Archive for the 'Self Confidence' Category

You’ve probably heard the old saying that you need to love yourself before you can love anyone else.

As trite as it sounds, this is really true. In order for you to cultivate other relationships you must have a good relationship with yourself.

One way we defeat ourselves is by not having compassion for ourselves.

What compassion means?
Compassion means feeling empathy and having a true understanding of what you’re going through.

You may have compassion for others but don’t show yourself the same thing. If you don’t have compassion for yourself you may also find that you don’t have compassion for others.

Factors influencing compassion:

Compassion is comprised of several factors - understanding, acceptance and forgiveness.

Understanding:

Trying to understand is the first step in the direction of compassion.

• Whether it is an understanding of something important about yourself or someone else, truly understanding gives you a fresh new perspective.
• Try to put yourself in the position of the other person. Understanding can bring new and different responses.
• Instead of the same old response, having insight enables you to break free of the usual responses.

Self confidence is an attitude that allows people to have positive, realistic views of themselves and situations that involve them.

People who are self-confident show that they have control over their lives and their abilities, no matter what happens.

They believe that they will be able to do what they set their mind to with a positive outcome.

Self confident people don’t always expect to be able to do everything by themselves; however, they have a healthy and practical approach to everything that comes their way.

Self confidence doesn’t necessarily enter into every aspect of a person’s life. For example, someone may exhibit self confidence at home but not at work, or during certain situations and not others.

Everyone has some areas of their life that they feel more confident about than others. Areas that people are specially trained in or have learned about are areas that they will generally have the most confidence about.

For instance, someone who went to college and graduated with a degree in mathematics will feel most confident when discussing or using mathematics.

Set a goal for yourself. Start with a weekly goal that you can attain.

A sample goal may be to say “no” three times during the week, when you normally would have said yes.

For instance, the PTA chairman may call and ask you to donate some time to an upcoming event.

Instead of saying yes when you really don’t have the time, say no.

Although you may feel guilty about saying no, you need to establish a new habit, one of saying what you really mean.

After several such instances it will become easier to do. At the end of the week you will feel good about yourself and will be closer towards developing self-confidence.

Self confidence builds on self-confidence. The more you have, the easier it is to have more. Confidence builds on itself. Negativity tears it down. Continue to work towards changing your negative behaviors. Recognize that you won’t be perfect.

You will have days that you slip back into old behaviors. Don’t let that get you down. Don’t beat yourself up for the slip. Instead, realize what you could have done differently and move on.

It is very important to have great success. We want to ensure that we have the best success that we can in life.

However, we do not want to feel too good about whom we are and what we do in life since this shows that we are over confidant and maybe a little conceded about who we are and what we do.

This is something that is not a good trait and we will want to avoid it if required.

There is nothing wrong with being proud of yourself for doing something great or feeling good about who you are.

This is a great feeling and one that everyone deserves to do in life.

We would like to make the most of what we do and who we are and we can achieve this goal by using our own personal growth and success. We can make the most of what we have and what we are as long as we are not taking it too far.

Show Off Your Achievements in a Good Way

You should not want to brag to everyone how great you are and what you have achieved all the time. You want to be able to express that you have made some great achievements in your life, but you want to do it with class.

One common thing that happens to many of us is getting caught in the “yes” trap.

We are asked to do something that we really don’t want to do.

But instead of saying no, we feel we should do it and so we say yes.

Reasons to say when you really mean no:

There are many reasons why we say yes when we really mean no.

• One reason is we are afraid to say no.
• We may fear being rejected by the person asking us.
• Instead of standing up for what we really believe or want, we cower and say yes. Or we fear having a confrontation with the person.
• Instead of saying no, you say yes to avoid getting into a conflict.
• People who have low self-confidence can sense that other people are more powerful than them. They often don’t want to get into situations that could turn into disagreements.

Circumstances in your life for which you say yes but mean no:

• You’re shopping for clothes and the salesperson makes some suggestions. Do you ever buy something you don’t really like that well just because you don’t want to say no to the salesperson?

There are two types of criticism. One comes from others and the other is self-criticism.

Criticism from others: they may criticize us and evaluate us.

This criticism usually comes from our parents or family members.

They are sometimes overly critical of us and what we do. From the time we are born we are aware of what others think about us.

We grow up wanting and needing the approval of others. First, we need our parent’s approval.

We learn to do things that they want us to do so that they will give us approval. These learned behaviors became our usual pattern for dealing with issues.

Self-criticism: Somewhere through the growing process, we learned to turn the criticism inward, towards ourselves. Our parents may be gone but we are still giving ourselves criticism that our parents used to. This has become so automatic that we don’t even realize we are doing it.

In order to change and grow, we need to change and eliminate the self-criticism. This is no easy task because this is a habit we have cultivated over a great length of time. You need to stop being critical of yourself and overly harsh on yourself.

1. If you start to feel anxious or self-conscious, find something to focus on and use all your energy to stay focused on that one thing.
2. Be assertive, not aggressive
3. Be prepared for other people’s words and actions
4. Know that you are good at many things.
5. Saying positive affirmations will improve your self confidence
6. Use positive self-talk
7. Take time to understand your true weaknesses
8. Know your strengths and remember them
9. Use positive words to describe yourself
10. Avoid being your own critic
11. Don’t over generalize
12. You can develop self confidence by stopping blaming yourself for things that aren’t your fault
13. Don’t say yes when you mean no
14. Don’t take things too personally
15. Stop trying to read other people’s minds
16. Remind yourself that you are the boss of you
17. Remember that you are worthy
18. Learn the keys to compassion – understanding, acceptance and forgiveness
19. Practice of active listening improves self confidence
20. Get friends or family to support you as you gain confidence
21. Evaluate your beliefs
22. Don’t call yourself names
23. Stop giving in to “shoulds”
24. Remember that mistakes happen to everyone

Everyone makes mistakes - nobody is perfect.

You’ve heard those phrases many times, but have you really listened to them?

Confident people know how to learn from their mistakes.

Improving self confidence by handling your mistakes:

• Everyone has faults. You need to learn to deal with your faults in a productive way and don’t let them make you feel inferior.
• It starts in childhood. How you dealt with mistakes and how your parents reacted to your mistakes shapes how you deal with them as an adult.
• When parents give unconditional acceptance to their children it encourages them to become independent and provides for the child to have positive feelings about themselves and their abilities.
• On the other hand, if the parents were overly critical or overprotective it will damage the child’s ability to develop self-confidence.
• As a child, you may have been punished for mistakes you made or you may have been ridiculed or chastised. If that happens too often, the person likely goes through life trying to avoid mistakes, instead of working through them.
• To this person, it becomes almost worse to actually make a mistake than what the mistake actually is.