit includes a worksheet to help with this exercise, although any form of diary or notebook would suffice. Give it a try.

Confidence marathon

by

As I write this 34,000 people are competing in the London Marathon – many running 26.2 miles for the first time. Whatever their reasons for entering (millions of $/£’s are raised for charities) completing the race is a tremendous achievement.

I was part of the crowd last year supporting my daughter who did her first marathon, aged 18. An extreme method of building self confidence? There is little doubt that stepping outside our comfort zone and achieving a goal that needs a lot of hard work and commitment is a great boost to anyone’s self confidence.

I did the race in 1998 and one big factor is that you are competing in the same race as the “elite” runners. The 2007 Women’s winner has just finished in 2hours 20 minutes – she’ll be having lunch back at her hotel when most of the other women are finishing, but that won’t worry them! You are all part of the same event.

Running may not press your buttons, but there are equivalent endeavors we can all achieve – it just takes commitment and hard work.

An Inspirational Thought

by

I subscribe to a fairly eclectic mix of newsletters, or ezines. One recent addition is called Kickstart Today and this is a quote from a recent edition:-

An Inspirational Thought

There is a little voice in our heads that acts as a
valve: whenever we start to get too enthusiastic,
motivated or inspired, the little voice tries to close
down the flow.

That voice is called doubt.

Even the most positive among us have this annoying
little creature living inside our skulls.

We can live with doubt – and forever limit our actions
(and hugely restrict our potential). Or, we can learn
to ignore the voice. It shouts pretty loud though.

Even better, we can overwhelm it.

Daily affirmations are one such tool we can easily use
to drown out the voice of doubt. Every time we repeat
to ourselves that we are successful, smart, proactive,
healthy, wealthy or … (fill in your own blank), the
voice of doubt becomes weaker.

When your affirmations shout and your voice of doubt
whispers, your success in whatever you desire will be
assured.

Thanks to Martin Avis (who also has a good blog!) for letting me quote his newsletter. I will return to affirmations and a technique to capture them tomorrow. Getting in the habit of using positive statements about ourselves is a key factor in obtaining great self confidence.

What great self confidence can do for you

by

My 19 year old daughter is about to return home after over 3 months working in children’s homes in India. She spent similar time in Ghana late last year. When I was her age there is no way I could have embarked on such adventures.

Throughout my teens and early twenties I was quite shy and lacked self confidence. Leaving home was a very gradual process and looking back I had some lucky breaks that propelled me forward and helped me change.

The bottom line with any form of self improvement is that you have to change from how you are now. Sometimes, like with me, circumstances and people around you help facilitate change without much conscious effort. Other times, it’s down to you to decide that you want to change and take the steps necessary to move forward.

I’m really happy that whatever we got right as parents helped give my daughter sufficient self confidence to undertake this gap year and travel and work abroad.

3 Vital Self Confidence Tricks

by

I have found a great post titled 3 Vital Self Confidence Tricks. The author, Dean Hunt, focuses on building self confidence when suffering from anxiety – such as in a social situation. His third “trick” in particular I like as it’s something that’s easy to do, but easy to overlook. Speak to yourself as you would speak to a friend.

If we make a mistake our self talk can be quite damning, “you are such a stupid fool”. But would we be so hard on a friend? This technique transposes even better when lacking confidence in our ability to do something. If you were a friend of a person giving a presentation or speech what would you be saying to them? You wouldn’t be saying “you’re going to mess up”, “you’re going to forget what to say”, “you’ll lose your job after this”. So why say those things to yourself?! As Dean says – speak to yourself as you would to others.