We all want to feel confident, we know what benefits it brings, but how do you become confident if you’re currently not? What a non-confident person can do to build self-confidence?
Being self-confident has many benefits. It helps you perform better, get noticed and appreciated for your work, it gets you a promotion and a raise.It also gets you attention of opposite sex. To put it simply: it helps you get what you want in life .
On the other hand, shyness and lack of self-confidence can seriously sabotage your efforts and stop you from getting what you want (and what you deserve).
This is why I decided to dedicate a whole blog post to building your self-confidence.
You need to remember something. It’s a process. You can’t build self-confidence overnight. The following 12 ways to do so will work best if applied all together and consistently over time. Confidence is not something that happens to you. It’s a habit. And though you know that you’ll need time and energy to create this new habit, the good news is that you can do. It is something under your control and dependent on you.
1. Use Positive affirmation
Practicing positive affirmations builds up self-confidence To feel more self-confident, you can use positive affirmation – positive statements that are meant to reprogram your mind to seeing yourself in a better light. These include statements such as: “I am worthy”, “I’m a great leader”, “Everybody likes me”, and so. There are a few ways to do it. You can write down your own mantra and repeat it to yourself every morning (or every evening before going to bed). You can write the positive statements on a piece of paper and put it somewhere where you will always see it (stick it on a wall or on a fridge), you can also write your affirmation on a mirror. That’s what I did. Every morning when I get ready I have no other choice but to look at it. I got another idea for how to incorporate positive affirmations to your life. I mentioned it in my previous blog post (it’s the extra tip).
When people act in a self-confident way towards others, they actually feel more self-confident themselves. This is one of the most amazing rules in our lives. If you want to have something, act as if you already have it. The way our mind works, is that the more familiar an idea is, the truer it will seem. And how to make an idea familiar? By repeating it! The more you do something, the more you say something, the more you’ll believe in it. If you want to be more self-confident, act like somebody who already is confident! It might feel funny at the beginning, but don’t let it stop you. It’s a process, and soon you’ll notice how natural and true that behaviour will become.
3. Dress smart
If you ever lack confidence, the easiest way to boost it by dressing like an authority. If you’re perceived like somebody important, you will start feeling like one! Smart outfit is an international symbol of status, so no matter in which country you are, you can always wear it. Things such as suits, shirts, nice shoes, accessories, gadgets – they all add to our confidence.
4. Speak loud
The way you talk and the way you project your voice is directly linked to your confidence. Shy people tend to keep their voice low. They don’t want to draw attention, which they would if they spoke up. You probably have noticed it yourself in meetings. There is always that one guys, the loudest of all, very self-confident, maybe sometimes arrogant, who doesn’t care much about what others think. And then there are those who don’t talk much, they stay quiet, and even when asked – they speak in such a way that people can’t really hear them. Next time you’re in a meeting speak up, project your voice, be loud. You’ll see what kind of an impact it has on your confidence.
6. Body language
Confident people have a different body language. They walk tall. They keep their head up. They look into the eyes of others. They also keep their body open.
Whenever we feel bad about ourselves, we feel down or hurt, we tend to close down. And not just emotionally but physically too. We try to become as small as positive, so people don’t notice us. We curl up, so we limit the surface of exposure.
Lack of self confidence manifests itself in such a body language. A way to build confidence is to adopt a body language of somebody who does feel confident.
Here is great TED talk (it’s one of my favourite) that gives tips on just that
7 Take care of yourself
Imagine somebody tells you, you look really nice. What would you respond?
Does “Oh, it’s an old dress.” or “Oh, I actually feel quite tired today” sound familiar to you?
What do you usually say when somebody pays you a compliment?
We rarely just accept a compliment. We rarely say “Thank you” without any buts.
But think about it. If somebody takes time to tell you something nice, it’s because they think that. Why can’t you just accept a nice word? Why are you tempted to downplay it? If you did a good job, take ownership of it. Embrace it! Allow yourself to believe in all the good things people tell you. It’s the easiest, and all for free, way to boost your confidence.
In many cultures (including mine), it’s not very polite to simply accept a compliment. It’s perceived rude and arrogant. So for people who come from such cultures it’s a more difficult job. Nevertheless, it’s worth trying.
9. Appreciate what you’ve already achieved
Appreciate how much you’ve already achieved
No matter where you are now, I can guarantee you that you’ve achieved much more than you think.
We tend to look in the future and always compare ourselves to that better version of ourselves we’d like to be. Or that we need to be in order to achieve our goals. You look into the future where your perfect self has tons of money, happy family and a beautiful home. Then you look back at now and get depressed and you start feeling like a failure for being so far from your dreams.
We often forget, though, about how far we’ve already come, and how much we’ve already achieved. We rarely look in the past and see who we used to be few years ago, and compare it to who we are.
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