So what do you do?

Your natural reaction is that your confidence plumets

It can be hard enough when someone you don’t care about says something bad about you but it is very bad when it is someone you love and/or respect. But it doesn’t matter who says it you will still feel your confidence levels go down.

It is important that you understand this because you need to protect your confidence levels.

How can you protect your confidence?

The first thing to do is to not let it upset you. I know this sounds difficult but you have to learn to be tough with any words that suggest you are bad or incapable. Try to develop a mental toughness.

A friend of mine used to use a word to stop this kind of thing from getting to him. I don’t want to repeat the word here because it’s a word that is better kept in the mind than written down but any strong word will do the trick. If ever he heard something he didn’t like he would simply mutter this word to himself or say it in his head. I learned to do the same and it can work wonders. Just be careful if others hear you say it they might get upset with you.

So use a word like say ‘rubbish’ and if someone says something you don’t like just say the word with feeling. Then remind yourself that you are better than that.

Don’t answer back

One of the worst things you can do is to answer someone back. There is something about human nature that if they feel attacked they will defend – even if that defense is pointless. If someone attacks you there may be a moment when you want to defend yourself and answer back. This will have two effects: a) the person will defend themselves and you end up in an angry argument and b) you are responding with agression which will make the comment hurt you more deeply.

If you are agressive in defending yourself it will make the impact of the comment last longer and become more ingrained in your mind. The more emotion you invest in any comment the more powerful will be it’s impact. You want to have more emotion with compliments and no emotion with insults.

Turn the comment around so it becomes a confidence booster for you

If someone says you are an idiot then say to yourself: I do this kind of thing well or I’m very clever. If someone says ‘you’ll never do that’ then say to yourself ‘I will succeed at this’. Put your feelings into the positive comment. This will take the power from the negative comment and put it in the positive comment.

Learn not to talk down to others yourself

Talking people down to people has become a part of modern day life for many of us. It is not funny or clever in fact I think it is the opposite. Sports people do it to try and get an edge on their opponents and I guess this is what many of us who resort to this way of talking are doing as well. We feel that someone putting someone else down raises us up. It doesn’t.

Make an agreement with yourself that you are not going to talk down to other people. You may experience a small lapse from time to time but try to make a habit out of not talking that way.

You will find that people will love you for it and they will start to talk nicer back to you.

Table of contents for Build your self confidence

1. Build Your Self Confidence 1: Build your desire
2. Build Your Self Confidence 2: Act more confident
3. Build Your Self Confidence 3: Change the way you talk
4. Build Your Self Confidence 4: Celebrating past success
5. Build Your Self Confidence 5: Improve yourself
6. Build Your Self Confidence 6: Reward yourself

It’s wrong to reward yourself for things that you should do right anyway. This is what most people think but most people are wrong. One of the things that lowers self-confidence and self esteme is a lack of rewarding yourself for your successes. Even small success should be rewarded. In this last of the current series of posts on building self confidence we will explore how to build rewards in to your daily life.

Do you feel that you don’t deserve any rewards?

It is not uncommon to discover that people do not believe that they should get any rewards. I’m not advocating the belief that just because you do something well somehow the world owes you a reward but instead I do advocate you rewarding yourself.

When you do something right  – even if it is insignificant – you should allow yourself to feel good that you have done it and that it has gone well.

When you set yourself a goal and you succeed at that goal you should reward your behaviour.

What kind of reward should you give yourself?

In part it depends on the goal but even small rewards can make you feel good. You wouldn’t want to buy yourself a new car every time you clean your kitchen because you would soon be bankrupt but there are small things that make good rewards.

You should cultivate an attitude of thinking of new ways to reward yourself. For instance when you have cleaned the kitchen you could make yourself a cup of coffee and sit outside and enjoy the fresh air (if you get fresh air and have somewhere to sit outside – sorry it is always tough when writing a blog to come up with something that will work for the whole world but hopefully you get the point). Think about things that make you happy and build them into your life as rewards for things you do.

What are the rewards for anyway?

When you reward yourself for something you have done you are encouraging yourself to act that same way again. It makes you feel good about what you do and will help you to do good things. This is a great way to raise your self confidence.

Any time you can feel good about yourself is great.

A simple way to reward yourself

Here is my suggestion for a very simple reward. Take it or leave it but make sure if you don’t use this one you will use a different reward.

Your reward is time. Not a long time – unless you have achieved a great goal of course. When you do something that you feel it would be good to reward yourself for give yourself a 5 minute pamper.

The five minute pamper

Sit or lie in a quiet place on your own (if possible). Close your eyes, take five deep breaths. Take them in through your nose and then hold your breath for 4 seconds until you let the first four out with a sigh. The fifth breath you can let out slowly and very controlled and as you do say in your mind relax (this should take a couple of minutes) and as you breathe out feel the tension floating away with the breath.

Now you are relaxed put on a smile (even if you don’t feel like it) and repeat to yourself quietly in your mind (until 4 minutes are up):

I have done something well. I am a good person. I love myself.

Try to feel the sentiment asyou think it.

For the last minute just relax and before you get started again take one last deep breath and sigh.

This is a good reward.

Feel free to vary it to suit yourself.

I hope you have benefitted from this short course on self confidence. If you have benefitted perhaps you know others who could benefit from it as well. Email them right now with a link to the first post in the series.

How do you reward yourself?

Leave a comment telling others what you do for a reward. There may be things you do that others could make good use of.

Table of contents for Build your self confidence

1. Build Your Self Confidence 1: Build your desire
2. Build Your Self Confidence 2: Act more confident
3. Build Your Self Confidence 3: Change the way you talk
4. Build Your Self Confidence 4: Celebrating past success
5. Build Your Self Confidence 5: Improve yourself
6. Build Your Self Confidence 6: Reward yourself

If you lack confidence or your self esteem is low then you proabably don’t need me to tell you to improve yourself. You need to understand that you are better than you think you are – the vast majority of us underrate our abilities and how much people like us. You also need to understand that it is important for everyone to build a habit of self improvement because no one is perfect.

You need to decide what you are going to work on

Scientists are undecided on whether it’s possible to work on improving more than one thing at a time. Some say it is best to work on many things others say you can only manage one.

My feeling is that it is better to start small and develop a good habit which then can be made more complex. So if you have never made self improvement a habit start with 1 thing and build up from there.

There are various way to decided which is the best to work on and one blog post is not enough to spell it all out. However what you will always need is to give yourself some time to do it. So pick a date and a time when you are going to do this and make it a top priority.

When you sit down to think make a list of the following areas: Body, Heart, Mind, Soul, Wealth, Relationships 

• Body = the physical part of your life e.g. health, exercise etc
• Heart = your emotional life e.g. happiness, depression etc
• Mind = your thinking self e.g. study, reading etc
• Soul = outside yourself e.g. caring for others, realtionship with God, beauty etc
• Wealth = really belongs with body but it is so often thought about that I give it its own section.
• Relationships = really belongs with heart and soul but again it is so often picked on that it has it’s own section.

Now rate each area with a number between 1 and 10. Where 1 is rubbish and 10 is perfect. You are trying to say how satisfied you feel with each area. This is how satisfied YOU are not your friends or family.

Look at the ratings. Do you see one or two areas where the number is very low or at least lower than the others? This is a good place to start. You don’t have to start here but it is as good a place as any.

Decide where you are with things at the moment

Having picked an area try to work out where you are with things now. This is what I call a ‘waypoint description’. What is wrong in that area? What do you believe this area should be like? What tools do you have to move forwards – you can only use what you have so don’t go wishing for other tools.

Decide where you want to get to

Develop a vision of what you would like things to be like, I call this a ‘passion description’. This is where you are trying to get to. Make it as detailed a picture as you can. You can change this picture in the future but you need something to aim for.

Set some goals/new waypoints

Now you need to work out how to get there and how to get there will involve some basic steps you will need to take. You probably will not get there in one jump so plan several. Then set yourself a goal to move to the next step and do it.

What will all this work do for your self confidence/self esteem?

When you make progress at improving yourself you will start to start to gain confidence. Every time you make yourself better you will start to view yourself better. Confidence is hard to build but easy to destroy. This is one of the ways to build it. Improving yourself should make you feel fantastic. All of those little things that you have punished yourself for in the past do not need to be a part of your future.

Tell us what you are changing

Why not leave a comment here telling us what you working on. Sharing your plans with others is an important way of making things happen and having the nerve to tell others about your plans is a good confidence booster.

It has long been believed that reflecting on your values raises your self esteem and so makes you less defensive when you have to address your problems. However this study has shown that reflecting on values makes you more focussed on others which makes them more loving and connected to others.

You can read more about this study here:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080722113022.htm

My own feeling is that both theories have merit. That reflecting on your values can raise your self esteem and help look beyond themselves.

I would recommend anyone to take some time to think about their values. Why not try doing it this way:

Write a list of values and then pick 5 of these as your main values.

Now rank that list in order of importance.

Then write for 10 minutes on why you think the one you have picked as number 1 is so important.

Why not let us know what your favoured values are by leaving a comment below.

Table of contents for Build your self confidence

1. Build Your Self Confidence 1: Build your desire
2. Build Your Self Confidence 2: Act more confident
3. Build Your Self Confidence 3: Change the way you talk
4. Build Your Self Confidence 4: Celebrating past success
5. Build Your Self Confidence 5: Improve yourself
6. Build Your Self Confidence 6: Reward yourself

We continue our series on building self confidence and self esteem with a look back at our past. Your past is always important in that it provides a filter through which you view the present. So if you failed in some task in the past it will threaten your confidence in the present and similarly if you succeeded at something in the past it will help build confidence for the present.

The problem is that normal people tend to remember past failure rather than past success. Here we explore how to turn that around.

You might feel that you have never succeeded in the past

Sometimes when you think back trying to remember good times in the past it can be very difficult to remember any. If your self-confidence is low this will make it particulalry hard to do. However, the truth is that there are many more successes in your past than you can easily remember. It could well be that your memory has got so fixed on your failure that it is blocking out your success.

So try to think about some simple things first. There is a list below of things you could think about. I’m sorry if the list covers things that are not true for you but I hope it will jog you into thinking about some of the successes of your past.

• Have you ever passed a test?
• What about your driving test?
• What about some qualifications when you left school?
• What about getting your first job?
• What about when someone asked you out or you asked someone out?
• What about when someone told you what a good job you had done?
• What about getting a gold star at school or a certificate?
• What about learning how to swim?

Take small success rather than no success at all

Don’t assume that this has to be a big event it can be something quite small.

The truth is that some of the stuff that we assume is quite small is actually a major achievement. Learning to walk and talk for instance is a major challenge and a big achievement. If you haven’t managed these because of a disability then I am sure there are other even more chanllenging problems that you have managed to overcome and succeed at.

If you can’t think of any successes then make some up

If you really can’t think of any then don’t despair because you can make some up. We don’t make stuff up so we can tell others how wonderful we are but because we want to get the feeling of success into our mind and we can do this with the imagination. 

I heard of a failing sports team (sorry can’t remember which sport) whose coach made them celebrate success even when they lost. After a while the feelings of success spilled over in to their performance and they started to win. The imagination is a very powerful tool.

Daydream about success to boost self confidence

If you want a fancier name for what I suggest you do now then its called visualisation. Daydreaming has a negative feel about it for some people but we nearly all know how to do it – or at least we used to know until our teachers made us stop.

1. Relax. Find a comfortable place to sit or lie down. Distance yourself from your thoughts  – don’t try to stop them just withdraw from them. Take some slow deep breathes letting the air out slowly and as you exhale think relax.
2. Close your eyes – it just helps to block out your surroundings.
3. Remember a past success. Remember what it was like. Try to remember as much detail about it as you can. Who was there? Where was it? What sounds could you hear? What did it smell like? Do your best to conjour up an image of it in your mind.
4. What did that success feel like? Think about it and try to feel those same emotions again. Remember the joy you felt. How -perhaps – you couldn’t stop smiling. Enjoy that moment

Feeling successful will help lift your confidence

The more you remember your past success the more confident in your abilities you will feel. There are ways to expand this exercise and use anchoring so you can recall the past feelings whenever you want to but I’ll save that one for another time. For now just having the feelings and learning that you are successful will help you.

Now whenever you succeed at something allow yourself a few moments of pleasure at the success – even if it is only a small one.

What success have you had?

Why not post a comment about your past success here. Letting others know will help boost your own confidence.

Table of contents for Build your self confidence

1. Build Your Self Confidence 1: Build your desire
2. Build Your Self Confidence 2: Act more confident
3. Build Your Self Confidence 3: Change the way you talk
4. Build Your Self Confidence 4: Celebrating past success
5. Build Your Self Confidence 5: Improve yourself
6. Build Your Self Confidence 6: Reward yourself

One of the most destructive things for our self confidence and self esteem is the way we talk to ourselves. We all talk to ourselves constantly although we are usually not too aware of what we are saying. When you call yourself a ’stupid idiot’ because you forgot your lunch you are knocing your self confidence.

You are your own worst enemy

The self talk that you experience throughout the day has the capacity to really dent the way you feel about yourself. Imagine your Mum was walking everywhere with you and all the time you were doing things she way saying: don’t do it like that, you’ve done it again haven’t you, what an idiot, you look terrible, are you wearing that again?, etc.

You would start to get very irritated and before long I imagine you would want to be getting away from your Mum for a break. But this is just what you do to yourself all the time.

The bad news is that you have become your own worst enemy. The good news is that this is just a habit and habits can be changed.

Become your own best friend

You should be your own best friend. You should be yelling yourslef what a good job you are doing, how smart you look today and how interesting you really are. I’m not advocating shutting everyone else out here just that you start to be more supportive to yourself.

Some of you may be thinking – yeh but I’m not going to lie. If I look bad I ought to tell myself.

I’m not asking you to lie to yourself – that would be very bad indeed. I am saying that you should not be so hard on yourself. You should help yourself and not knock yourself all the time.

Step 1. Listen yo your self talk

As you go through the day start to become familiar with your self talk. You need to raise your awareness of it.

Step 2. Listen out for the criticism

Become aware of the way you talk. Listen to all those little critical jibes you make about yourself through the day. Just hearing them may be enough to stop them but if it isn’t then read on.

Step 3. Become aware of how silly they are

“I always do that!” is perhaps the most used silly phrase that we all sometimes fall victim to. This is a ridiculous thing to say. You don’t always make that mistake no one does – so why say it?

Think through all of the other silly things you are saying to yourself and start to see how silly they really are.

Step 4. Stop yourself saying them

Now stop yourself from saying them. If they come up in your mind then just tell yourself to stop. Don’t make a big thing out of it but just keep telling yourself to stop. Changing your self talk can take a long time (you have taken years to learn it after all) so don’t be put off by relapses. Keep going with it and when it reduces (or even stops) your confidence will soar.

But it’s not just yourself you have to stop saying this stuff to. We can also say this stuff to others when we make a mistake.

“Silly me”.

“I’m so stupid”.

“I’m always doing that”.

“There I go again”.

Are all phrases (together with a load more) we should learn not to say about ourselves to others. When we say them to others we believe them about ourselves and sometimes people start to believe them about you as well.

What silly things do you say?

Why not post a comment telling us what silly things you say and even tell us what is so silly about them. Therapy for you and help for us.

Table of contents for Build your self confidence

1. Build Your Self Confidence 1: Build your desire
2. Build Your Self Confidence 2: Act more confident
3. Build Your Self Confidence 3: Change the way you talk
4. Build Your Self Confidence 4: Celebrating past success
5. Build Your Self Confidence 5: Improve yourself
6. Build Your Self Confidence 6: Reward yourself

Gaining confidence in yourself is a process. Real confidence grows and develops over time. However there are some very simple ways to increase your confidence straight away. All you need to do is to act more confident and your confidence will start to grow.

It’s a funny old world. If we pretend to be more confident then it will help to grow our self confidence. It seems that there is a part of our brain that is really not very smart and it can be hoodwinked by other parts of our brain into thinking something is true. The part of your brain that makes you feel confident is one of those gullible parts.

You may have spent years telling this part of your brain that you are not very good at anything and your confident brain has believed it.

However we are going to outsmart that part of your brain with some simple deception.

Now ordinarily I would not recommend deception but in this case it is quite justified. The truth is that you should be more confident but after years of being knocked your confidence has decided to throw in the towel and believe the nonsense that has been fed it. Time to take out the trash (as Homer Simpson would say).

Start to walk and stand more confidently

People will low self confidence tend to stand with rounded shoulders, looking at the floor and with a shy hounded expresion on their faces. Standing like this confirms to your brain that you are not confident.

So force yourself to stand up straight. Push your shoulders back, and smile.

Be adopting a more confident posture your brain will get confused and start to think that perhaps it had you wrong and you are more confident after all.

Copy someone you admire

Think about someone that you admire for their confidence. Then observe them. How do they stand. How do they smile. What is it about them that you admire. Copy those behaviours. Be careful not to lose your own identity and don’t become just a mirror image of someone but copy the posture and the way of behaving that makes you believe that this person is confident.

Look in to other peoples eyes when you speak to them

People who lack confidence also tend to look at the floor when they speak to others so start to look into the eyes of people you speak with. You don’t have to stare them out or make you think you are falling in love with them but simply look into their eyes when you speak to them.

Once again your brain will be fooled and you will start to feel more confident.

Dress confidently

People develop styles of dress that reflect something about themselves. People who are not confident tend to like big and baggy clothes, clothes that are neutral colours, scruffy clothes. So start to power dress. Get yourself some more confident clothes. That means to dress smartly, include a little colour (not too much because we are going for confidence not be become a childrens TV presenter) and wear clothes that fit. If you need to then find a friend who dresses well and ask them to help you.

It helps to always be neatly groomed as well.

When you start to take a little pride in the way you look you will start to feel more confident in yourself.

Other things you could try to improve your own self image

• Volunteer to help when you can.
• Sit in the front row.
• Smile at people and say hello to them – other people love this.

Next time: We will be continuing to think about building self confidence by improving your self talk.

Let others know how they could improve their self image

Do you have any tips that you could offer to help others to improve their self image? Why not leave a comment about ways that work for you.

Table of contents for Build your self confidence

1. Build Your Self Confidence 1: Build your desire
2. Build Your Self Confidence 2: Act more confident
3. Build Your Self Confidence 3: Change the way you talk
4. Build Your Self Confidence 4: Celebrating past success
5. Build Your Self Confidence 5: Improve yourself
6. Build Your Self Confidence 6: Reward yourself

In this series of 6 posts we will be looking at how you can build your self confidence. Lots of things will have an impact on your self confidence, everything from your friends down to the way you dress. However there is hope for everyone. Because we are talking about “self” confidence it means that no matter what pressure you are under from others it is possible to break away and build your own confident self.

What is causing you to lack confidence?

You need to start by thinking through what it is that is causing you to lack confidence.

Start with the external things. Did your family support you emotionally as a child? When you did something well did people tell you what a good thing you had done? Did you have good friends or perhaps no friends at all? Did you fit in with the crowd or stand out from the crowd? Did you ever feel you were on your own?

Now think about the internal things. Do you constantly tell yourself that you are no good? Do you believe you make a lot of mistakes? Do you feel awkward around other people?

If you need help then get it – your mental health warning

You know if anyone tells you to exercise they always say you should see your doctor first. This is the mental health equivalent.

If when you have been thinking you have thought about some things from your past that really made you sad I want you to consider taking some counselling. All of us have some things in the past that upset us but if you find that these are big things that keep coming up again and again then you may benefit from professional counselling.

I’m not saying you have to at all and most of us will not need counselling but it would be wrong of me not to mention it. If while taking this course you find that there are things that keep coming up again and again that may be a clue to needing some extra help. Enough said.

Your past is past

Whatever you turned up in your thinking above is in the past. From this moment on you are starting fresh. You can’t change the past you can only change the future. From this moment – as you read this – your new life is beginning. It may not be perfect from this moment and you may think it doesn’t feel an awful lot different but it is new.

Now with your new life you are going to make some changes that will make you into a different more confident person.

Write down what you want

You are going to create a desire statement about what you want. This relates to your confidence only. So it could be that your desire is to be more confident with other people. It could be you want the confidence to speak in front of others. It could be you want the confidence to speak to a particular person about starting a relationship. This list could go on forever.

Write down what you desire the most. Over the next ten days I want you to write this down every morning. Writing fixes an idea in your mind and once it is fixed in your mind you will start seeing ways to make it happen.

What will it feel like when you have your desire?

When you get an opportunity I want you to relax and think about what life will be like when you have what you desire. Think about things in a positive way. Imagine the feelings you will have and how happy you will be. Remember that this happiness will come from having the confidence and not by getting what you want.

Self-confidence is often linked to an element of risk. Not everyone gets the answer that they want. However having the confidence to take the risk is enough. If you have confidence for one risk then you can take more.

Getting what you want is not the most important thing

It is always nice when you get what you want but this is not the most important thing. When you don’t get what you want you can learn to become stronger and better. Being stronger and better are great results. So if you try something and it fails remember that you are learning things that will make you stronger and better in the future. Even things going wrong can help build your confidence.

In the next installment

We will be looking at how you can persuade yourself to be more confident even if you don’t feel it.

Comment Please

Why not leave a comment on the blog telling others about what your desire is. Sharing this information with others can help you to achieve things.