Build Up Your Self Confidence
Our vulnerability to fear is in opposite proportion to our feeling of self worth.
If you have little self regard and consider yourselves to be worthless and of little value you will be enormously fearful.
On the other hand, if you are genuinely self confident you are less likely to be fearful. If you know that you have dealt effectively with problems in the past you are likely to have self confidence in your ability to deal with new problems.
You have probably acquired your feelings of inadequacy, because the people around you have made you feel inadequate and worthless.
Therefore in order to build up your self confidence you must replace negative, damaging feelings of failure, incompetence and unworthiness with positive feelings of success.
Let’s look at some workable ways in which you can boost your self confidence and eliminate your feelings of inadequacy.
First sit down with a piece of paper and a pencil and write down all the good things you can think of to say about yourself. Imagine that you are preparing a marketing campaign for yourself. This is where you will promote all your good points. You are trying to sell yourself to the world, though really you selling yourself to yourself.
I know that if you are shy and lacking in self confidence you may feel that it is going to be a daunting task. If you feel you are not ready to do it on your own, ask a friend that you trust to sit with you, they always say a job shared is a job halved. Create a list of words between you here is a few to start you of, honest, generous, thoughtful, hard-working, punctual, careful, considerate, moral, kind, ambitious, creative there lots just get your thinking hat on. Write down every good word that you think of, and then go through the list and tick of the ones that you honestly believe apply to yourself.
Read your `advertisement' every day to improve your self-image.
Stop seeing yourself as a failure, substitute your negative thinking with some positive images. You have to learn to see yourself as a success.
Now make a list of all the things you hold dear to you, not things you own but a list of all the intangibles in your life. If your married this would be your partner, your children, plus your integrity, your friends, your interests, your knowledge, your accomplishments and your good memories. These are the real treasures in your life. Next write down all the things for which you are grateful. When you look at your lists you may be surprised to find how many things there are that you can be proud about. These are your blessings.
Write down your top twenty memories, the magical times in your life when you felt at your happiest and calmest. Keep the list somewhere safe and look at it regularly. Keep your lists up dated adding new special memories to your Top Twenty lists as they occur.
Some fears aren't always easy to identify or isolate. If you have a problem which you want to identify try asking yourself `Why?'. That one word is the key to understanding (and overcoming) fear.
So, for example, if you feel `angry' and suspect that your anger may be caused by underlying fear ask yourself: `Why?' And keep asking `why?' until you get some answers.
Fear of the unknown is a powerful driving force. But you can derail this particular fear by always asking yourself. What is the worst thing that can happen in this situation? You will often be surprised to find that the worst really isn't all that bad. Once you know the worst you can make plans accordingly, my mother used to say “Fear comes knocking on the door, Faith answers it and there is no one there”.
My fear was of failure though I sometimes think it is fear of success, two sides of the same coin. How many times have you been on the verge of success and then you have sabotaged yourself, I’ve done it lots of times and in this moment in time I’m finishing my first book and once again the cold icy fingers of the fear of failure is creeping up on me, however I’ve made a plan and put it into action. My plan is written down and it’s now only one month to my book being published each day, I’m facing my fear and doing it anyway. My book may be a success who knows but I’ll have looked fear in the face and know I had nothing to fear but fear it’s self
Fear likes to keep us busy, we do jobs we don’t like because we’re frightened of what might happen if we leave. Fears keep people in relationships which have no future. Fear destroys courage and initiative. Fear of the unknown is one of society's ways of keeping us under control.
Spend As Much Time As You Can With Positive People
Don't spend time with people who are always criticising you, putting you down or looking on the gloomy side of life. Make every effort to make new friends out of people you admire. What's the worst that can happen? a negative response. What's the best that can happen? a great new friend.
Spend time with people who support and encourage you. Don’t put up with people who put you down? Keep away from them. Don't bother to share your life with them unless, of course, they change. Write positive quotes in your diary. Use inspirational books and tapes. Spend the first twenty minutes of your day doing something positive this will set you up for the day. Limit the amount of negative TV you watch, keep up with what is going on in the world by reading a once-a-week news magazine.
Remember that if you send out positive thoughts, you will get positive thoughts back.
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