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How to Build Self Confidence (Essential And Timeless Tips)

How-to-build-self-confidence
How to Build Self Confidence (Essential And Timeless Tips)
"Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face."
~Helen Keller
"Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy."
~Brain Tracy
"Confidence is courage at ease."
~Daniel Maher
I believe that one of the most common wishes is simply to feel more confident in various situations in life. But How?
Confident friends may say: "Well, just be confident, man!" However, to a person that doesn't feel that confident, this piece of advice may not be very helpful al all.
There are however some time-tested and timeless advice. And in this article I'll explore some of those tips.

1: Take action. Get it done.

The most important step in building self confidence is simply  to take action. Working on something and getting it done. Sitting at home and thinking about it will just make you feel worse. Simple... but not always easy tp dp. To make it a bit easier, here are a three of my favorite ways to make it easier to take action:

Be Present:
This will help you snap out of over thinking and just go and do whatever you want to get done. This is probably the best tip I have found so far for taking more action since it puts you in a sate where you feel a little emotional resistance to the work you'll do. And it puts you in state where the right actions often just seem to flow out of you in a focused but relaxed way and without much effort. One of the simplest ways to connect with the present moment is just to keep your focus on your breathing for a minute or two.

Lighten Up:
One way to dissuade yourself from taking action is to take whatever you are about to do too seriously. That makes it feel too big, too difficult and to scary. If you, on the other hand relax a bit and lighten up, you often realize that those problems and negative feelings are just something you are creating in your own mind. With a lighter state of mind your tasks seem lighter and become easier to get started with. Have a look at Lighten Up! for more on this.

Really, Really Want It:
Then taking action isn't something you have to force. Taking action becomes a very natural thing. It's something you can't wait to do.

2: Face Your Fear.

"The way to develop self-confidence is to do the things you fear."
~William Jennings Bryan
There are ways to face your fears that do not include that much shaking of the knees. There are ways to make it easier for you.

Be Curious:
When you are stuck in fear you are closed up. You tend to create division in your world and mind. You create barriers between you and other people/things. When you shift to being curious your perceptions go SWOOSH! and the world just opens up. Curiosity is filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. It opens you up. And when you are open and enthusiastic then you have more fun things to think about than focusing on your fear. How do you become more curious? One way is to remember how life has become more fun in the past, thanks to your curiosity! and to remember! all the cool things it helped you to discover and experience.

Realize that fear is often based on unhelpful interpretation.
As humans we like to look for patterns. The problem is just that we often find negative and not so helpful patterns in our lives based on just one or two experiences. Or by misjudging situations. Or thought some silly miscommunication. When you get too identified with your thoughts you will believe anything they tell you. A more helpful practice may be not to take your thoughts too seriously. A lot of the time they and your memory are pretty inaccurate.

3: Understand in what order things happen.

The thing is, when you do things you don't just build confidence in your ability to handle different situations. You also experience progressive desensitization. What that means is that situations - like for example public speaking or maybe just showing your latest blog post to an audience out there - that made you feel all shaky become more and more normal in your life. It is not longer something you psyche yourself up to do. It just becomes normal. Like tying your shoes, hanging out with your friends or taking a shower.

4: Prepare.

"One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation."
~Arthur Ashe
Preparing yourself and educating yourself can be a big help here. By for example rehearsing and rewriting your speech over and over you can pretty much learn it by heart. By doing research you can find breathing techniques that can quickly make you calmer and present. Or simple visualization techniques that make you feel more confident and positive as you step out on the stage.

5: Realize that failure or being wrong will not kill you.

"I quit being afraid when my first venture failed and the sky didn't fall down."
~Allen H. Neuharth
"Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong."
~Peter T. Mcintyre
Again, you have to face your fear. Because it is only then that you discover the thing that billions of people throughout history have discovered before. Failure won't kill you. Nor will being wrong. The sky will not fall down. That's just what people what people that haven't faced their fear yet.

6: Get to know who you are and what you want out of life.

"The world has the habit of making room for the man whose words and actions show that he knows where he is going."
~Napoleon Hill
To build and find more confidence in yourself you have to get to know yourself better. Go exploring. Face some of your fears. Fail over and over and understand that it isn't really that big of a deal. Grow stronger through such experiences and also become more internally relaxed. Figure out what really excites you by simply trying a whole bunch of stuff out.

This will of course take time. It may be something that never really ends So you might as well get started now.
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