How Do I Build Confidence in Myself?
Confidence is one of those elements that you might feel people are either born with or they are not. The fact is, anyone can build and nurture their self-esteem and their confidence in themselves, yet it doesn’t happen overnight. Your perception of yourself is nurtured by your own inner-dialogue and by your relationships with others over a long period of time. Most of us develop our core sense of who we are, what we do well, and what we can offer the world in the family we grew up in. Sadly, some people are shamed, belittled and spoken down-to in a way that wrecks what confidence they did have or were growing. The good news is you CAN grow your confidence. Yes, you can!
Beliefs and Awareness
Your beliefs are at the core of what it takes to think and feel different. Most people want better self-esteem and confidence in themselves because they feel unhappy. Well, you’ve got to alter the beliefs in order for your thoughts and then your feelings to change. Start by writing down and sorting through what it is you believe about yourself. What are some of the things you do well? If you were to ask your mother, a coworker, a trusted friend what would they tell you? List those things, not in your mind, but on paper. Now, take what you have written and hang it up, you’ve got to see it, what you wrote must be visible. If you are going to start believing better and knowing different you have to do something different. The issue here is that most people that struggle with confidence have a running script in their mind of all the things that they are not good at, things they feel they have a ‘weakness’ in. This running script only serves to consistently reinforce their weaknesses such that often that’s all they see themselves as, a long list of weaknesses.
The Spin Cycle
Pay attention to your thoughts through the day. What do you find your mind drifts over to? Are you fixating on your weaknesses or fears? Do you find perhaps that you focus on the negative? Maybe you hold your body in a way that communicates you are unhappy and stuck? Here’s the deal. If you want to feel better you’ve got to start thinking better. Your mind has thousands of thoughts each day. Your mind is not you, it’s the brain’s experience of the things you see, here, and conclude about what is happening. The brain will follow old patterns of thinking, patterns that are default settings. You don’t even have to ‘try’ and think poorly of yourself or your circumstances, it just happens. Now, you can change this, it is possible! Start by becoming aware of the thought spin, like a washing machine drum, spinning along in its default motion.
Start By Doing
If things are going to get better you need to begin to focus on the good, strong, great things that you do, even if you think the list is small, and repeat and review it daily. Sounds lame, well it might be but guess what? People that exude confidence are well aware of what they do well and that confidence and self-esteem grows upon itself. You think Olympic athletes win by thinking about losing or about goofing up when it counts? Nope, they don’t, instead they begin to alter the way they believe about themselves and their bodies begin to follow what they believe and good things happen for them. This can happen for you, you don’t have to be an Olympian to have this happen, but you have to start believing and thinning thinking in a new way.
Copyright: No part of this article in section or full may be reproduced without permission from the author Justin Stum, MS LMFT. The one and only exception is for educational purposes and only if the contact information below for the author is fully cited here in article.
Justin Stum, MS LMFT, 640 E. 700 S., Suite 205B, St. George Utah 84770, 435-574-9193, https://www.justinstum.com
