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Confidence is a state of mind

Confidence is a state of mind that is conditioned through experiences. When a person experiences success, that person will tend to expect to be successful. And that expectation will cause a feeling of confidence.

For example: A young man wants to be a prizefighter, so he gets a manager and takes lessons. His manager will not setup a bout for him until he has built up enough stamina and skill. And even then, the manager will only put him up against a contender that he knows his fighter can hammer. When his fighter beats the challenger, he is successful, and starts to gain belief in his fighting skills.

With each bout, the manager puts his contestant up against a contender who is only a little bit better of a challenger then the last, but not good enough to beat his man. By the end of the third fight, the young contender begins to expect to win his fourth, and so his confidence continues to increase. This series of events continues to repeat itself. And as long as the contender wins, his expectations of success, and his feelings of self-confidence will continue to increase.

If a person who has a long history of success and feelings of self-confidence does fail, they still tend to expect success the next time out. Conversely, when a person who is weak in the self-confidence department fails, they tend to lose confidence, and begin to expect failure, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Having true self-confidence doesn't mean that individuals will be able to do everything. People, who have true self-confidence, usually have expectations that are sensible. Even when some of their expectations are not met, they continue to be positive and to accept themselves.

People who are not self-confident, tend to depend excessively on the approval of others in order to feel self-esteem. They tend to avoid taking risks because they fear failure. They often put themselves down and tend to discount or ignore compliments that they do receive.

Conversely, secure people will risk the disapproval of other people because they generally depend on their own aptness. Just because a person does not have confidence, it does not mean that he/she doesn't have abilities. A lack of self-esteem is often the result of centering totally on the ridiculous expectancies of other people, especially those of parents and friends. The power of friends can be more powerful than those of parents in shaping the feelings about one's self.

Beliefs That Continue to Influence Self-Confidence

In response to external influences, people create assumptions; some of these are helpful and some are not. Several assumptions that can interfere with self-confidence and alternative ways of thinking are:

ASSUMPTION: I must always be successful at everything that I do. This assumption is totally unrealistic. In real life, each person has her strengths and her weaknesses. While it's important to learn to do the best that one can, it's more important to learn to accept the self as being human, and fallible. Feel good about what you are good at, and accept the fact that no one knows everything nor are they an expert at everything.

ASSUMPTION: I must be perfect, and loved by everyone, and satisfy everyone. Again, this assumption is totally unrealistic. All human beings are flawed. It's better to develop personal standards and values that are not completely dependent on the approval of others.

ASSUMPTION: Everything that happened to me in the past remains in control of my feelings and behaviors in the present.

ALTERNATIVE: While it is true that your confidence was especially influenced by external influences when you were a young child, as you gain maturity, you can gain insight and outlook on what those influences have been. In doing so, you can choose which influences you will continue to allow to have an effect on your life. You don't have to be helpless based on what happened in the past. HERE ARE SOME STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING CONFIDENCE

Emphasize Your Strengths. Think about and give yourself credit for everything you can do. And give yourself acknowledgment for every new experience that you are willing to try. Take risks. Adopt the point of view of: I never fail, because there are NO failures. However, sometimes I learn what doesn't work, and once I've learned what doesn't work in a given situation, I can try something else.

Use Self-Talk: Use self-talk as a tool to counter harmful assumptions. Then, tell yourself to stop. Substitute more reasonable assumptions. For example, when you catch yourself expecting perfection, remind yourself that it's impossible to do everything perfectly, and that it's only possible to do things to the best of your ability. This allows you to accept yourself while still striving to improve.

Make mental movies: Visualize yourself in the various scenarios that you currently lack confidence in. But see yourself behaving like a person who has tremendous self-confidence would. There are powerful Hypnosis and NLP procedures that you can use to build a monumental amount of self-confidence from within your subconscious mind. There are even NLP techniques that will let you take confidence that you do have in areas of your life, and then transplant that confidence to areas of your life that are lacking confidence!

Self-Evaluate: Learn to appraise yourself independently. Circumvent the continual sense of chaos that comes from relying too much on the opinions of others.

Alan B. Densky, CH is a certified hypnotherapist and NLP Practitioner. His ecommerce site offers hypnosis CD's for self-confidence. His Self Confidence CD's were reviewed by Personal-Development.info in England. Visit him for Free self hypnosis & NLP newsletters and articles.