6 Keys To Boost Your Confidence

Life is full of ups and downs and sometimes has a few sideways thrown in too. When things go wrong or don’t go as planned, or when something happens to throw us off balance and doubt ourselves it can be tough to deal with. After all, we all want things to go well and to feel good about ourselves. But life will always throw challenges at us, and we can’t control everything. Nor should we try. It’s not what happens to you but how you respond to what is happening that makes the difference. Here are some strategies that help you build your confidence.

Focus on Your Strengths
We’re a bunch of contradictions. Sometimes happy, sometimes sad; sometimes hopeful, sometimes pessimistic; sometimes childish and sometimes mature. We also have a whole load of strengths and weaknesses that affect what we do and how we do it, but we tend to put more focus on our weaknesses and not our strengths. 

A strength is something that you do consistently well – it’s something you’re just able to do, you’re hard-wired to do it well and you get an inherent satisfaction from doing it. It could be tackling and solving complex problems, empathising with people, having a lively imagination or being a good listener.

Write down other positive things about yourself, such as "I'm thoughtful" or "I'm a great cook" or "I'm someone that others trust". Also write some good things that other people say about you.

Focusing on what you do well rather than what you’re not so good at makes all kinds of sense. When you look at what you’re not good at you feel bad about yourself and your ability, but when you focus on and play to your strengths, you build up your confidence.

Build positive relationships
If you find certain people tend to bring you down, try to spend less time with them, or tell them how you feel about their words or actions. Try to build relationships with people who are positive and who appreciate you.

Be kind to yourself
Being kind to yourself means being gentle to yourself at times when you feel like being self-critical. Building a really good relationship with yourself is, I believe, one of the best things you can do in life, because it's the very foundation for everything else to flow from.

Start saying "no"
People with often feel they have to say yes to other people, even when they do not really want to. The risk is that you become overburdened, resentful, angry and depressed. For the most part, saying no does not upset relationships. It can be helpful to keep saying no, but in different ways, until they get the message. Learning to set healthy boundaries for yourself is an act of self-love.

Give yourself a challenge
We all feel nervous or afraid to do things at times. But people with self-confidence don’t let these feelings stop them trying new things or taking on challenges. Set yourself a new goal that both excites you and stretches you. Achieving your goals will help to boost your self-esteem and a wonderful way to grow personally.

Set things up ahead of time
There will be times when you can just head into something, do brilliantly at it and get the result you were hoping for (normally if you’re playing to your strengths), but other times you might blunder forwards, wing it and not get the result you wanted. Whatever challenges or opportunities you’re facing you’ll stand a much better chance of getting a great result if you set things up to succeed ahead of time. 

What exactly do you want to happen? What solution, outcome or result would be great? Get really clear on the outcome you want from what’s facing you and how it would feel to get the outcome you’re looking for. Then start breaking it down – what can you do to set things up so that your desired outcome happens? What needs to be put in place? What will help to make what you want to happen, happen? And to ensure the best outcome, what are you willing to do?

Someone told me once that he begins each morning visualising his day in detail, seeing it vividly in his minds eye. Seeing each moment as it unfolds to the end result. "When then the day starts I'm totally at ease, I feel such a sense of security", he says, "because I have seen myself already reaching my goal. It affects every cell in my body, and it has become something that has followed me though life and has become a way of living."
I find this inspiring.

Life is a journey. If we can see life as an ongoing learning experience, and face every obstacle with curiosity instead of frustration, I know, it can sometimes be challenging, but it can make all the difference to our quality of life. We are never the finished article. There will alway be new ways to grow and evolve, and find new strategies to help us along the way.

Photo by Anastasiia Malai on Unsplash