Thursday, September 4, 2008

How to Have Confidence by Adopting a Realistic Attitude

By Peter Murphy

If you are struggling with how to have confidence in your life, you are not alone. Most people think that self-confidence is something that lucky people have, people who can do anything and everything.

Part of the problem with confidence is we think we have to have tons and tons of it and all the time. The reality is, that not everyone knows how to have confidence in all situations.

Self-confidence is really an attitude a person has, that allows them to have a positive view of themselves and the situations life may put them. People with a confident attitude are realistic. They trust in their own abilities and believe that they will be able to do most of what they want to do in life. They know they can’t do everything.

To look at how to have confidence you need to understand that the typical person is always going to have some areas in their life that they are more confident than others.

You can be very athletic and comfortably confident in your athletic abilities while not feeling confident when meeting new people. Chances are you are confident in more ways than you may realize. The key to discovering a realistic self-confidence is to remove some of the false beliefs you may have developed.

1. False Belief:

I believe that to be successful in life I have to be competent in all the important areas of life.

Realistic Belief:

I know that achievement-based thinking is not the true way to feel worthy. I get some satisfaction when I achieve things that I set out to do, but I know that failures have nothing to do with my personal worth. I was born worthy.

2. False Belief:

The past has shown me how to have confidence in myself or not. My past is my most important guidance-system.

Realistic Belief:

As we grow we don’t have the same vulnerabilities we did when we were young. You’ve gained some awareness on what you think should continue to influence you in life. You choose which areas of the past that you’ll allow to steer the present, but you don’t have to be a slave to the past.

3. False Belief:

Everybody knows that bad things happen more than good things. The good things I do can’t be given too much importance with all the bad. People remember the bad so I should, too. Maybe if I concentrate hard enough, I’ll have less bad results.

Realistic Belief:

I know that if I win 4 out of 5 times, that dwelling on the one time I lose and how terrible I feel is not a positive outlook. I know I can’t win all the time! It’s enough for me to do well at something most of the time.

I can use how good it feels to win next time things aren’t falling my way, because I know it’s only a temporary setback.

Learning how to have confidence has a lot to do with learning how to have a more realistic attitude towards life’s ups and downs.

Peter Murphy is a peak performance expert. He recently produced a very popular free report: 10 Simple Steps to Developing Communication Confidence. This report reveals the secret strategies all high achievers use to communicate with charm and impact. Apply now because it is available for a limited time only at: http://www-confidence.com/

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Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Build Confidence

By Michael Teo

Confidence is the feeling that you are sure you can complete a complex or even dangerous task. Feeling confident means you are sure of your skills and ability to succeed in a given task. It is an internal determination of how sure you are of your skills. Lack of confidence means you are not sure that you can complete an activity successfully. Your confidence of being able to do something is based on your track record of succeeding in various similar tasks. The feeling of self-confidence is learned and can be passed from one task to another task.

People with low confidence level are people who are stressed out. They are so harsh and strict on themselves that they tend to bring their own self-confidence down without anyone else helping them to. So, the first thing you will need to do is to relax and de-stress in the evening after work or 3 times a week. Yoga is generally good; you can try that if you want. Self-hypnosis is fabulous too. But if you do not have a budget for all those fancy classes, switch on some relaxing music and just sit there, with your legs cross, concentrate of breathing. Focus on every single breath you take and feel the anger and the confusion disperse with every single breath you exhale.

One reason people are not confident after successfully completing a task or achieving a difficult goal is because they often do not acknowledge their achievement and may even demean what they have done. Another reason some people are not confident is they look at a task or a goal as a large entity. Success or failure is determined by the outcome that may come after days or months of toiling. Some people wontedly take on tasks that are way over their head, such that they are assured of failure. They do this to re-enforce their apparent lack of self-confidence.

The way to build confidence is to: Break tasks into smaller units; acknowledge your success for each step, and learn from your mistakes to re-enforce your confidence.

Break task into smaller steps: Before you set out to perform a task or try to achieve a goal, you must realize that the activity is in fact a series of smaller steps. This is a basic concept in any type of task planning. Thus, instead of waiting until the end to examine if you are successful, you have a series of successes, leading up to the finish.

Acknowledge success for each step: For each one of these steps, you must acknowledge your success. Congratulate yourself each time whenever you succeed. If you do not do well, correct your error. Take care about warning yourself, except in extreme cases.

Re-enforce overall confidence: This self-talk will re-enforce your acknowledgment of your abilities and increase your confidence as you go along on achieving the goal.

You can build your confidence by acknowledging your successes for each step along the way to achieve a goal. The self-congratulations will build and re-enforce your confidence along the way feeling like a champion.

Michael Teo is an expert on the Human Psychology and Behavior.

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