How to improve your self-confidence?
The most important aspect which you want to achieve while trying to develop your personality is self-confidence. This when developed fuels and supports the development of all other qualities like communication skills and other soft skills.
Well, that’s what you’re here for, go ahead and boost your confidence for better chances of success.
These 25 tips will help you boost your self-confidence level.
1. Don’t waste your energy in trying to impress someone
a. Be Yourself
You are who you are and nobody can change that. There is just no requirement to pretend to be someone else. You have to be accepted for who you are, not someone whom you’re pretending to be. Because you cannot go on pretending forever. Artificiality is abnormal and gives away. Be genuine, it takes no effort at all.
b. You might not be judged as you deserve.
Even if you pretend to be some personality which you’re not, maybe they don’t appreciate it for whom you’re doing it. Maybe you don’t get the applause you expected for being that. People have different choices, if you’re not their choice, bear in mind that you cannot change it. Or if you believe you can influence the choice, which I’m quite certain you can’t, then better try that than modifying yourself.
c. You might have to sacrifice what you like for what others like.
What’s the point in trying to please someone who sacrifices your happiness? We all have variations in our choices, their priority might not be yours. Hence you might have to sacrifice yours for someone else, someone you’re trying to impress. But believe me, the importance of self-confidence is way more than that.
Can you attain happiness by attaining the person and losing your priorities? A person who cares more about how you suit his choice and less about your priorities.
2. Value what’s valuable.
a. The way you dress can improve your self- confidence.
Being cool isn’t about how fancy you look. You won’t find elegant people with fancy funky looks. Because It’s more of a street ingredient. Moreover, it’s an unsuccessful attempt to earn value and importance. Look around, observe the people who have a reputation and who look dignified, how are they dressed?
And let me tell you that the way you dress is an important factor. You’ll feel different when you wear different kinds of clothes. Cleanliness and elegance are to be taken into consideration.
b. So what makes you better?
Knowledge, skills, and good character are what make you better. Don’t tell me I missed wealth here, it is unsustainable sometimes. And for an obvious reason that if you do have wealth but lack the prior qualities, you still are way behind. I do admit that if you have both then you’re gifted. But, my simple point is the importance of self-confidence and self-esteem is more than wealth.
See that people listen to you, which they will if you have something valuable to say. Acquire knowledge, if you have wisdom along then you’re on a positive side. Have a set of skills, the more skills you have more independent will you be. And if you have a helping hand, you have an upper hand.
3. Have a good company to help you improve self-confidence
The company you choose to have is your identity. You are considered worthy of respect automatically if you are accompanied by such people. Choose whom to stay with wisely, it determines your personality and can improve your self-confidence level. Don’t put your reputation at stake by selecting an inappropriate company.
4. Be positive to boost your self-confidence
Negative thoughts are certain to lead to negativity. And negativity results in no good whatsoever. Hatred, grudge, animosity, jealousy, and pride have done no good to anyone. Negative thoughts are something that will destroy you more than the ones you have these thoughts towards.
And also never have negative thoughts towards yourself. Let’s be positive it turns bad things into good, hatred into love, and sorrows into happiness. Do read this about positive thinking. After all, it’s your belief system that builds your confidence.
5. Live for others, be happy with their happiness.
Being selfless makes you happy and confident. We are not made to be selfish, the human being in us doesn’t enjoy being that. On the contrary, being selfless is divine, pleasing, soothing, and gives self-satisfaction and self-confidence. Deep inside this is what you’ll find of people who represent those qualities respectively.
6. Be a good human being and improve self-confidence
You’ve nothing to hide, you’re confident. You are more transparent, you don’t have that feeling of guilt that you’d have if you have things to hide. The more the darker side of you and your life exists, the more things you need to conceal, the less confident you become.
Hence this leads to an inferiority complex, you don’t want people to know your true self. And you’re into the portrayal of a better different person whom you believe you aren’t.
Some people aren’t bothered about being good, less concerned about what people think. They don’t even attempt to hide their darker side, sort of proud of it even. Take my word, they aren’t happy. And it’s this dissatisfaction that stands as a hurdle on your path to improving your self-confidence.
7. Let time help you improve self-confidence, don’t waste it.
If you know you’re working hard and you’re not letting yourself down, nobody else can. You can only be satisfied with your life if you have a reason to believe that you are making it worth living. If you know that you have earned what you have.
The more you waste your time, you waste your life and the more reasons you have to regret it. This kills your self-confidence. Value your time, value your life and earn satisfaction by doing something good, no matter what effort it takes. Using your time is using it to improve your self-confidence. Remember that contentment will come by endeavor and procrastination will lead to remorse and grief.
8. Stop self-pitying & Self apologizing
Excusing a mistake is worse than committing that mistake. Don’t go about justifying whatever you’re accountable for. So admit your blunders, hold yourself responsible for the consequences and embrace the responsibilities.
Nor shall you hold yourself pitiable, don’t seek sympathies. It holds you back from emerging out of it and blows your confidence.
9. Learn to say no.
You’re not obliged to do everything you are asked to. Especially those things which leave a damaging impact on your self-respect or which you shouldn’t be doing for some genuine reason.
Learn to do it without compromising on the relations, if it does then judge the situations, some relations are better off that way.
10. Speak only when it helps and required.
It’s better to be silent than to speak when it makes no difference. We don’t speak for the sake of speaking. Like it’s said if speaking is silver then being silent is gold. It’s the best way you can hide your flaws, many are considered accountable and intelligent until they open their mouth. If your words don’t seem to add up or improve your self-confidence, then hold your words.
Don’t shy away from what makes you uncomfortable.
Between victory and you lies fear, take that leap, even if you fail; you’re more experienced. More of the fear you encounter, less you’re scared of it, more you learn to deal with it. Finally, you get confident enough not to jitter anymore.
12. Read, improve your knowledge to boost your self-confidence
Man’s actual worth is how much knowledge he possesses. Always have the desire to learn more, be a lifelong learner. You can only convince people if you speak of your knowledge and experience.
13. Exercise and take care of your physique
A healthy mind needs a healthy body. Drooped shoulders before anything else announce the lack of confidence. Let me make it simple for you, depletion of confidence results in a bad posture. And good posture boosts confidence. Both are so much interrelated.
Take care of your body, stay healthy, let your body scaffold your confidence. If you want to be a confident man, you should look like one.
14. Respect yourself to improve self-confidence
Treat yourself as you want others to treat you even in loneliness. Treat yourself with respect even if it is just between you and yourself. Don’t do what you wouldn’t do in public even if you’re not.
The actual level of confidence is when you are confident in front of yourself. And you achieve this by earning self-respect, avoiding doing anything which hinders your respect for yourself. Never tolerate or compromise on doing what’s inappropriate, build and maintain your reputation.
15. Learn to deal with negativity.
Now I did speak of positivity. But ironically we live in a society where negativity is unavoidable. The only option we are left with is to learn to deal with it. So have control over your emotions, don’t get carried away.
You don’t have to respond to every action you see, and certainly not if your mind is cooking a negative response. Learn to hold yourself and give it a thought, if you can’t convince yourself for a positive response better avoid it.
Research tells us that the human brain can think of five to nine things at the same time, so it can be a bit challenging to isolate and identify the confidence-building thoughts from those that do you no good.
Realizing that you have confidence within you, even if it has been hiding for a while, is the first step in reinforcing it. Deciding that you want to retain and focus on your self-confidence is the next one.
For many who live with doubt, or are in challenging situations, believing that they are even capable of feeling confident can be difficult. I recommend that, if you are feeling this way, you find some quiet reflection time to help you see that somewhere inside you lies a confident thought or two. And that is all you need to get to the next level.
To get to this point, it can help to remember a time when you felt good about yourself and your life. Those are confident memories, and we all know that if you’ve done it before, you can do it again.
Reflecting on past successes and allowing yourself to feel the positive emotions connected with them will help you create a more exceptional ability to tap into your confidence because you aren’t just wishing and hoping; you are seeing that you have been a more self-confident person. Those little pieces of success, pride, and assurance are like seeds:
If you plant them, give them a little sunlight and water, or in this case sometimes and thought, you will begin to feel better about yourself and what you are doing.
Initially, most people are a little reluctant, partially because it’s unfamiliar territory, which always produces a touch of anxiety. Pushing through your discomfort and working on identifying where your confidence lies is a task that, when completed, you will be thankful you took on.
Once you get in touch with the reality that you can believe in yourself, your life will get a little easier and most likely a lot more fun.
Confidence isn’t about taking over the world. It is about enjoying your world as much as possible. It doesn’t take much, and you do have it inside your heart and soul, so take a little time and look for it. I think you will be more than pleased with yourself with what you find.
These are a few additional tips with which you can increase your confidence.
16. How to increase the confidence by staying away from a negative environment
A negative environment where people are negative has an impact on our confidence. This isn’t about having the occasional bad day or moment. It’s about living and working in an environment that brings or puts you down.
When someone is always telling you that you’re not good enough, eventually, if you stay around a while, you will start to believe it. So always surround yourself with positive people and stay in a positive environment.
17. Have trust in the process
Whenever we face unexpected things while we are doing something, we usually get a little anxious; sometimes we freak out. Again, this is pretty human stuff, but the problem is that whenever most people get derailed, their confidence is shaken, and they can change direction or just get lost and have difficulty getting back on track.
Instead of putting your project aside to deal with the problem that’s trying to get your attention, take the time to do what you were going to do in the first place. By not allowing yourself to be thrown off course, you are keeping control. If you can sit down and complete your goal, despite your current circumstances, you will build your self-confidence and won’t lose any ground.
18. Inner peace and happiness
Happiness is an inner state of peace and well-being regardless of circumstances. When we experience that kind of inner happiness, we also have high self-esteem. We believe in ourselves and know that we are worthy regardless of our circumstances, that is real confidence. Developing the inner state of well-being will create confidence in all areas of your life.
If you don’t develop inner well-being, you may feel confident in one specific area of your life, but uncomfortable in many other regions. That is “conditional confidence,” and it will never bring you fulfillment. The process of developing greater confidence like building a muscle—takes regular training, making a habit of doing the things that help you feel inner peace and well-being that leads you to increase your confidence.
19. Imagination
Imagination plays a vital role in building our confidence. By using this technique, some salesperson has increased its sales by up to 400%. They used to imagine what kind of questions people will ask, and then they use to prepare their answers accordingly. Since they are ready for all the questions, they feel confident.
Psychologists say that if we imagine that we are losing it is almost impossible that we will win. In the same way, if we believe that we can do it, then it will contribute a lot to our success. If we take time daily and accurately use this technique, then we can increase our confidence.
20. Be patient with yourself
If you don’t reach your goals the first time you try, don’t see it as a failure. Remember that you have learned something and will do better next time. The way to develop self-confidence is to know that, no matter what happens, you will grow from the experience. Self-confidence doesn’t come from sitting on your hands and waiting for something to happen.
It is about throwing everything you have against the wall and waiting patiently for something to stick. Then you have to take your time to refine your projects. For many, that is the hardest part of the process. If we overcome that, then we can be successful. Patience may be a virtue, but it is also a necessity in achieving and living a self-confident life.
21.Embrace your fears
Logic would dictate that overcoming something that frightens you makes you more self-confident by embracing your fears. You create a much more efficient and practical way of dealing with them.
You don’t have to climb Mount Everest or jump out of a perfectly good airplane to move through your anxieties; often just dealing appropriately with the stress and worry of daily life can increase your self-confidence. Having the confidence to wrap your head around your fears and look at how they help or hurt you is a great exercise to help you not only overcome them but also use them to accomplish your goals.
22. Be prepared
You can’t feel confident unless you know what you need to know. Get educated, learn, research, and never stop reading. Preparing whether it is for a presentation or an exam will help you feel safe and allow you to show off your best performance.
Even though you can’t always be ready for everything, life throws at you. But, getting into the habit of preparing, you create a backlog of emotional building blocks you’ll get to use later. Preparation is your friend and not nearly as painful as you think it is. It is also a necessity when it comes to gaining greater self-confidence.
23. Be courageous
Courage is not the absence of fear; it is about moving through the unsure moments to reach your goals, despite any anxieties. Facing challenges with the understanding that you have the emotional mettle to withstand the difficulties around the corner is a building block of confidence.
When you know you’re doing the right thing, it makes you feel empowered. And that kind of confidence can’t help but give you the courage you need to face adversity. Whether it’s a physical illness, a work challenge, or any other challenge if you trust that you are meant to be where you are, or intended to survive whatever is threatening you, your ability to win is greatly enhanced.
24.Monitor your thinking
Of the gazillion thoughts, we have a day; research has determined that 80 percent are negative. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or even a “shrink” to realize that negative thoughts will produce downer days. The challenge for those of us who want to keep our thinking as positive as possible is to stop those massive quantities of bad vibes from entering our brains.
Meditation, visualization, and self-hypnosis are other tools that can assist you in this very doable task. Monitoring your thinking so that you can change from a negative thinker to a positive one, is a great tool to help you build your self-confidence.
25.Celebrate small victories
Small victories, as I like to call them, can be anything from finding a great parking space or buying a lottery ticket and winning a small amount. The trick of turning these micro-successes into confidence is that you have to experience the emotions associated with success. By allowing yourself to feel successful, you are training your brain cells and giving them the most addictive force in nature: intermittent positive reinforcement.
If you celebrate successes throughout the day, no matter how small, you can’t help but increase your desire to want more. Building your confidence from your success is the purest form of self-esteem.
In your journey of building your confidence up, be honest, both to yourself and everyone else. Be opportunistic, a threatening situation might be an opportunity in disguise sometimes. Take your decisions carefully. All the best.
Credit for the second part of the article goes to Mr.Ameer B
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