This article shares 4 secrets to improving self-confidence. Most people tend to focus on specific areas when they try to improve self-confidence such as improving the way that they speak or give presentations in business meetings. This is important but it is not the priority to focus on when trying to improve self-confidence. Below I break down the 4 secrets to self-confidence.
1. Improve your emotional fitness and mental state
Self-confidence is about emotional fitness. Most of what we experience around the area of self-confidence gets influenced more by emotions. Just think about what you go through when you feel that you have poor self-confidence. Most likely you feel anxious, doubtful, fearful and uncertain. At times you might even feel like you will embarrass yourself in a public place or a meeting. It is not always that we are not skillful, able or talented. Most of the time it is our feelings that get in a way and cause us to be fearful. Feelings of uncertainty and inadequacy are also associated with low self-confidence. Fear of Rejection, failure, embarrassment. All of these things are influenced by our emotions and mental state than anything else. It is not uncommon to have someone who is capable being afraid to do something due to fear of failure, rejection and embarrassment. The journey to becoming self-confident therefore starts with improving your emotional fitness and conditioning yourself to have a mind that supports you instead of a mindset that works against you.
When you feel that you have poor self-confidence it is very tempting to focus on the specific area where you want to improve self-confidence such as speaking or your ability to present in meetings. This is essential but it is more of the end than the beginning. To really improve self-confidence you need to first improve your emotional fitness and mental strength before focusing on the specific area that you want to improve. Doing this sets you up more for success than if you improve your skill set without dealing with inner issues.
Improving emotional fitness and your mindset before improving your specific skill set will help you create more lasting change. Let me give you an example of how what I am talking about right now works using marathon runners as an example. An amateur runner cut corners when it comes to stretching. He or she might feel like it is a waste of time spending 15 minutes stretching and warming up before the run and get tempted get started with the exercise or marathon right away. This in the short-term might look like a good decision because 15 minutes of stretching and warm up is saved as running starts immediately. It is a grave mistake when considering the long-term perspective because the amateur runner might get injured from not stretching and suffer a long prolonged period without exercising and competing due to injury.
Professional runners know that stretching and warm-up before the marathon is as important as the marathon itself and therefore spend time before running to stretch and warm up, knowing it will benefit them.
Improving self-confidence sometimes works the same way. Before trying to improve self-confidence on the specific area of your life whether this is about singing or cooking or speaking well you need to spend time improving your emotional fitness and mindset. Because self-confidence is more about emotional strength and mindset. When you take care of your emotional fitness a priority, your journey to improve self-confidence becomes much more easier.
From doing this you will gain the same benefit that the long distance runner gets from spending 15 minutes stretching before he starts running. You will be able to create lasting change in your life. What is even more exciting is that we the right level of emotional fitness you will be able to bounce back should you make mistakes or something crushes your ego as you are trying to improve your self-confidence. One person said that self-confidence is not about walking into the room and have everybody get excited to see you. It is about walking into the room knowing that if nobody accepts you or if you make a mistake and embarrass yourself you will be OK and have the ability to get up and dust yourself up without being too miserable. To get to this level of self-confidence takes emotional fitness. So first focus on emotional fitness to improve your self-confidence.
2. Improve mastery
Even though emotional fitness is the first priority to improve self-confidence, I would like you to note that no one is confident doing something that they feel they are not skillful in doing. You might feel comfortable speaking in public and maybe enjoy it, when you get asked to sing and dance in public a different story might unravel. Unless you are extremely multi-talented you might feel timid, nervous and hesitant. This is because doing one specific thing well does not make one a master in everything. It is important to practice and improve your mastery level to improve self-confidence. After you have conditioned yourself emotionally and mentally identify what it is that you would like to do well and improve your self-confidence doing. Maybe you would like to feel less anxious in social situations or to speak. Whatever it is that you want to improve your self-confidence on, identify it and spend time mastering the skills to develop it. This will help you improve your self-confidence. As you learn and try to improve you might take some time to master the skills that you want to improve well. If you have developed the right emotional strength and mental strength you will find yourself recovering well after setbacks and getting encouraged until you improve your self-confidence.
3. Improve self-esteem
When trying to improve self-confidence, having low self-esteem can sometimes work against your efforts. No matter how good you become at doing something if you do not accept yourself and see yourself in a positive light you might always find ways to criticize yourself and second guess yourself. Having a healthy self-esteem is therefore extremely important for improving self-confidence. Improving your self-esteem will help you easily develop self-confidence in the specific areas of your life and be able to enjoy any success that you create as the result of improved self-confidence.
4. Train your self-confidence
Self-confidence is like a muscle. The more you teach yourself to be self-confident in challenging situations, the more you get better. Self-confident people aren't vastly different from anyone else. They have just learn to manage their feelings in the face of pressure or adversity. One of the best ways to improve self-confidence is to act despite fear and anxiety. The best way to learn to act despite fear and anxiety is to act despite fear and anxiety. Doing this will train your self-confidence. One person said that those that are successful do experience fear, they just learn to act despite fear.
Whatever it is that you fear begin practicing conquering it. If you have social anxiety and are afraid to meet people in social situations playfully start meeting people and push yourself to act despite your anxiety. If you fear speaking up during meetings start pushing yourself and say a few words in the next meeting that you have. Feel the anxiety as it tries to stop you but act anyway. Many people who face challenging situations and pressure including athletes, sky divers and even entrepreneurs learn to act despite anxiety. Do the same thing that they do in your life, it will help you.
Remember, you have all that it takes within you to succeed.
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