Rebuilding Your Confidence
Recently, Katy Perry of American Idol stated to a contestant who experienced a lot of social media bullying that, “It’s what you think of you, not what they think of you, that is important.” If you want to build a new confident self, you must consider the truth of this statement. Let’s talk about rebuilding your confidence in a powerful, life-changing way.
It’s time to rebuild your self-confidence so that you can feel accomplished. Everything worthwhile takes time and effort to achieve. You’re not going to be 100 percent confident in every area of your life overnight. However, you will know how to create the opportunity to build confidence once you educate yourself about this issue. After all, how much confidence you carry yourself with is 100 percent in your control.
Set SMART Goals
Learn how to set goals properly so that you also implement the steps required for achieving the goals you set. A SMART goal is set up from the beginning to be easy to implement. The process of establishing a SMART goal requires implementation.
To set SMART goals, you’ll want to ensure each goal you set is:
• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Time-Bound
This means that your goals must meet all five of the criteria described by the initials. If your goal is specific, it’s easier to set up the steps required for success. If you can measure the results, then you will know if you’re succeeding or not.
Plus, what’s the point of setting goals that aren’t attainable or realistic anyway? Finally, setting a deadline for the goal to be realized also informs everything else about your schedule and what needs to be done in what order to avoid bottlenecks. This is the one thing that you can learn that will really make a difference as we advance in experiencing success. When you experience more success, you feel more confident. This begins the process of rebuilding your confidence.
Rebuilding Your Confidence Leads to Taking More Risks
Moving past your comfort zone by taking more risks will help you rebuild your confidence. Taking risk is about acting. Acting is the only way you will achieve repeatable success in life. Success in life rarely happens to people without them doing something each day to lead to success.
When you were a little kid, you took risks every time you played. You tried out new things, made mistakes, stumbled, fell, and got back up. Perhaps you ate some dirt and decided you did not like it. Whatever it is that you did, you had built-in confidence to try new things when you were little. It’s part of being a kid.
The great thing was your mom, dad, or other grown-up was there to help cushion the fall or at least help you get back up. Now that you’re an adult, it’s important to keep putting your toe in and trying new things so that you can avoid getting stuck in doing the same thing, day in and day out, and not continuing your growth.
Confidence Comes From Accomplishment
When you take risks, even as a kid, that experience starts to create accomplishments that you can look back on, giving you the experience to gauge your experiences and make more decisions.
When you were a kid, you likely got on your bike wrecked and fell down a good bit. However, your persistence and determination enabled you to learn to ride the bike without so many scrapes and bruises. Falling taught you how to sit on the bike properly. Falling taught you that you need a helmet and knee pads. Falling taught you how to balance better. Falling and failing teach you perseverance.
Confidence Results From Defeat; Rebuilding Your Confidence is the Solution
When you take risks, sometimes you fail. But that is okay because when you fail at something, miss a deadline, or just crash and burn, you still learn valuable information that can increase your chances for success in the future. That experience leads to more confidence.
Naturally, you don’t want to make it a practice to repeat failure. If you do crash and burn when you try something new, assess the steps you took before choosing to go forward. There is usually a way to mitigate danger by researching and gaining knowledge before taking the risk.
For example, your mom and dad made you wear a helmet and knee pads before you started learning to ride your bike. So, while you felt like you were taking a fun risk and it was an adventure to learn, it was done so in a safe way that allowed you to take the risk without risking your life.
You can do the same thing when it comes to taking a risk. Take risks that you’ve researched and studied that are likely to provide you the results you desire. That process all starts by knowing what you want first.
Focus on Your Strengths
You may not realize this, but even if you were born with the natural ability to be a famous singer, you still might not succeed if you can’t find a way to develop your skill so that you can become famous for it. One thing for sure is that once you’ve identified your strengths, it’s a lot easier to be confident about them if you work on building them better.
Identify Your Strengths
Take the time to write down the things you are good at doing already, even if you’re a beginner. If you can do it well enough, consider it a strength. For example, if you’re naturally good at putting your thoughts to paper, that’s strength even if you’ve never written a novel.
If you’re not sure what you’re good at, you can:
• Ask your family – What does your family think you’re good at doing?
• Ask your friends – What do your friends think you’re good at doing?
• Take a test – Take an assessment test that will tell you what you’re good at doing and even your unconscious interests.
• Make lists – Write down five things you enjoy doing that you’re also good at, even if you’re not an expert yet.
Enhance Strengths and Develop Weak Areas
Once you know what things you are good at, throw out anything you dislike doing, and then find someone you can learn from to help you improve and start practicing that skill. Watch YouTube videos, or hire a life coach who specializes in helping people improve that skill that you want to improve.
Remember that how you perceive things is how they are for you, even if you’re wrong. If you lack confidence because you think you’re not good at something, then you’re not good at it. Confidence comes from proof of success. To be good at it, you’ll need to take the time to practice so that when you do it for a cause, you’re good at it, whatever it is.
Define Your Principles, Morals, and Values
Almost nothing impacts your life more than your stated principles, morals, and values. These are what guide you to your profession, vocation, and passion in life. Your stated principles, morals, and values should define your decision-making in every aspect of your life.
When you are strong and understand your own principles, morals, and values, you’ll make choices about right and wrong easier than if you don’t know for sure. When you don’t live by your moral principles, the incongruency can cause you to experience doubt and lack self-confidence.
Compromising your principles is never a good idea. Make sure you have developed your principles and not just using someone else’s principles, morals, and values to appease others in the moment. It’s easier to be confident when you are passionate and stand behind your beliefs. Some sound principles might include the following:
• Treating Others with Humanity and Respect – This is often known as the “golden rule” to treat others how you’d expect to be treated.
• Not Telling Falsehoods About Yourself or Others – Not telling lies is a fundamental moral principle that everyone should follow, of course, but most of us tell ourselves lies all the time and, due to that, end up losing confidence.
• Not Going into Debt – This is another principle that you might choose to live with. You may have it spelled out to not go into debt for anything but a home or education but knowing your thoughts on this area will be helpful as you make choices in life.
• Doing What You Say You Will – This is another principle that you may want to develop. Being able to say yes or no with conviction feels good and sets you up for success.
The important thing is to make a list of your principles, morals, and values that you want to stand by no matter what so that you live those principles. When you do that, you automatically build confidence in yourself little by little, day by day.
Focus on Solutions, Not Problems
As you seek to develop your confidence level in everything you do, remember to become solution focused. If you focus on the problem, you may make the situation worse, but you become focused on the action if you focus on developing and implementing solutions. Action breeds confidence. Continue to focus on rebuilding your confidence. To become more solution-focused try the suggestions below.
• Describe the Problem as It Is – Don’t get tied up in hyperbole when it comes to describing the problems you want to solve. Just tell it like it is. “I want to write a novel” is a problem, but you need to be specific. “I want to write a novel about my life growing up as an Army Brat from the ages of 12 to 18 within the next 18 months.”
• Be Optimistic – As you describe the problem you need to solve, be confident that you really can solve it. If you know, you can solve it with just a little work, and you won’t be frustrated and give up. Remember, perseverance is what you need to achieve.
• Do Your Research – Once you define the problem, you can now find out what the experts say. Find out what the experts say about the problem, and then start choosing between solutions.
• Give It Time – Nothing happens overnight. You’re not going to solve all your problems in one try. Some problems you’ll be working on for a lifetime. That’s okay because the journey is what will build your confidence.
Becoming solution-focused is the answer for almost everything in life, from finding happiness to starting a business to raising kids. It all starts with a problem and ends with a solution. But when your solution-focused, you get stuff done instead of only think about the problem.
Adopt A Noble Cause
Even if you’re an introvert doing things for others or associating your life with an important cause you care about can do more to help advance your confidence than almost anything else. The main reason is that as a human, you feel good when you help others. It’s a natural thing to do for most.
Develop Resilience
Being able to bounce back from daily challenges that happen to you is an essential skill you can practice and build. Without resilience, you can’t be confident because everyone has setbacks. No one has a life that goes smoothly from day one to the end. To develop more resilience, take more risks, do more things, and keep doing them even when you don’t want to as long as it’s producing the desired results.
Visualize Success
An enjoyable and practical skill to develop on your way to more confidence is the ability to visualize your success. Everyone likes to visualize differently. Figure out what works best for you. Some people like to write a story to themselves about what happens, listing all the good things that will happen. Others like to create a vision board using magazines, poster boards, and glue.
Whether you visualize only in your mind, or on paper, or by using technology does not matter. The ability to get your vision into your thoughts in a positive way is imperative to ensuring your success.
Become Well Informed
As you make choices, you want to base your decisions on facts, rather than on assumptions, lies or misunderstandings. Read a wide variety of literature, both fiction and nonfiction, about topics you care about. Read thoughts and opinions that differ from yours yet are based on facts. The more well informed you are on any topic, the better choices you’ll make, the better results you’ll achieve from those choices, and thus, your confidence level will increase.
Let Go of Perfectionism
One of the things that get in your way of feeling confident is feeling like a fake. You may feel like a fake for a variety of reasons, but more than likely, it’s not because you’re a fake. The more likely scenario is that you have bought into the notion that you can be perfect.
If you’re engaged in perfectionism, it’s a lie that you tell yourself not to experience success or not ever to get any of your ideas finished. It can be associated with a fear of success more than a fear of failure. This is something deep in your unconscious that you need to work through.
Dress for The Part You Want
Don’t misinterpret this advice as having to dress in a three-piece suit even if you feel strangled and genuinely hate the suit. This is about dressing to feel personally ready to do the job or the thing you need to do. Whether that’s public speaking or something else entirely does not matter. Dress in a way that makes you feel like you can do it.
Focus on Overall Health
It’s hard to be confident if you feel that you are not good enough. One truth to life is that you have the potential and everything you need to make changes that your life better by being as healthy as possible. Whether you inherited some physical traits that make life more difficult, you can eat and exercise your way to better health.
Health is another one of those areas in life that make it best to solidify your knowledge based on facts and then follow the experts you’ve identified based on your research. You don’t want to listen to anyone without the right experience and education regarding your health. Expertise really does matter.
Be Kind to Yourself and Others
Kindness is about putting what’s best for you and others first. Kindness is not about being nice. After all, it may not feel that nice to tell your best friend that she needs to open her curtains and get out of her bed if she ever wants to feel better. It’s not always taken as a kindness, even if it is.
To be kind, consider the language you use, listen more. Be mindful of what you’re doing and saying. Learn to communicate better so that your messages are heard as intended and how to listen better for understanding instead of responding.
Trust Your Intuitions
Trust your gut is a common thing you’re told in life. How many times has someone said to you that “you’ll know” when you’re having trouble producing the correct answer? The truth is, trusting your gut can be dangerous if you’ve not done the work to really know who you are, along with understanding the foundation of who you want to be to the world. You want to figure out when your gut aligns with reality and then trust it.
Surround Yourself with People Who Love You
As a human being, you need to connect with other people. Nothing can make you feel better about yourself than surrounding yourself with like-minded people who love you as you really are. This is not to say you need a bunch of “yes” people around you to lie to you. You still want people around you who tell you the truth, but you want them to be kind and honest people.
Don’t Allow Past Mistakes to Dictate Your Future
Everyone makes mistakes. Mistakes are part of every person’s life. Take the time to study your mistakes and research how you could have done it differently but do it without judgment. Only do this for the future knowledge of how to react if you have the same situation happen again. Look at it in the bright light of the day, then pack it away and move on. There is no need to dwell on a mistake any more than necessary to improve the future.
Accept Your Accomplishments
Just like you want to own up to your mistakes so you can do better in the future, accepting the things you’ve accomplished also goes far in helping you have a sense of accomplishment that fuels your self-confidence level.
List Each Accomplishment
More than likely, you already have a whole host of things you’ve managed to do without much thought. Write down everything you’ve done that you’re proud of over your lifetime or just in relation to what you are planning to do next.
Describe What You Learned
It will be helpful with each accomplishment to describe what you learned from that experience as you reached for your goals. Maybe you learned that you’re better at something than you thought, like writing or speaking in public. Maybe you realized you had more patience than you thought. Whatever it is, please write it down.
Describe the Feelings it Gave You as You Focus on Rebuilding Your Confidence
The other important factor for each of the accomplishments you list aside from what you learned is your feelings before, during, and after. Having a large vocabulary to describe your feelings will help you in rebuilding your confidence even more.
The more info included about each accomplishment, such as what you learned from it, the feelings you had about it and continue to have about it, the more you tap into your self-confidence when you need it. Isn’t rebuilding your confidence fun?
Many people who often speak to groups of people, give themselves a pep talk before going into a room to speak. In these pep talks, use affirmations that remind you that you have the specific qualities needed to succeed. When you also focus on what you’ve accomplished, you boost your confidence before you ever say a word.
I’m bestselling Wall Street Journal and USA Today author, marketing strategist, and entrepreneur Connie Ragen Green and I would love to connect further with you to help you to achieve your goals. If you are interested in learning how to optimize the syndication of your content, please take a look at my popular Syndication Optimization training course and consider coming aboard to increase your visibility, credibility, and profitability.