People who are lacking in confidence can improve their confidence by changing their thinking. If people believe that they are not confident in a certain area of their life they may have a tendency to worry about this and ‘over-think’ things. It is this negative thinking that is largely responsible for them not making progress in this area.
Here are a few tips for overcoming that negative thinking: If struggling with a particular area, i.e. public speaking, we can improve our confidence by improving our competence – in this case perhaps by taking a public speaking course. By facing our fears, we can overcome them; by avoiding them we compound them, and this will mean that things become much more of an issue than they need to be.
We need to stop procrastinating and take action! We are likely to have reinforced our belief that we are not good at something for many years. Try to remember what caused this belief. Did you try something and fail? Did a parent or teacher tell you that you were not good at something – and you believed them? Often, we carry on believing something and reinforcing that message (often a negative one) without examining where that belief originally came from and questioning the validity of it – after all, thoughts aren’t real!
Stop thinking that everyone that is around you is confident. We are all less confident in certain areas. Even people whom we perceive to be confident will tell you that they do not always feel like that – they have learnt how to mask their true feelings. Think of it as a bit like carrying out a role on stage – the more you perform that role the more you will become comfortable in it (so it starts to feel real!) Please let me know about how you get on – also please share your own confidence-building tips with me!