THE ART OF SELF-CONFIDENCE

According to Barbara Markway Ph.D. “Self-confidence is linked to almost every element involved in a happy life”.

It means if you want a happy life, Self-confidence is the key. And isn’t that what we all want? A happy life!

Now that might be a huge surprise for those who constantly doubt themselves and then wonder why we end up having miserable lives.

BUT before you judge yourself, I have a good news for you. Having self-confidence is as simple as driving a car. Yes! You wondering HOW? They both are the skills that can be learned over a passage of time. [ Self-confidence is a skill (Simons, 4 April 2018)]. So, anyone reading right now can learn to be self-confident.

Dr. Ivan Joseph had perfectly defined Self Confidence in his famous ted talk as ‘The ability or the belief to believe in yourself to accomplish any task no matter the odds, no matter the difficulty and no matter the adversity. The belief that you can accomplish it’

It is not based on your ACTUAL ABILITY to succeed at a task but your BELIEF in your ability to succeed. For instance: 

·        Your belief in your ability to speak in front of an audience

·        Your belief in your ability to learn a new technology

·        Your belief in your ability to lead a team

BELIEF.

In order to understand we first know what belief is. It’s a mental pattern that one has created about something in his mind. And these are the believes that shape our life. And if they are negative like ‘I can’t’, ‘I am not able’ you will be less confident about yourself.

Even if you have negative believes, Donald Hebb’s landmark discovery in 1949 showed that you can rewire your brain. Yes, and it only takes around 2 to 8 months to create a new pattern.

SELF-TALK.

Guarding our self-talk can rewire our brain. Because it’s what we tell ourselves alone that shapes our believes in the subconscious.

Surprisingly 80% of our self-talk is negative (Jennifer, 2014)

Talking to oneself is one the most natural, yet undervalued, skills we have. Would you allow anyone to speak to you the way you speak to yourself?

Our words effect our confidence and motivation.

All these words like “I can’t”, “I should”, makes you smaller and smaller in your own eyes and damages your self-confidence.

What successful people do is that they keep on reminding themselves about how amazing they are by positive affirmations. Like

• “I know who I am, and I am enough.”
• “I can learn any skill by putting hard work and persistence.”
• “I am in control of the way I respond to the behavior of others.”

 Until it becomes a strong faith. Because when you deep inside don’t believe yourself you can never be confident.

My dear friends we have two options,

1.  Either to live like a loser, hiding our-self with low self-esteem, missing out beautiful opportunities life offers just because we are not confident enough.

2.  Or to live 100%, be confident and see our highest potential. And believe me this is worth it.

But at the end choice is yours!