If you’re lacking in self-confidence, the good news is that you can change.
Maybe you were confident once but life has knocked it out of you, or perhaps you can’t remember ever feeling confident. Whatever your background circumstances, you can increase your self-confidence by taking some simple steps.
One way is to go back in your mind to a time when you did feel confident.
Even if you think you’ve never felt confident, if you go back far enough in your memory, you’ll find a moment in time when you did. It might only be a small moment but it will be there.
Perhaps when you learned to ride a bike or tie your shoelaces, or when you received some praise from a parent or teacher for something you did.
Now take yourself back there mentally.
How did that confidence feel in your body? How did it make you feel emotionally? How did you stand? How did you walk? How did you look?
Remember as much about the situation as you can, and bring it to life in your mind for a few minutes
Every day, take a few quiet minutes without any distractions, close your eyes and mentally go back to your confident time. Picture yourself as you were at that time and feel how the confidence felt in your body. Keep practising every day, so you become used to how confidence feels to you.
Then when you’re faced with a situation where you feel nervous or anxious, take yourself to your confident place in your mind. This becomes easier with practice and in time you’ll be able to achieve that confident state quickly whenever you want to.
Another technique for building your confidence is to use affirmations.
These are simple statements, made in the present tense, which you repeat over and over to yourself.
Examples are “I am confident”, “I am a confident person” and “I move confidently through life”.
You can say them out loud or in your head, and you might want to write them down.
The key is to say them and/or write them repeatedly, day after day.
In time you’ll notice that you’re feeling more confident.
A lovely creative way to help boost your confidence is to make yourself a confidence folder.
It can be a physical folder or box, or a digital folder if you prefer.
Whichever type you’re using, you’re going to fill it with evidence of how wonderful you are.
Collect together all the thank you notes, cards and emails you can find. Add in any favourable work appraisals, client or customer reviews and anything else where people have expressed appreciation for you and what you’ve done for them.
Read all of those words of appreciation and allow yourself to believe them.
People wouldn’t have written them if they didn’t mean what they said.
Your confidence folder is a living thing to be added to every time some more evidence of your brilliance arrives. Read its contents regularly to boost your self-confidence.
Whenever you’re feeling low and lacking in confidence, go to your confidence folder and read its contents. Remember that it’s you who those words are talking about, and absorb the appreciation. You are amazing and you deserve to feel confident about yourself.
If you’re struggling with building your self-confidence, book a free call with me to discuss how I can help: https://calendly.com/yournewdawn/30min
