Sunday, June 24, 2007

A short lesson in building self confidence and self esteem





Easy and Practical Self confidence

Everybody needs a confidence boost sometimes, so here are a few tips...
[These self confidence tips come from Roger Elliott, who runs courses and a website dedicated to building self confidence. You can subscribe to his famous free self confidence course here.

1) Feel Good when you Want
When you need to boost your self confidence or self esteem, find 3 things that make you feel good. These could be memories of good times, a piece of music, a holiday souvenir, or a person's face - use photos if it helps. Practise thinking about them and bringing them to mind.
Developing self confidence that lasts - because of the way emotions 'attach' themselves to memories, you will quickly train yourself to feel good when you want - a great help.

2) Beat Self Consciousness
Self consciousness is the No.1 enemy of self confidence. Learn how to keep your attention off yourself. You can do this easily by following these steps...
a) If you notice you have become self-conscious, (you can usually tell because you start to feel anxious), choose something 'everyday' you can see and study it in detail. For example: examine a door, look at the different textures and shades of colour, wonder about who made it and how and so on. The important thing is that you're learning how to keep your attention off yourself.
b) If you feel self-conscious in a social situation, it's usually because you don't have enough to do! Focus on what your purpose in the situation is. Whether you're there to:
find out if you like the other people in the situation
make others feel comfortable
find out some information
make business contacts
and so on...
It's easy to feel self-conscious if you have nothing to do, and much more difficult if your attention is occupied by a task.
Think how comfortable you have been with others when you're all working toward a common goal. The common goal of socialising could be making friends, it could be the exchange of mutually beneficial information, it could be whatever you want it to be!

3) Don't Take Undue Criticism - Even From Yourself !
Challenge your own assumptions. Here's a few to get you started:
a) Confident-looking people have bad moments too.
b) Just because you feel under-confident, doesn't mean other people can tell.
c) If you're saying things to yourself like "You're no good at anything" then rest assured, you're wrong. Everyone can compose a sentence, get successfully to the store, eat without choking. Don't let yourself make sweeping statements about yourself - in the long run it is this sort of thing that can really damage your self image.
Building self esteem is not just about thinking good of yourself, it's about not thinking bad for no reason!
d) Just because you have felt bad about yourself in the past doesn't mean you're always going to feel that way. I have seen hundreds of people surprise themselves once they have learned how to build self confidence in a way that it stays built!

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