5 Ways To Increase Self-confidence
Believing in yourself is trusting that your own resources are sufficient to pursue your goals. It is knowing that we have a chance of success but that, if we do not achieve it, we will overcome failure. And, above all, to trust is to value ourselves for who we are, regardless of the results.
Trust is an important factor of resistance: it allows us to relativize and amortize the impact of failures. Being confident does not mean being insensitive to adversity, or ceasing to doubt forever, but simply showing ourselves capable of making good use of those experiences.
To have confidence is to suffer for failure – it is normal for it to cause us misery – without destroying us: failure should not leave us dejected or cause us to punish ourselves. If I trust myself, I will be able to distinguish between my worth and my achievements: because of failing I am not useless, and vice versa: the fact of succeeding does not make me a genius.
To increase our confidence in ourselves:
Trusting yourself is not having the certainty of reaching your goal but of having done everything possible to achieve it. To achieve that goal:
- Work hard
Train ourselves, prepare to progress in the field in which we want to be successful. As a famous golfer said: “The more I train, the luckier I get.” The same thing happens with confidence: it will come to us more easily if we have studied during the entire course –if we are students–, prepared our report –if we are employees–, reflected on what we wanted to say in a job interview –if we are. We are looking for-.
- Silencing inner criticism
It is that little voice that repeats incessantly: “you will not succeed, this is not for you, resign …”. Be careful, the inner critic generally tries to camouflage itself by pretending to be lucid; that is, masking subjective assessments (“I have felt ridiculous during the talk I just gave”) into absolute truths (“I have been ridiculous in front of everyone”).
A good exercise in struggle consists, then, in systematically reformulating one’s own thoughts from three questions:
- What are the facts? (“I have given my talk in a state of significant nervousness.”)
- What are my views on these facts? (“I think that my nervousness has been noticed and has altered the quality of my presentation, and that I have been judged negatively.”)
- What grounds do I have to think that way? (“Wow, I haven’t really asked anyone’s opinion: I was very ashamed and I was sure I had done it terrible!”).
- Regularly ask the opinion of those closest to you
Let’s ask for feedback instead of asking ourselves the questions and the answers, saying, “Did I get it right? No, I have been pathetic, I will never dare to expose myself like that … “. Whatever criticisms we may receive, they will never be as negative as those that we are capable of directing ourselves. And often they will be more interesting.
- Be the best friend of oneself
It is essential that we modify the relationship we maintain with ourselves, increasing tolerance and benevolence. We do not continually pressure ourselves and admit that we are not perfect, that we do not always have something intelligent to say or something admirable to do … It is about maintaining a friendly relationship with ourselves, a relationship made at the same time of tolerance, always, and of demand , sometimes – and not in the inverse proportion.
Good self-confidence simply means treating each other like we would treat our best friend: frankly and kindly. We do not say to a friend who has failed: “You are useless, it would have been better if you had not acted.”
We know that this would be false, unfair and demotivating at the same time. And yet this is how many people talk to themselves.
- Accept the idea of failure
We must find the middle ground between the denial of failure (“It would be a catastrophe, everything but that …”), which subjects us to excessive pressure, and the obsessive doubt (“I’m not going to continue, I’m going to collapse… ”), which will make us lose our capacities. To accept failure is to foresee that it may come and, if it yields, to understand that we will survive. And after accepting the possibility, we jump into the ring to avoid it coming by surprise.
In order to increase our tolerance for failure, this is the solution: force ourselves to act more often to have a sufficient amount of data before judging. If we only approach a person on the street to ask the time and it turns out that it is unpleasant , we will conclude that this management is doomed to failure.
But if we force ourselves to approach ten people, we will then perceive – or at least that would be normal – that it works well eight times out of ten. The law of series is favorable to self-confidence.
- Stop confusing value and performance
Avoid continually depending on the approval of others or the achievement of one goal or another. We do not lose our value by being loved or by having failed in something. Neither success nor failure reveals the truth of who we are. Life is not only a story of successes or failures, it is also everything that exists in parallel, outside of competitions and comparisons.
As the Zen adage says: “Whoever achieves his goal loses everything else.”
Let’s trust, do our best, and then forget about it all and just go back to living, so as not to miss out on everything else.
