7 steps to build your confidence

Dear...

Lack of self-confidence can keep you from being truly successful in anything you want to undertake. In fact some people don't undertake anything at all because of the lack of self-confidence.

If you look at the definition of (self)confidence in the dictionary, you'll find something along the lines of: trust or faith in a person or thing; freedom from doubt; belief in yourself and your abilities. In a blog I recently read on this topic it was described as: confidence is based on the belief that you, no matter your physical attributes, net-worth, career or connections, have real worth.

In other words self-confidence is the belief that you have self worth, regardless how you look, what you posses or your abilities. Belief that you have self worth even when you are stripped of everything instead of when you have everything.

Now I understand this is easier said than done and the question many people have is: how do you gain or find self-confidence when you don't have it?

These 7 steps will give you direction to build  your confidence:

1. Have a  positive attitude. Focus on the positive things in your life and learn how to see things in a more positive perspective. Make a conscious effort to see the positive in all people, don't gossip and use only positive language.
2. Focus on what you can control and accept what you can't control. E.g. you can't control the weather but you can control what to wear or the activities you are undertaking.  Accept uncertainty, uncertainty is part of life, wanting certainty in life is probably one of the main causes of shaking self confidence
3. Practice, learn, prepare. If you look for more confidence at a performance, for instance at an exam or competition, good preparation and serious practice is half of the work. Gain confidence by doing competition or exam simulations.
4. Let go of judgement. Don't judge others and don't judge yourself.
5. There are no failures. The lack of confidence comes often from the fear of failures or mistakes. There are no failures if you learn to see that every mistake is a learning.
6. Be grateful for what you have achieved so far, celebrate your wins and have an attitude of gratitude.
7. Have clear goals and understand why they are important to you. Having absolute clarity of what your goals in life are, paired with the motivation to reach them will build enormous confidence.


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