The best news is this: rebuilding or developing your confidence, or self-esteem, is very achievable. You have to:

• know where you are going
• manage your mind
• take action

Know Where You’re Going
Start with assessing where you are. Try to find a way to use your situation to motivate you to work on developing confidence. The one place you won’t find motivation is sitting around feeling sorry for yourself (sorry). While it may be understandable that you feel this way, (and I encourage you to acknowledge how you are feeling) indulging in those feelings will keep you stuck, no matter how habitual they are.

Next, ask yourself a few questions: Where do you want to go? Why do you want this confidence? What will it get you? If you don’t know where you want to go, (and why you want to go there) you can’t get there. Knowing where and why you want to get someplace will help motivate you to stay the course on the road to building your confidence.

Manage Your Mind
Perhaps this is the most difficult part, but very do-able. Depending on who you listen to, we have somewhere between 20-70,000 thoughts per day. Some people estimate that as much as 80% of those thoughts are negative. That’s what fear, worry, sadness and limiting beliefs do to our thinking. When we actively engage in positive thoughts and activities, think of the impact that could have on your life. Negative thinking is very self-defeating. Start identifying when you are having those thoughts.

Then, engage in positive thinking (I am simplifying for brevity sake. Please refer to my other blog posts and newsletters on this) When you catch yourself saying something negative, one easy trick is to flip it around and replace it with a positive thought.
You can start quite simply. Instead of, “I’m sure I’ll never meet someone else” say, “I look forward to the time when I will meet my soul mate.” This creates a higher vibration and shifts your focus to a positive future, instead of staying stuck in the past or worried about the future.

Employ the use of visualization, and images of success and happiness. The mind doesn’t really know the difference between a real or imagined thought, so try to shift your thoughts to what you ultimately want, so that your subconscious (and the universe) start really working on that.

Write down all of your achievements and all the things you are proud of. Ask people what they say when describing your positive attributes. If you’re in business, ask for testimonials. What are your strengths? Write this all down and read it frequently.
Make a commitment to yourself that you have decided to build your confidence, and will do whatever it takes. If you don’t make this clear decision within yourself, you will waffle, and find it easy to slip into old behaviors like negative self-talk. These behaviors will undermine your confidence.

When you doubt your way, or have a limited belief around your success, acknowledge the doubt or belief, but challenge it. My favorite questions are, “how true is this really?” or, “How do I know this to be true?” Have the conversation with yourself. If after debating the risks you are taking, you feel the goals you have outlined are too risky, just make smaller goals. But challenge yourself to move out of your comfort zone in order to change.

Take Action
Set goals, and break them down into bite-sized pieces. Keep a journal of your successes, no matter how “small.” Any success is a cause for celebration. (I don’t believe any success is small.) Make the goals achievable, and then as your confidence builds, create goals that are more of a reach.

And one last note: learn how to handle stumbles, mistakes and failures along the way. They are simply lessons learned and part of life. Acknowledge them, and go back to reading your success journal, plotting your next step toward building more successes, and therefore more confidence!

If you’d like to work on more techniques for building confidence, drop me an email. I’d love to help!

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