How To Super Charge Your Confidence In Times of Doubt!
Surround Yourself With The Right People
Be around the right people. When you are around people who are negative and always pessimistic, sooner or later their energy will pull you down as well. When you are around positive people, sooner or later their energy will rub off on you as well and you will become much more positive with your life also. If you can't meet them for some reason, read their books, watch videos on them. If they have a Blog, read it religiously. The bottom line is, in the age of the internet, you have no excuses.
Focus on Your Strengths
When you focus on your weaknesses all the time, your self esteem is bound to be very low. The reason is that if you only focus on your weaknesses, soon you will be convinced that you are good at nothing, even when you have had times in your business and career that have been spectacular. But the truth is there is always one thing or a group of few things that we are all immensely talented at. As I usually say, the root of low self esteem is when people focus on all the things they suck at, when you figure out the one thing you are amazing at, and there always is that one thing, you will realize how blessed you are, there is no one like you.
Use Affirmations
Affirmations basically mean repeating positive statements to yourself over and over again to the point that you start believing them. Affirmations program your subconscious mind with extreme confidence about your ability to do something. The belief that you can do something wins you half the battle as compared to others who doubt they can't do anything because only the people who believe they can do something, put in the effort to make it a reality. Muhammad Ali said, "It is the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief and when that belief becomes a conviction, things begin to happen!"
Groom Yourself Properly
Start paying attention to the way you carry yourself. It will work wonders on your self confidence. Even if you are blessed with Greek God looks, if you are unkempt you won't be liked by people and that will affect your self esteem. Take a look at yourself and see if there is something you can change with regards to your appearance.
Different people like different looks and frankly fashion trends do change with time. So just experiment and find what works best for you. Once you do, stick to it, until you can find something better.
Prepare Hard
The best way to gain confidence is through preparation. The more you prepare, the more equipped you are to deal with a particular situation. The people who are most confident whilst doing something are those who have prepared hard for something to the point that it feels like a fairly easy routine task for them. Prepare for something so well that doing it becomes a piece of cake.
Never Compromise on Self Respect
One of the main reasons that people go through having a very low self esteem about themselves is because they allow their self respect to be trampled upon by others at every step. Whether it is always compromising upon what they want or allowing themselves to be exploited or taken advantage of, if you compromise on self respect, there is no way you are ever going to be happy.
This is true for anyone regardless of whether they are treated disrespectfully by their spouse, boss or by their clients/investors. This is also true for people who maybe very rich and super successful in the eyes of the world but allow their self worth to be trampled upon by someone else all the time. If you want to be confident, stop compromising on self respect.
Workout and get fit
One of the best ways to feel confident to get fit is by starting to workout. If you are underweight, gain weight. A fit body is the first thing you should strive to achieve to improve your looks. I know losing weight made a huge difference in my life. Whether it is a personal or a professional environment, people often perceive you favorably if you are fitter.
When you workout the body releases certain chemicals that make you feel happier and more confident. Slowly over time when the results of the workout begin to show on your body, you become even more confident. Working out is the number one natural way to slow down aging, try it!
Have the right diet
Along with working out, if there is one thing that can have tremendous effect on your mood, it is your diet. When you eat the wrong foods, the brain produces chemicals that make you lazy and depressed. When you eat the right diet, it makes you more confident and alert. Adopt a balanced diet of protein, carbohydrates and fat for optimum nutrition. Eat clean and avoid eating too much sugar or fat and you will realize your mood will become much more stable. Once your mood becomes stable and your body improves because of your better diet, your confidence levels will begin to improve vastly as well.
Adopt the right Body posture. Use power postures
Your posture plays a tremendous role in the kind of confidence you have. Normally, people who are depressed tend to look down a lot and slouch a lot and people who are confident and happy tend to walk with a straight back and with their head held high, however, the reverse is true as well! The way you sit or stand can actually influence your confidence levels directly, it's not always the other way round! According to a research done by Amy Cuddy from Harvard, people who adopted something known as a "power posture" reported feeling better and much more confident even if they were feeling low to begin with. Learn about power postures in the Public Speaking article at the end.
Do What You Fear
Avoiding what you fear makes you retreat further and further to the point that you often begin to avoid even the things you did not fear earlier, if they are somehow linked with the thing that you fear. This is what gradually leads to the development of phobias and makes a person lose their belief in the ability to do something. On the other hand, when you do what you fear over and over again, not only does it desensitizes you to the fear itself, it also gives you the confidence and belief to tackle anything else in the world that you want to do!
Build Confidence Through Competence
One of the best ways to build confidence is through competence. You cannot learn how to swim by mere affirmations or power postures alone. There are many things in life that need to be developed as a skill. You develop skill through practice and by becoming better and better at something. You don't learn how to swim by jumping into the ocean with no one around you. You become confident by doing things one step at a time, first by learning to swim in a pool under the guidance of an expert trainer, before you progress to deeper depths and eventually progress to swimming in lakes and rivers and finally the ocean. You just built your confidence through competence! When it comes to becoming confident at a skill, the number one way to become so is through sheer competence.
Stay Productive
The more you can stay productive, the less time you have to think and whine about things. As they say, an idle mind is the devil's workshop. When you start to give yourself idle time, you are likely to fall into a destructive pattern. Or you may feel depressed about things after a while. If you stay productive, you keep your mind occupied and you just don't have the time to let the negativity sink in. Furthermore, staying productive gives you the confidence that you are doing something worthwhile in your life, it's just a matter of time before things come back on track again.
Keep yourself Organized
Many people do just as well whilst being disorganized but I have found that just by organizing something as simple as the place I work in makes me much more confident, because it gives a sense of order in my surroundings instead of everything being totally chaotic and out of control. That sense of control makes a lot of people feel better. Furthermore, any sort of success requires organized systems that repeat what has proven to work in a faster and more efficient way. The more you can keep your life organized, the more likely you are to adopt systems that will improve and accelerate your work productivity as well.
Do Something that you have been delaying forever
Continuing to procrastinate on something is similar to avoiding what you fear. You procrastinate because you feel lazy or are overwhelmed by the task at hand. Either way, you doubt your ability to get the task done immediately, which is why you keep procrastinating on it. Continuing to procrastinate only makes the task appear more and more difficult and complex in your mind even if it wasn't that complex to begin with. Make a decision and do the task and get it out of the way. In fact get things out of the way as quickly as you can on a regular basis. Your confidence and your belief in your ability to tackle any obstacle will soar!
Become Knowledgeable
People fear what they don't understand. People procrastinate when they don't understand something. They doubt their own ability to do something when they don't understand it. On the other hand, some people might take decisions that are too quick and take blind and foolish risks when they don't understand something as well. When you educate yourself and become knowledgeable about something you are contemplating about, you become much more sure and confident of your decisions in life.
Be Grateful
One of the biggest reasons why people are always complaining and unhappy with their lives is because they are not grateful for what they have. If you are someone who has a loving spouse and are craving the wealth of your neighbor, that neighbor may be craving having a loving spouse while their wealth means nothing to them.
The truth is that no one in the world is better than one or the other in all aspects. Everyone is a master in some thing and a rookie in another. Everyone has a few things others might crave and might never have. Focus and appreciate those things.
Shift your perspective and start appreciating things you have instead of being sad about what you don’t! You will realize how lucky you are!
