How to feel more confident

Every week I get lots of Emails from people who to want to feel more confident about themselves and who want to have a higher self esteem.

One of the big barriers to building self confidence is believing that you can’t do anything about your current confident levels, While self confidence seems like a hard coded part of your personality the truth is that you can easily improve your self esteem and feel more confident about yourself by making few simple changes to your life.

In this article I will explain the reasons that might be preventing you from feeling confident and then will tell you how to feel more confident.

Why do you lack self confidence?

Self confidence is nothing more than a set beliefs that a person has about himself, if these beliefs were negative such as "I am not attractive", "I am nothing compared to others" or "I am no good" then the person will have a low self esteem.

As babies we are all born without any beliefs, this means that no one is either born confident or lacking self confidence. So that question is, how are these limiting beliefs formed?

Here is the answer:

• Criticism: If a child was constantly criticized, told that he is no good or discouraged then he will start believing that he is not worthy
• Failures: If you failed to do something more than once you might develop a limiting belief about it. For example failing to approach people few times might result in a belief such as "People don’t like me" (see Challenge your failures)
• Failure + criticism: One of the most famous situations that results in formation of limiting beliefs is when someone fails to do something then faces criticism from friends or relatives about it. For example if a teen failed to make friends, become popular in school or play the school’s favorite sport then his colleagues might start to make fun of him or even give him names like "Loser", "failure", "Geek" ....etc. Such combination doesn't only lower self esteem but it also provides external proofs for the person's false beliefs!!

Does limiting beliefs result in low self confidence?

So do limiting beliefs lower the self confidence levels on their own?

No, at the point the limiting beliefs are formed the person becomes less confident but as he keeps progressing through life he keeps strengthening these limiting beliefs until he losses all of his confidence, here is how a person strengthens the limiting beliefs:

• Incorrect interpretations of events: Whenever a person who believes that he is unattractive faces rejection or gets undesired treatment he quickly attributes it to his limiting belief (not being attractive) and so the belief becomes stronger (see How to become more confident
• Deleting the evidence: When such a person gets good treatment, find that some people like him or when he is told that he is attractive he quickly deletes this part from his memory by saying that it was a coincidence or by finding any other excuse for the person who treated him well (for example, he is nice and treats everyone this way)

How to feel more confident

In order to feel more confident about yourself you need to reverse all of these events that happened and that resulted in your low self esteem.

1. First of all you have to have Journal or a confidence sheet that you use to record all the compliments and the positive clues you come across in your life (you will find many but you were just deleting them)
2. Secondly you have to stop collecting false clues that strengthens your limiting beliefs by questioning any clue that you came across. For example if someone didn’t say hi then you must tell yourself that he might have not seen you or that he might have been busy thinking about something else instead of thinking that he has done it on intention
3. You must keep reminding yourself of your strengths by reading your compliment’s journal. While affirmations never work because they involve self deception, reading a confidence journal is one of the strongest methods that can help you become more confident without fooling your subconscious mind.

Do the previous simple steps and you will surely feel more confident about yourself and your self esteem will increase.

2knowmysef is not a complicated medical website nor a boring online encyclopedia but rather a place where you will find simple, to the point and effective information that is backed by psychology and presented in a simple way that you can understand and apply. If you think that this is some kind of marketing hype then see what other visitors say about 2knowmyself.The book How to make someone fall in love with you was released by 2knowmyself.com; the book will dramatically increase your chance of letting someone fall in love with you.

Want to know more?

How to gain self confidence

How to feel more confident about yourself

Inferiority complex and self esteem