Self-confidence is the ability to believe in yourself, your worth, your power and skills, regardless of wherever you find yourself. However, the best way to improve self-confidence is to model highly self-confident in people.
Many people believe that self-confidence comes from the possession of a high skill set or knowledge. Though being useful in a particular area of expertise can give you a sense of high-worth, it doesn’t necessarily the prerequisite for self- confidence.
People that have self-confidence have a strong sense of belief in themselves. They keep calm, composure, and self-awareness, and that is why they have formed a set of habits that have become of who they are and how they live their life.
What are the habits to imbibe to improve your self-confidence?
- Keep Your Words To Yourself And Others
The statement sounds very simple, but it’s not often. For instance, how often do you tell yourself that you will do something and you do it? How often do you not keep your promise to others? Whenever this happens, it’s not there is a parallel feeling of distraction or dissatisfaction within yourself. Still, you’re providing your subconscious mind with evidence that you don’t do what you say you will. You’re someone that can’t be trusted.
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This altitude is incredibly destroying your self-confidence because you don’t get trusted and know who you claim to be. You say one thing but don’t deliver, and this costs you your trust in yourself and your self-confidence.
People with high self-confident understand the importance of keeping their word. They know that the meaning of integrity, their word is law, which is the key to accessing their power and self-confidence. It’s also an essential habit that leads to success in life.
Start aking smaller promises that you know you won’t let yourself or others down. Be honest with yourself. Never say YES to something that you know you can’t fix it.
Baby steps are the key here. If you try to do too much too soon, you will inevitably let something slip, and guess who will be watching?
2. Choose Positive Self Talk
The main keyword here is to CHOOSE. How many success you have or how many things you do well, you continually doubt yourself and your abilities. It might have something to do with the fact that 80% of what you think is negative, which is entirely counterproductive. With the statistics on the ground, it’s no wonder you struggle to feel good about yourself.
One of the most significant changes we can make in our life is choosing our self-talk.
High self-confident people have learned the habit of catching negative thoughts before they can affect their feelings, moods, and performance. They choose to cancel their thoughts and replace them with positive, empowering thoughts instead.
They have formed the habit of saying: stop, cancel or pass, whenever they catch a negative thought… not giving any power to that thought… not reacting to it.
Affirmations are a compelling way of re-educating your minds to think empowering thoughts rather than the counterproductive, negative thoughts.
So CHOOSE to improve self-confidence by choosing positive thoughts and practice these using affirmations.
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- Focus On Your Strengths
High self-confident people know their strength and focus on what they can do, rather than what they can’t. Lack of self-confidence as a result of losing sight of your excellent qualities and exaggerating your flaws instead.
Whenever you think you’re not good at something, try to consciously focus on the qualities that are important to carry out the task.
For instance, if you’re doing public speaking, but you’re not confident in delivering a speech. Be a good researcher, writer, and organizer. Focus on these attributes and know that you can be sure and proud of the content of that speech. It will be less significant if you focus on the content while delivering the speech.
4. Be Courage
Self-Confident people tend to procrastinate and worry. They end up being hung up over adverse outcomes and failure of the past. They don’t seem to find the courage to move forward. “Get out of it and just do it!”.
Self-Confident people have learned that to succeed, they can create the possibility of being courageous anytime they want. Even if they are afraid, they can choose to take action.
A scholar said, “COURAGE is not acting without fear; courage is working in spite of fear.
When you choose courage as your habit, it will increase your self-confidence, because you’re more likely to give the things you want a go. When you focused on the doing than the thinking and worrying, you’ve overcome half of the battle.
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5. Act And Feel Important
People have a habit of thinking highly of themselves through the way they behave and the image they portray. They are always energetic to do more.
If you ever notice, self-confident people stand up for themselves and speak up when it’s appropriate. The physiology and body language also portray the image they possess. They look after their bodies and the way they dress.
Do you ever see any self-confident people who walk around with slumped shoulders and are poorly dressed?
No one is more conscious of your physical appearance than you are. So, make it a priority to look good and feel important.
These are the basic things you can do at the physical level to improve self-confidence
- Good posture: walk confidently, stand up straight and tall with shoulders back and head up, and make eye contact.
- Dress sharp: Look smart and presentable. When you dressed well, doesn’t that instantly make you feel significant and important?
6. Be Grateful
High self-confident people have an attitude of gratitude. I’m talking of heartfelt appreciation and not so much about forced gratitude.
How do you recognize the difference between heartfelt gratitude and forced gratitude?
If you’ve ever expressed gratitude by starting a sentence with, “At least…” you understand the meaning of forced gratitude. For example… at least I have food on the table, or… at least I have a good job, etc. We push ourselves to feel grateful, but this is coming from emptiness, and it isn’t a long-lasting habit because, as soon as our circumstances change, we may not feel the same.
Heartfelt gratitude is a much deeper feeling. It is a feeling of appreciation and connection with life itself, which, when present, gratitude triggers positive feedback loops.
This is the secret habit that high self-confidence people rely on to get access to this fantastic positive mental attitude that they have.
So, to improve self-confidence, start the habit of being grateful.
An exercise you can do every day is to spend 5 minutes acknowledging the small things you like about yourself, things that make you feel self-confident, and thriving right now.
You can write these down in a gratitude journal and review them weekly.
Another powerful thing to do is find an unsuspecting or unlikely target to unleash your gratitude upon.
Gratitude often works best where you would least expect it to. Perhaps, you can show appreciation or be grateful to a friend or family member. Or you have seen a beautiful tree or flower that brightens your day, perhaps, appreciate your favourite song, or a perfect hug… you will be surprised how many things you will find that you can understand and be grateful for every day!
