Practical tools to boost your confidence
I often hear from my clients: 'I wish I could be as confident as my sister or a friend of mine..',
'I wish I was born with a confident attitude' or even 'What's wrong with me, why can't I be like others'. The problem with those statements is that they put the person who believes in them in a position of a victim, very disempowering one, as it removes the person from a position of control, responsibility and most importantly possibillity of change. That victim mentality takes you further and further away from the truth, which is: you can change any aspect of your personality, if you really want to. Isn't great?! That's the beauty of self development, you are in the driver's seat and you choose your destination. It requires of course your energy, some knowledge and practice, but this shouldn't be an obstacle if confidence is what you incredibly desire.
Our words create our world, they shape our thoughts, beliefs and behaviour, so we need to guard them carefully and make sure, we are using only those, which serve us.
This is the first topic we usually need to focus on, if we want to become more confident. Answer the questions below and identify the language, which creates your reality:
What am I saying about my confidence to myself and others? What words am I using? Is it empowering me or making me feel small?
Once you are done, I invite you to write new powerful statements, which makes you feel confident like: 'I have been confident in many situations before, I can do it again' or ' I know that I can be more confident, if I start changing my way of thinking about it', or 'I am becoming more confident by taking small steps every day'.
This is a great beginning to break the pattern of negative self-talk about your confidence, which has direct impact on you performing with low confidence.
A second simple tool I want to share with you, which works wonders for many clients wanting to boost their self-esteem is 'acting out the confident body language' technique.
To start, pick up a situation, when you felt extremely confident, try to recall all the details about what was happening with your body in that moment in time: what were your gestures, how were you moving/walking/sitting? What were your facial expressions? Were you leaning backwards or forwards? Were you moving fast/slow/steady? What was your breathing like?
Be as SPECIFIC as you can.
Next stage is the practising part. You want to act out that specific body language with all the details described as often as possible, until it starts to feel very natural, literally as part a of you - this is not only how you behave, this is who you are.
Why is body language directly connected to confidence? Because ANY emotion or feeling is connected to the body - EMOTION COMES FROM MOTION. Our body associates particular (individual to each person) moves, gestures to particular feelings/emotions. Try and test for yourself!
Speak confidently and move your body in a way, which feels confident for you, repeat it enough times and you will start to see an incredible difference.
Many people still believe that confidence is something that you are born with, therefore some of us are lucky and some of us are cursed with complete lack of it. Nothing further from the truth. We can CREATE a feeling of confidence, or to be more accurate RECREATE as we all felt that feeling at some point in our lives and we can tap into it at any moment.