Dear homer366,
Please, my sweet one, no one is a loser
unless they want to be. I have found some information I
would like to share with you. I know it has helped other
members and I hope the same for you.
What Is
Self-confidence?
Self-confidence is the belief that you can
handle a certain situation correctly. Self-confidence is
knowing that you don't lack any of the necessary skills in
order to successfully complete a task. This task could vary
from a social activity like being able to approach someone
you don't know, to a professional activity like the ability
to complete a certain task that your work or your business
needs.
Where Does Self-confidence Come From?
Without
confidence you will surely miss a lot of available
opportunities because you will be afraid to take the risk of
trying something that you aren't sure you can handle. The
following are some facts about self-confidence:
Self
confidence is never inherited, it's learned. The belief that
you lack the genes or something like that is just a popular
myth.(
Self confidence is not general, instead you have
different confidence levels for all the different activities
you do. For example, you may be confident about your ability
to drive a car but at the same time dread public speaking.
Self confidence is not constant with time; it may change
to the better or worse due to new events happening in your
life.
Self confidence may be independent of external
factors, like being rich or having someone who loves you
back.
What Can I Do to Build My Self-confidence?
You
could be more confident through the total elimination of
dependency upon others' judgment. This is because if you
don't really have a solid knowledge of your abilities and of
who you are, you will most likely be depending on others to
tell you who you are and to define your abilites and
limitations for you. If they were satisfied by your actions,
then they may tell you that you are a good person; if not,
they may label you a fool, an idiot or anything else that
suits their own point of view. You will of course welcome
these labels and add them to your idea about yourself
because you've left the judgment to them from the
beginning.
How to Eliminate Dependancy on Others'
Judgment
Correcting this problem is very simple: Get a
piece of paper and write down your strengths and your
weaknesses. Keep editing this paper until you are satisfied
with what you've written. Now keep reading it daily until
you are really sure that what you wrote down are your real
abilities and skills. Now, whenever you are faced by someone
criticizing you or labeling you, you can simply see if any
of what he said matches your judgment of yourself. If it
doesn't, just drop the comment.
Is it Rude to Disregard
Others' Opinion About You?
You may think that it's rude to
judge yourself without referring to others' judgement; but
lets face reality, if you are twenty years old, you should
know yourself better someone who's only known you for a few
months and so your judgement will probably be the most
relevant. Moreover, in such an imperfect world, you will
never be able to get a sufficient answer to your questions
and your quest for gathering clues from others will never
end.
Just like anybody else, you definitely have people
who consider you their enemy, are jealous of you or just
dislike you for one reason or another. People such as these
will almost never tell you that you're great at something,
or that you're talented at a particular activity and so you
will find it extremely difficult to get an honest judgement
of your abilities from anyone. Consequently, the best thing
to do would be to depend on your own judgement of yourself.
Self-confidence and Making Mistakes
Some mothers shout
at their children as soon as they break anything, stain
their clothes, forget to do their chores or any other minor
mistake. Treating a child in this way results in him
thinking that doing something wrong is shameful and that
making mistakes makes him different from other perfect
people who do not make mistakes. When this child grows up
and makes a certain mistake in front in public, like
dropping a glass or having something go wrong during a
presentation, it appears to him as an embarrassing situation
and will cause him to think that he is not up to the
standard of other people. These kinds of thoughts will
gradually but surely damage his confidence.
A parent's
role should be building self-confidence in their children by
encouraging them to try new things and not to be afraid of
making mistakes. The parent should teach them that, as a
human being, error's are unavoidable; so it's best to accept
your mistakes without criticizing or labeling yourself.
Self-confidence and Inferiority Complex
One very
important thing to note here is whether your lack of
self-confidence is because any of the reasons we mentioned
earlier, or if it is because of a deeply rooted inferiority
complex. If suffering from an inferiority complex is your
problem, skip to this section. Simply put, inferiority
complex is a disorder that develops as a result of feeling
inferior when compared to your peers or friends. This can
act as a barrier to building self-confidence and so it is
necessary to deal with it first.
Self-confidence and
Perfectionism
Another great cause for a lack of
self-confidence is being a perfectionist. A perfectionist
always sets impossible goals and very high standards that he
can never meet and this causes his confidence to degrade as
he success escapes him again and again. One example of these
impossible standards could be "I must never make mistakes if
I want to be great at what I do".
Lack of Self-confidence
and Assertiveness
A lack of assertiveness in communication
can also lead to having less confidence of your abilities.
If you are assertive, this will help you feel that you are
in control, important and more worthy of respect and
attention. Assertiveness is the ability to express yourself
and needs without being aggressive; it's also the way of
communication that makes you stand up for your rights and
never let them go while at the same time avoiding violating
others' rights.
Lack of Self-confidence and Negative
Self-talk
Usually, the lack of self confidence is
associated with negative self talk; which are the negative
phrases and words you keep telling yourself while doing your
normal thinking process. Stopping those negative words and
phrases and replacing them with positive ones can not only
increase your confidence but can help in fixing many of your
emotional problems.
Lack of Self-confidence and Poor Self
Image
Sometimes the underlying cause for a lack of
self-confidence is having a poor self image. An example of
this is if you think that you are ugly and so lack
confidence whenever you meet new people. In order to know
whether or not your lack of self-confidence is rooted in
your poor self image; there is a small test that you can do:
If you find that you feel more confident wearing your best
shirt and much less confident when wearing something else,
then your lack of confidence may be a direct result of the
poor self image you have of yourself. In that case, fixing
your poor mental self image is all what you have to do to
restore your self-confidence.
Self-confidence and
Knowlegde
When you know the benefit of something that you
do regularly, you will be much more confident talking about
it and doing it than if you were just doing it out of habit.
Although you shouldn't have to provide an explanation to
other people for what you, the power of knowing can still
give your self-confidence a big boost.
Self-confidence
and Comparing Yourself to Others
Some people have developed
the terrible habit of always comparing themselves to others;
what's worse is that they choose to compare criteria that
almost always puts them at the weak end of the comparison.
They ignore all that is great about them and pick just this
one thing that they lack and compare it to others. On
finding that they are different, they feel less confident
about themselves and their abilities. This behaviour only
results in damaging their already worn self-confidence.
Fear and Lack of Self-confidence
do you know that fear
can also steal some of your self-confidence? If you are
afriad of ghosts or of the dark, your subconscious mind will
probably be a little confused as to why you think you should
feel confident when you find yourself helpless in certain
harmless situations like being alone in the dark. The more
helpless you feel, the more your self-confidence will erode
as a result.
You can still be confident even when afraid of
something, but facing your fears will make you that much
more confident than you already are.
Self-confidence and
the Self Reinforcing Cycle
Just as your personality affects
your behaviour, so does your behaviour affect your
personality. Acting in a non-assertive way will result in
your feeling less confident and will lead to a self
reinforcing cycle; where your continiously decreasing
self-confidence makes you even less assertive and this in
turn weakens you further. This can also work the other way
round, since by forcing yourself to act in a confident and
assertive way, you will start feeling more confident which
reinforces and strengthens you even more.
2knowmyself
is not a simple article website nor it’s a place where you
will find shallow fixes, but it’s a place where you will
find effective techniques that are backed by psychology and
that are presented in obvious and understandable format. If
you think that this is some kind of marketing hype then see
what other visitors say about 2knowmyself
Did that
help?
Love,
- Aphrodite
