Self confidence definition

Lets start defining self confidence by doing a small exercise, I want you to lift your hands up right now and hold them for few seconds then put them back where they were.

Now the question is, did you find any difficulty raising your hand? Did you think that it's impossible to do so? Do you remember that last time something bad happened when you lifted your hands and so you hesitated? Was your mind full of negative thoughts and obsessions so that you hesitated before lifting your hands?

Of course none of these things happened simply because you have self confidence in raising your hands because you did it many times correctly before. This brings us to two very important conclusions: The first is that you can be confident of your ability to do a certain task (like raising your hand) and lack confidence in doing another task like public speaking. That's why lots of successful people might be wondering why do they lack self confidence, while those people are confident in their ability to succeed at work or at studies they lack self confidence in other life fields. The second is that you the more you do a task successfully the more you become confident in doing it. The first time you tried riding a bicycle you were so afraid, stressed and you fell a lot of times but later on when you mastered it, it became a piece of cake.

Can your mobile phone fly?

If i took your mobile phone and told you that is it a helicopter, will you ever believe me? Of course you won't!! Even if I brought a couple of my friends who told you the same thing you will just say that they are nuts. Now what if you went home and found one of your relatives holding your phone and trying to make it fly? and when you approached her you were told "Did you see my new helicopter?"

Will you believe her? Of course not!!

But why did you hold on to your beliefs even though lots of people were apposing you? Its because you know for sure that this mobile phone is not a helicopter. The same goes for your personality, the main reason you believe things that people say about you is that you are not sure of your real self.

If someone told you that you are a loser and you felt bad, its usually because you are not sure whether you are a loser or not. Had you been confident enough the same way you were confident that your mobile phone isn't a helicopter you wouldn't have felt bad at all.

Its also the same reason why the world's boxing champion would not feel bad at all if a stranger told him that he is weak or unhealthy. But if your very slim friend was told the same thing then most probably he will feel really bad.

The important conclusion we come up with from these pieces of information is that: Your self confidence in your personal traits comes from knowing yourself well to the extent that you never believe people who tell you anything else.

Confident people aren't the ones who are never criticized or rejected but they are the ones who discount these rejections and consider them nothing, while a guy who lacks confidence will obsess about anything that is said about him a confident person would simply laugh and walk away.

Self confidence levels

As I mentioned earlier self, self confidence can not be generalized, for example you can't say "I am self confident" or "I lack self confidence" simply because each one of us (even the ones who believe that they have no confidence) have certain things that they can do very well.

The first step to becoming a confident person is to ask you, what are the life fields that i lack confidence at?

Some people are confident in getting good grades in exams but they lack confidence in dealing with people. You might be perfect in using computers but you might have no self confidence when it comes to playing sports.

Important exercise Before you continue reading this lesson, write down the areas of your life where you lack self confidence. Try to remember the things that you fear doing most and recall the last times you didn't perform well while doing something.

People usually give a very high importance to social interactions to the extent that they believe that they lack self confidence if they don't perform well socially. I met a friend of mine who told me that she needs my help because she doesn't have any self confidence, I asked her how she knew that she lacks self confidence and she told me that she fears to talk with new people.

My friend who was intelligent,smart and who had lots of good traits believed that she has no self confidence because of her lack of ability to deal with new people!!

The correct answer she should have said is, i am confident in answering math problems but i do lack confidence when it comes to meeting strangers. Knowing which areas that you need to work on is the key to building self confidence.

The main reason millions of the self confidence building self help advice never work is that people give generic advice and expect them to be applied to the person's life with disregard to the field he lacks confidence at. if you already believe that you are intelligent then helping you become the most intelligent person in the world might not affect your confidence if you had problems talking to the other sex.

This is the reason why you should know what areas of your life you lack self confidence at. Stop reading now and determine these areas so that you make the best use out of this program

Myths surrounding self confidence

What prevents people from building self confidence? Why do some people believe that they can't do anything about it or help themselves? Simply this happens because those people have some false beliefs about self confidence that they have acquired from friends, relatives or the media.

These beliefs are myths and being aware of them is one of the things that will pave the way for building a solid confidence:

I don't have the self confidence genes or I wasn't born confident. The truth is that there are no such thing as self confidence genes simply because self confidence is just a set of beliefs that you have about yourself. Each of us was born clean Without any beliefs about ourselves or the objects around us.As we moved on with our lives we started developing beliefs about ourselves. Those who formed positive beliefs became confidence and those we formed negative beliefs became less confident.

self confidence is dependent on external factors :Some people might believe that if they got that expensive car or if they were a bit taller then they would become more confident but the truth is that this never happens. When your self confidence comes from external factors you will still feel worthless deep within because your subconscious mind will be aware that you are getting your sense of self worth from your car, mobile or friends. The other problem that arises when you depend on external factors for self confidence is that the fake confidence you will experience will disappear as soon as one of these external factors is lost, for example if your expensive car wrecked you might not be able to leave your home without it !!

its too late to build self confidence, I should have done it earlier: even if you are above 60 you can still build your self confidence from scratch. Just as i just explained, self confidence is a set of beliefs and beliefs can be added or removed from your mind anytime with disregard to your age. So in short there are no self confidence genes but there are just correct and incorrect beliefs about oneself.