Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

Build Self Confidence Fast

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This is a great video on building self confidence, albeit rather slick. Its worth spending the three and a half minutes to watch it. Sharon Melnick illustrates how people try to build self confidence by using indirect methods, rather than going direct. She focusses on work situations, but the ideas are applicable anywhere.

Indirect methods are very much tied up in having a concern about what others think of you.  You direct your energy and attention to managing others perceptions of you, not building real confidence. I'm very conscious that this is something I have done in the past. There are two types of indirect confidence building:-

Borrow Confidence from Others

This way you go out of your way to get other people to notice you – to earn a "pat on the back".  Its also a form of seeking reassurance and validation from other people, be it peers or boss. For example:-

Staying late or arriving early (and making others aware)

Over promise what you can do

Bringing others attention to something you have done well

Ask others opinion (when you know yourself) to give you an opportunity to show your knowledge

Interrupting others to show how much you know [Read more…]

All You Need to Know about Bad Habits

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If you don’t have any bad habits you can skip reading this.

build self confidenceYou’re still here. Good! You’ve taken the first step in identifying your bad habits by admitting you have them. They didn’t seem so bad at first. The bad habits were just insignificant and you could break them any time you want. You’ve heard about the guy who could stop smoking anytime he wanted. He’s done it many times.

Habits, by their nature are comfortable and easy to slip into. Bad habits have a way of doing that – getting easier. Bad habits are a lot like drugs, they’re addictive and you find a way to rationalize them.

In a comment on a past post I noted that 85% of what we do each day is “unconscious”. I have no idea where I got that statistic from, but even if wide of the mark it illustrates how much we rely on habits to cope with our daily lives.

Which Bad Habits Undermine Self Confidence?

The question is, of course, how much of your low self esteem or self confidence is down to bad habits. [Read more…]

Unhelpful Thinking – part 3

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Self esteem and self confidence can be undermined by our thinking habits. In this final part looking at some of these unhelpful habits, there are just two remaining. What we have covered to date are:-

unhelpful thinking

Shoulds

Musts

All or Nothing

Over Generalization

Jumping to Conclusions

Mental Filter

Catastrophising

Labeling

Which leaves us with:-

Self Blaming

This is the tendency to blame ourselves when things go wrong, to always assume “its our fault”. Even when an event isn’t within your control, you take responsibility for the outcome. This personalization can often take place within relationships – if a person is angry or upset you assume its your fault, its because you said something to upset them. [Read more…]