The self-confidence Or self-confidence is of extreme importance in almost every aspect of our lives, but even so, many people find it difficult to find the confidence they need in themselves.
Unfortunately, it is a vicious circle: people with low self-confidence tend to find it extremely difficult to improve it (obviously, Because they lack self-confidence to think that they can become successful people and have high self-confidence).
Good news: self-confidence can be built, trained and worked.
" The safest way to become people of merit and courage is to trust ourselves "(Miguel Angel).
What is self confidence confidence in oneself?
According to Antonio Estanqueiro, a graduate in Philosophy and author of a well-known book about interpersonal communication, self-confidence is a sign of self esteem And the basis of motivation, is an attitude that exerts a positive influence on personal development and relationship with others 1 .
The author argues that the degree of success of a person is proportional to the strength with which he believes in himself and his abilities.
A person without self-confidence is a person who puts limits on himself, a person who always drives with the brakes on.
Fear of failure and lack of perseverance Faced with difficulties are ingredients that always go hand in hand with a low self-confidence.
In conclusion, possessing a powerful self-confidence is of extreme importance for achieving a satisfactory life in which we feel at ease with our achievements. Why comfortable?
Because we will know that what we have achieved in our lives is the fruit of our insatiable desire to overcome and Daily effort to love ourselves and love what we do.
How is a person with self-confidence?
People who trust in themselves inspire trust in others: their audience, peers, bosses, clients, friends, and family. Gaining the trust of others is one of the keys through which a person with a high self-confidence gets success in his life.
People who have strong self-confidence see problems as challenges and persist despite possible obstacles. It is this way That people with a powerful self-confidence always succeed in reaching their goals, however difficult they may be.
Self-confidence makes us stronger, more apt to inspire confidence and More capable of influencing others.
Learn to know yourself and visualize your goal
What promotes your low self-confidence?
Each person is different and the reasons why you do not trust enough in yourself is the first thing you need to know in order to be able to change.
Through the identification and analysis of the emotions you feel when you think about yourself, you will get the first key to working your self-confidence. This goes hand in hand Of self-esteem , So think about yourself and try to describe yourself.
Once you have managed to write a description of yourself in writing, I ask you to redo it. This time, based on your previous text, it describes the Person in which you want to become. For each negative characteristic, it raises a positive one.
With this description in hand, you have your conceptualized goal. Keep this writing in awe and consult it whenever you feel weakness or insecurity. Keeping your goal in view, you will be stronger to take each step towards your final goal.
Before embarking on your journey to change, ask yourself when you want it to happen: in what contexts do you need to increase your self-confidence? How Should I adapt my self-confidence in different situations?
After you have done this self-reflection work, you are ready to begin your journey towards powerful self-confidence.
How to work on building your self-confidence?
There are three key components that you will need to work on to achieve a powerful self-confidence 1
- A) Development of competencies.
- B) Positive thinking.
- C) Adoption of a security stance.
To work on each of these three points, I will provide exercises and tips for easy application.
A) Development of competences
" The more I work, the luckier I seem to have "(Ralph Emerson)
It is completely normal and humane to feel insecure in difficult or unknown situations as a result of uncertainty and incompetence. Given the We can not act on the uncertainty of the novel situations (this is an intrinsic property of the same), we must work on the Competition in such a priori unknown areas.
One of the remedies to overcome insecurity and increase our self-confidence is to develop our skills (knowledge and Skills) to face the various challenges of social and professional life.
When a person recognizes himself as competent, he does not cultivate feelings of incapacity or allow himself to be paralyzed because of the fear . Competition self-confidence.
You do not get to the maximum doing the minimum thing. Without effort, there is no competition and, without competition, there is no self-confidence.
What can I do to develop my skills by increasing my self-confidence?
1-Do not hinder yourself Limiting beliefs
" Our doubts are indications of goods that we could often get if we were not afraid of the attempt "(William Shakespeare)
Whoever does not trust himself can not be sure of his decisions or his way, he will hesitate and will often obstruct the way to himself.
Whoever trusts in himself will not only achieve successes more easily, but will help him to react better in the face of adversity and not to be discouraged.
Limiting beliefs are part of the thinking of a person with low self-confidence:"I am a failure,""I am not important,""I am not
Strong enough to impose me,"etc.
People with low self-confidence are continually formulating and repeating these kinds of limiting statements, closing doors and ending
Believing they are real.
How to get rid of limiting beliefs?
The following method was formulated by NLP: Neurolinguistic Programming 2
- Formulate and verify Your limiting beliefs , What feelings does it arouse within yourself to utter such beliefs aloud?
- Try to change the way you often talk about your limiting beliefs, to a more positive way.
- Check them out: What feelings awaken in you now that you have positively reformulated your limiting beliefs?
2-Try what you do not believe possible
Will I get it or not?
This is probably the first question that comes to mind when you pose a challenge that seems impossible.
The answer is: whatever, it does not matter.
No matter the outcome, what is relevant is the way. To try is in itself to achieve: you will acquire new skills and you will want more for yourself by the Simple fact of fighting.
What if it fails? Does not matter. Failures are necessary to improve . Focus on everything you have achieved on your path to achieving your goal.
3-Reinforce each of your successes and be constant
It does not matter that they are small successes because each of them will bring you closer and closer to your goal. Behind the phrase I included earlier,"the more Work, more luck seems to have,"hides the effectiveness of this technique.
Accumulation of success occurs exponentially. So, even if the first success achieved seems small, if you can strengthen your self-confidence and Motivation as a result of this success, the second of your successes will be much greater: it will be enhanced by the personal development you have achieved with previous.
B) Positive thinking
According to the writer and professor Anthony Strano,"we are what we think". Everything achieved by man began with a thought, an idea. The line Temporal is thought → planning → action.
According to the author, there are four types of thoughts:
- Necessary Thoughts : Those that refer to our daily routines and that are necessary for the normal development of our life. By Example"what I have to do today".
- Useless thoughts : Those that are neither useful, constructive, nor particularly negative. Thoughts about things you do not Let's act For example,"if I had not made a, there would not have happened b".
- Negative thoughts : Those especially harmful based on negative emotions that poison our mind and our environment. For example "I'm useless, I will not get it."
- Positive thoughts : Those that allow us to accumulate strength and confidence in ourselves. They enable us to be productive while being Realistic and beneficial to feed our training to a task or situation. For example:"This is too difficult, but I will give my Maximum to achieve the best possible performance."
What can I do to enhance my positive thoughts by increasing my self-confidence?
4-Classify your thoughts in these four categories and actively modify them
I would like to propose the self-registration technique to achieve this goal. Self-registrations are a very widespread and effective technique in the practice of Clinical psychology.
If your daily occupations allow you, the best way to use the self-registration technique is to always carry with you a little notebook in which You can record the events at the very moment they occur. Write in your little book some examples of thoughts that you have in your day in the form of Short phrase that synthesizes this idea.
At the end of the day before bedtime, reread these sentences and classify them into Strano's four categories. You will notice that:
- The necessary thoughts must occur and you must do nothing to change or eliminate them.
- Useless thoughts do not help you in your daily life and only contribute to increase your frustration and feelings of impotence indirectly. The best thing you can do with them is to eliminate them from your life as these are, in fact, a waste of valuable time and energy.
- Negative thoughts paralyze and fill you with negative emotions. It is these thoughts that you must reformulate in the form of thoughts
Positive. - Positive thoughts carry your energy and give you confidence and confidence in yourself.
Once categorized, it reformulates negative thoughts in the form of positive thoughts and mentally repeats this positive form.
The purpose of this exercise is to make you aware of How does your mind work When you think and automate little by little the process of reformulating Negative thoughts in positives.
At the end of your training you will see that when a negative thought comes to your mind, you will automatically feel the urge to reformulate it in the form of positive thinking. You'll be surprised how much it will change your mood And confidence in yourself.
You will change and change your environment. If you are positive and you bring positivity to your environment you will see how easy it will be to get everything that you propose. This will ultimately feed back your self-confidence by raising it to previously unimagined levels.
5-The exercise of silence
The purpose of this exercise is the same as that of the self-registration technique but it is a version for those of you who are overwhelmed in Your day to day and do not have time to realize autorregistros.
This exercise consists of experimenting by creating a positive thought about something that happened to you recently and seeing for how long you can Keep it in mind.
Training your mind to function positively is the ultimate goal, and what better way to try it in your free time?
C) Adoption of a security posture
" If you want to have a quality, behave as if you already had it (I.e. William James )
The lack of self-confidence goes hand in hand with a lack of self-confidence. Low security is related to self-criticism and it Frustration, creating a barrier to free action and the idea of personal, professional and social improvement.
On the contrary, having security in yourself will lead to self-efficacy, a term introduced by Bandura In the XX century and that refers to the belief That you can achieve success in everything that you propose 4 .
How to adopt a security posture increasing my self-confidence? Continue to the next step?? |
6-Security arises from action
Contrary to previous techniques, you will now see how your actions will help you gain greater confidence in yourself. This advice is simple to formulate but difficult to execute: it acts.
I'll give you an example: I'm at a conference. I know that I should participate to challenge myself but everyone there seems more intelligent and capable than I. All pose such intelligent questions that I am overwhelmed by the idea of asking myself a question.
Stop thinking, just do it! Think about your question in advance and, when it is time, shoot!
Once you've done it, you'll realize that it all boils down to physically forcing you to raise your hand, hold it there, and drop words. After You will feel good about yourself: you have achieved it.
Next time you will see that you are impatient for the moment when you can ask.
And what problems do you have to increase your self-confidence?
References
- [Links] Principles of interpersonal communication: to know how to deal with people. Sociocultural Collection. Narcea, S.A. From Ediciones.
- Schwarz, A.A. And Schweppe, R.P. (2009). Easy NLP guide: Basic techniques for understanding and practicing neurolinguistic programming in everyday life. Robin Book.
- Strano, A. (2002). The Power of Positive Thinking. Brahma Kumaris Raja Yoga Centers Inc.
- Kay, K and Shipman, C. (2015). The key to trust. Editorial Ocean.
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