Listly by April Rose Casiple Semogan
Confidence is not something that anyone is born with, and everyone needs to work on this aspect of themselves. Self-confidence is something that you need to build. So, if you know someone with incredible self-esteem, then you can expect that they have worked hard to earn it. Confidence can be a little fragile at times. You can take years to build enough confidence to believe in yourself, only to be discouraged in seconds by one rude comment.
You are indeed surrounded by many elements that threaten your self-confidence. These elements go on top of your inner critic of self-doubt that tells you that you are not good enough. It would help if you started making active decisions to build up your self-esteem.
Visualisation is the technique that involves seeing or imagining a version of yourself that you are proud of and believing that you can be that version of you. Typically, self-doubt roots from the fact that you have a poor perception of yourself. So it would help if you understood that this poor perception is often a mistaken idea of yourself.
Again, your self-esteem is probably low because you don't see yourself as someone successful. The trick here is to make a permanent or even just a lasting change on how you view yourself. Affirmations are positive and uplifting statements that you can tell yourselves to lift your spirits. Usually, the louder you say them, the more they are going to be effective. If you tell yourself always that you are a successful person, then you are eventually going to believe it.
You cannot overcome your fear by hiding in the corner of a dark room. Go ahead, step out and do something that scares you every day. You will gain confidence in every experience. You would think that "If I was able to do this, then I can do anything". So, get off your dark corner and shine!
The harshest things that you will ever hear come typically from yourself. It is your inner critic, your self-doubt. If you doubt yourself too much, then it means that your inner critic has become overactive and incorrect. But you can make this a two-way street if you hear your inner critic tell you that you are a failure-- ask it why, how and where are the proof. That ought to shut it up.
Jia Jiang started the 100 days of rejection challenge after he got rejected by a potential investor. He became more upset than he expected, so he plans on desensitising himself to rejection. He would make outrageous requests of people so that he can be rejected over 100 days.
If you set goals that are too difficult to achieve, then you might be discouraging yourself to do anything at all. You should set up small goals that you can easily win then work your way up from there. Motivate yourself the moment you wake up and find an inspiration. Listening to podcasts of motivational speakers, watching motivational videos and reading inspirational books can help you through it.
Helping other people can help you forget about any of the flaws that you think you possess. You focus on making another human being feel better. When you do successfully assist someone, you, in turn, would feel accomplished.
You need to take care of yourself so that you can start feeling self-confidence. It's hard to feel confident when you look and feel stressed out. Make time to exercise, eat properly, sleep and socialise.
You should know when to say "no". It would help if you let other people know that you want them to respect your personal boundaries. Be more assertive and learn to ask for what you want.
Low self-confidence may come from the misguided idea that other people are better than you are. You need to understand that you are not inferior to anybody else.