5 Tips To Build Your Self Confidence

Self-confidence is cannot be learned, it is a state of mind that requires build up by thinking positively, practicing, training and talking to other people. Someone who has a great self-confidence has improved or boosted their confidence levels over the years.

Confidence comes from feelings of well-being, acceptance of your body mind i.e. self-esteem and belief in your own ability, skills and experience.

Having a healthy level of self-confidence can help you become successful in your personal and professional life.

Fortunately there are several ways to build your self-confidence so as to appear more confident to other people and most importantly, to yourself. Here are some strategies to help you with your improving your self-confidence.

A. Self-knowledge

B. Motivate yourself

C. Stand up to your fears

D. Focus on the good

E. Be Prepared

A. SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Self-knowledge simply denotes understanding the properties of oneself, the sensations, thoughts, character, belief, mental state and information that describes the person. It requires self-awareness and self-consciousness.

Getting to know your true self is very vital to building your self-confidence. It is what you are really like, as distinct from what other people think or know, or believe you are like. The true self is not the self as it appears to others or to itself but the self as it really is.

To have knowledge of your true self would be a genuine ‘cognitive’ or intellectual achievement, and one which requires time and effort. And once you think of self-knowledge as effortful, there is a natural further question which arises: what is the point or value of self-knowledge? What good does it do you to have it and what would you lose by not having it?

It’s often taken for granted that self-knowledge is worth having. Some people believe that self-knowledge is valuable because, to put it crudely, you will be happier with it than without it. But that’s not obvious; maybe there are some truths about yourself you would be happier and better off not knowing.

Perhaps, in that case, we need to look elsewhere to explain the value of self-knowledge. You might think of Socrates’ suggestion that self-knowledge is needed to live meaningfully or the related idea that you need self-knowledge to live ‘authentically’, that is, in a way that is true to yourself, to your true self. Whether such explanations of the value of self-knowledge are correct sounds like an excellent question for a philosopher of self-knowledge.

B. MOTIVATE YOURSELF

This is central to everything positive that you want to do in your life. It is even more important than your self esteem! What you say to yourself is extremely important.

You may be motivated by external factors, others may encourage you to start something new or begin moving in a positive direction. You can be motivated by faith, by your belief in God and in doing what is right. You can even be motivated by negative events to achieve positively.

Why do you need self motivation?

• You cannot always rely on others to encourage you, if you have positive friends who are always there when you need them then you are indeed lucky and very much in the minority. If you are lonely or have few friends when you face any difficulties in your life you must rely on your own motivation to get you through. Lack of self motivation at that time could lead to depression.

• You need self motivation to achieve because if you don’t encourage yourself to accept opportunity and challenge who will?

• To plan and find direction in your life

• To take up a new activity, hobby or challenge

• To be enthusiastic about life and living

• To have the courage to see things through despite setbacks or negative comments from others

Self motivation is so important in every aspect of your life. You may have friends who are negative or who put you down. This shows they have a problem but the tragedy is these people suck you dry of positive energy and being with negative people can only sap your inner strengths. Chances are that any self motivation you have they will slowly destroy and bring you down to their level.

At any time you may change your goal or the steps you need to follow. This is not giving up but maybe you decide at some point there is something else you want to do or your goal no longer applies. You decide what you aim for and you decide when you are a success.

Failure only means you haven’t succeeded yet.

C. STAND UP TO YOUR FEARS

Self confidence is belief in yourself. It the ability to trust in your abilities. The main reason for lack o confidence is always as a regard of fear. This could be fear of embarrassment, fear of criticism, fear of rejection, fear of failure and so many or kinds. The key to building up your self confidence is to face the undying fear, and to practice doing that thing until you have conquered the fear.

We all experience fear, but what matters is how you can overcome it. A fascinating thing abut fear is that if you deal with them courageously they will diminish, on the other hand, if you back away from them they grow until they have power to hold you back from any progress.

The key then to overcoming fear is to face them quickly without giving your self time to be afraid. When you discipline yourself to do the thing you fear, your fear of the situation gradually goes away. You just do what you fear over and over again until it holds no more fear in you. You face fear, confront the fear, and act despite until you are no longer afraid.

D. FOCUS ON THE GOOD

It is very easy to focus on the negative than on the positive especially when things are not going smoothly for you. But it is however important to take note of the positive on a daily basis to boost your self-confidence.

One little trick to it is waking up every morning and affirming yourself. Get a standing mirror is necessary and look yourself in the mirror and say nice things about yourself.

"Affirmations are a powerful tool to deliberately install desired beliefs about yourself." -- Nikki Carnevale.

We tend to behave in accordance with our own self-image. The trick to making lasting change is to change how you view yourself. Affirmations are positive and uplifting statements that we say to ourselves. These are normally more effective if said out loud so that you can hear yourself say it.

We tend to believe whatever we tell ourselves constantly. For example, if you hate your own physical appearance, practice saying something that you appreciate or like about yourself when you next look in the mirror.

To get your brain to accept your positive statements more quickly, phrase your affirmations as questions such as, “Why am I so good at making deals?” instead of “I am so good at making deals.” Our brains are biologically wired to seek answers to questions, without analyzing whether the question is valid or not.

E. BE PREPARED

Learn everything there is to know about your field, job, presentation--whatever is next on your "to conquer" list. If you are prepared, and have the knowledge to back it up, your self-confidence will soar.