Boost Your Confidence in Three Simple Steps

What is Confidence?

Confidence is the ability to believe or have faith in something. In the same way you will march across a stone bridge after seeing others go before you or because you know stone bridges are sound so it is with confidence. Knowledge and experience are key.

Your confidence level stems from your personal belief in yourself. If you are comfortable with who you are and your abilities, confidence is unlikely to be an issue for you. Some people appear confident in everything they do, others have certain areas in life where they are unsure of themselves and their ability. Self preservation and an instinct for survival will make you fear uncertain situations. Understanding how confidence works and accepting that it will be limited when a situation is potentially dangerous or unknown but high when the facts are known and the situation is safe gives you a starting point to developing a more confident persona.

Know Yourself

To improve your confidence you need to strengthen your personal belief in yourself and your abilities. People who lack confidence often have low self-esteem or a limited belief in their ability to do something. This often stems from a negative thought pattern - possibly due to what others have repeatedly said, what the person deeply believes about themselves, from a negative experience or lack of knowledge or skills. So many people who lack confidence seek perfection in themselves. They often look at others and in the same way they focus on an imperfection or inability in themselves they focus on an ability or strength of the other person and fail to see other people's flaws.

To improve your confidence it is important to develop a more balanced view of yourself in your place in the world. Accept that you have imperfections and weaknesses, but you also have strengths. To start this process you have to believe you can change and you have to be motivated and committed to change. Bear in mind that years of personal conditioning will mean that you will insist on denying yourself any strengths. If you cannot do this yourself consider using a counsellor, life coach or hypnotherapist to help you.

Know Your Stuff

If your lack of confidence is more around your ability to do things then all you need to understand is that confidence comes with knowing your subject and practise. It is perfectly normal to be nervous tackling something outside of your experience. The key here is to gather as much information as possible, learn and practise. This may mean developing new skills. The key here is recognising where your weakness is and doing something about it. You will never improve if you do nothing.

If you are in a situation where this is not possible then learn to feel comfortable admitting to being human and fallible! If you make mistakes think of them as steps towards success - it does not make you a failure. It is said that Thomas Edison took 10,000 attempts at the light bulb until he got it right - now that is perseverance!

Jacky Tustain is a Life Coach based in the UK, specialising in helping people turn their life around through raising confidence and self esteem.
For Life Coaching information check out her BeCanDo website or for confidence training her Inner Confidence ecourse.