In order to achieve your goals and succeed and in order to have a strong personality so you can inspire others and be an icon you must be really confident in yourself.
Self-confidence is extremely important in almost every aspect of our lives, yet so many people struggle to find it. Sadly, this can be a vicious circle: people who lack self-confidence can find it difficult to become successful.
After all, most people are reluctant to back a project that's being pitched by someone who is nervous, fumbling, and overly apologetic.
On the other hand, you might be persuaded by someone who speaks clearly, who holds his or her head high, who answers questions assuredly, and who readily admits when he or she does not know something.
Self-confident people inspire confidence in others: their audience, their peers, their bosses, their customers, and their friends. And gaining the confidence of others is one of the key ways in which a self-confident person finds success.
The good news is that self-confidence can be learned and built on. And, whether you are working on your own self-confidence or building the confidence of people around you, it is well worth the effort!
What is Self-Confidence?
Two main things contribute to self-confidence: self-efficacy and self-esteem.
We gain a sense of self-efficacy when we see ourselves (and others similar to ourselves) mastering skills and achieving goals that matter in those skill areas. This is the confidence that, if we learn and work hard in a particular area, we'll succeed. It's this type of confidence that leads people to accept difficult challenges, and persist in the face of setbacks.
This overlaps with the idea of self-esteem, which is a more general sense that we can cope with what's going on in our lives, and that we have a right to be happy. Partly, this comes from a feeling that the people around us approve of us, which we may or may not be able to control. However, it also comes from the sense that we are behaving virtuously, that we're competent at what we do, and that we can compete successfully when we put our minds to it.
Building Self-Confidence
So how do you build this sense of balanced self-confidence, founded on a firm appreciation of reality?
The bad news is that there is no five-minute solution.
The good news is that building self-confidence is readily achievable, just as long as you have the focus and determination to carry things through. And what is even better is that the things you will do to build self-confidence will also build success – after all, your confidence will come from real, solid achievement. No-one can take this away from you.
- Step 1: Preparing for Your Journey
The first step involves getting yourself ready for your journey to self-confidence. You need to take stock of where you are, think about where you want to go, get yourself in the right mindset for your journey, and commit yourself to starting it and staying with it.
In preparing for your journey, do these five things:
- Look at What You've Already Achieved
- Think About Your Strengths
- Think About What's Important to You, and Where you Want to Go
- Start Managing Your Mind
- And Then Commit Yourself to Success!
This is where you start, ever so slowly, moving towards your goal. By doing the right things, and starting with small, easy wins, you will put yourself on the path to success – and start building the self-confidence that comes with this.
- Build the Knowledge you need to Succeed
- Focus on the Basics
- Set Small Goals, and Achieve Them
- Keep Managing Your Mind
- Step 3: Accelerating Towards Success
By this stage, you will feel your self-confidence building. You will have completed some of the courses you started in step 2, and you will have plenty of success to celebrate.
This is the time to start stretching yourself. Make the goals a bit bigger and the challenges a bit tougher. Increase the size of your commitment.
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