Difficult times are easier to survive with self-confidence. This quality helps not to panic, make decisions calmly, rely on your own strength and actively seek a way out of the situation. It also causes the sympathy of other people, allows a harmonious relationship and a successful career if you Become More Confident.
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What Is Self-confidence
Self-confidence is a realistic attitude to their skills. Possessing this quality man accepts himself for what he is, and trusts himself. He knows his strengths and weaknesses, sets himself achievable goals, knows how to defend personal boundaries and calmly accepts criticism.
Lack of self-confidence leads to constant doubts, a feeling of insignificance, as well as an inability to trust. This problem sometimes doesn’t apply to all spheres of life: a person can be confident in himself/herself as a professional, but have difficulties in relationships.
Neutralize Cognitive Distortions
Emotions affect how satisfied a person is with their life. But often our automatic reactions to events do not reflect the real state of affairs. In many cases, they are overly negative-but this is not as harmless as it sounds. Automatic thoughts and cognitive distortions can multiply anxiety, deprive hope, and undermine self-esteem. A prime example is when, after being rejected at a job interview, a person thinks, “I’ll never get anything done.” This rejection could be due to a hundred different reasons, and it says nothing about future career prospects, but the far-reaching conclusions do not motivate courageous action.
But such negative thoughts can be brought under control by keeping a diary of emotions. To do this, draw three columns on a sheet of paper: “automatic thoughts,” “cognitive distortions,” and “rational response.
Each time you feel insecure, record your anxious thoughts in the first column. Then think about what cognitive distortion is causing them, and write it down in the second column.
After that, you should try to replace the negative thought with a more realistic and rational one. Instead of the overgeneralization “I’m definitely going to fail at the interview, I never do well” you can write “If I don’t worry, I can make a good impression, I have a story to tell.” Such a thought should be put in the third column, and then assess how much your mood and level of anxiety have changed.
Use Comedic Visualization
Another way Burns recommends: exaggerate your fears to incredible proportions in a way that even makes you laugh.
For example, you’re afraid that your talk will be too boring and you won’t be listened to. Imagine that as soon as you start talking, the audience will begin to fall asleep rapidly, some will bassily snore, others will drop their heads on their neighbor’s shoulder. After the show everyone will wake up from sleep and conclude that they slept for a long time. As a result, you’ll be famous as a lecturer whose speeches can overcome insomnia and rejuvenate. People will go to your lectures in droves to sleep.
Use the Strategy of Small Victories
When a person achieves goals, his confidence grows. Goals do not have to be ambitious. Suitable and those that are quite realistic to achieve in a small period, and because of this to feel a little more confident.
Here’s what you can do:
- Find a sport you like and go to practice regularly. Picking the right sport, look at the most popular events at Bet22. Since they are on-demand, you will be able to access more opportunities to practice them, regardless of your location. According to the American Psychological Association, sports improve your mood and help fight anxiety and depression. And getting fit gives you a sense of accomplishment and boosts your self-esteem – so it’s also important to find a way to track your progress.
- Keep track of all your progress at work. Often we forget what we did well and take a long time to get over failures. If this happens to you, keep a list of all, even minor work victories – you’ll be surprised how many small victories you have in your account every day.
- Start learning new things. A new language, online course, or lecture adds to your knowledge base and boosts your confidence by pushing your limits. You don’t have to learn something that will be useful right now – pick something you like. Learning develops the brain in any case, and solving new problems helps you look at routine work from a new angle.
Protect Yourself From Toxic Influences
Friends, family and colleagues can greatly influence self-esteem. In a supportive environment, anyone will feel more confident, whereas constant recriminations can cause even the most confident among us to lose heart.
Here’s how to improve communication:
- Analyze your relationships with friends and loved ones: how do these people feel about you, how do they evaluate you, support or criticize you, how correct are their judgments? Sometimes those closest to you throw you off balance and hurt your self-esteem. It can be impossible to break off relations with them, but it is possible to minimize contact and establish personal boundaries. At first, it will be hard, but if you insist on repeating that you are not willing to listen to criticism, over time, the relationship can change.
- Learn to say no: agreeing to any, even uncomfortable to you event, you may feel a loss of control over your life. Before you agree, give yourself time to evaluate your options – sometimes a polite refusal helps to save time, energy and feel more confident.
- Limit social media: the more often we flip through the feed with the posts of successful people, trying to compare ourselves with a retouched picture, the more chances we have to lose faith in ourselves. It is worth setting a time limit on using social networks and periodically reminding yourself that a picture on the Internet can be very far from real life.
Change Your Impression of Yourself
We read our interlocutor’s body language without realizing it. A person who looks tense, with his arms crossed over his chest and looking down at the floor seems closed off and unsure of himself.
Consciously controlling your movements during an important meeting is hard. But still it is worth trying to adopt a more relaxed posture, to drop the shoulders, to smile slightly, to periodically look into the eyes of the interlocutor. At first, it will require effort, but over time it will become a habit, will look more confident in the eyes of others and achieve better results in the work.
Clothing is also important. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but it should be comfortable and fit the image that you would like to be associated with. This will make you feel more relaxed and at ease.