What is confidence?
Confidence is to trust, to have faith that something is factually correct or someone is having your back no matter what. But what about self-confidence? Do you really trust and believe in yourself?
I know that it is much easier for us to trust and believe in others, and hope they will have our back. Trusting and believing in ourselves, however…… oh boy, that is a different story. Quite often in our lives, we act as if we are the most confident in the room and nothing can faze us. But inside, our stomach is clenched, our hands are clammy and we deploy all our mental and physical resources to keep that poker face on display.
So confidence, and more importantly, self-confidence is an attitude that we really and truly trust in our abilities. It means we know our strengths and weaknesses and we accept ourselves as imperfect as we come. That doesn’t mean that we stop to work on improving ourselves. It simply means that we know, deep down inside, that whatever life throws at us, we are capable to deal with it and learn the lesson.
What prevents confidence?
Having low self-confidence means that we doubt ourselves and our abilities. It means that we believe that life happens to us, instead of for us. Having low self-confidence means we live in a victim mindset. But my question is for how long we can keep the mask, while we are falling into pieces on the inside? Is it really worth the pain we are putting ourselves through?
People with low confidence describe themselves as shy. What does that mean? In my humble opinion, and this is formed through my personal experience and what my clients have presented to me, low self-confidence is a by-product of limited beliefs and fear.
Both, fears and unhelpful limiting beliefs, are gathered during our childhood and adolescent years. During the first 7 years of a person’s life, their brain is like a sponge. Children learn from their caregivers – mother, father, adoptive or foster parents, grandparents, extended family or childminders, behaviors. During these first seven years, children learn how to talk, feed themselves, walk, and behave in society. Most importantly, during these first seven years, children learn about the world. This happens through projection. The caregiver projects their views and beliefs, about the world and life, onto the child. And the child internalizes it and accepts it as a truth.
What is required to be confident?
Working on increasing self-confidence means that first, we need to raise our awareness of ourselves. And this should be done in the steps below:
- Recognizing and improving our strengths
- Looking at failure as a blind spot torch, that shows us our weaknesses, not as the end of the world
- Having a big goal but with smaller, achievable goals within it, and celebrating even the most minor achievements
- Accept that it is impossible to be perfect. We are all works in progress
- Recognizing that our past experiences in life do not define us, but rather help us grow
- Learning to say “No”
- Learning to express our feelings, beliefs, and needs in a clear and respectful manner
- Dropping making judgments about ourselves and others
If you need help to boost your confidence, book your session with me:
